Are Black Men Mean?: A Lifetime Of Denial Examined

by Christa Bell

"People afraid of criticism/But I always put myself in a sacrificial position"

-Nas, Nas 2008 (N.I.G.G.E.R.)

Remember when Madonna said, "I've never been treated more disrespectfully as a woman than by the black men I've dated"? This, in a January 1996 interview with Spin Magazine, in response to Dennis Rodman's humiliating depiction of her as a sperm demon in his memoir, I Should Be Dead By Now. 

Black women lost their minds.  We trampled over one another in our rush to defend black men, all the while denying the secret truths of our own experiences, our own families and relationships. We attacked Madonna like fried chicken at a family reunion. Called her and her mama stank ho while wondering at the audacity of white pussy. She needed to keep her legs closed and away from our brothers, nasty bitch. Chickenhead whore.   Her "caint sang no how" voice was silenced in our community because she was a thief, a usurper of black dick, and in our minds, the number one reason, as Essence Magazine kept warning, most of us would probably die without black husbands.

And now, fifteen years A.O.J. (After OJ),  after so-called "gangsta rap" has made billions of dollars on some "we-destroy-black-psyches-to-the-beat-y'all", after  R. Kelley, Kobe Bryant, and Bishop Weeks, after the black male Niggarati tried with all their might to persuade us against the brilliance of Barack Obama (yeah, I'm talking about you Tavis, Cornel, Jesse), after one of my best friends, a black man, was arrested for beating and terrorizing his asian wife, after my best sister-friend told me that Steve, her baby daddy, has decided that in order to continue paying child support he's gonna need a paternity test for his 16 year-old son, after all of this, I am thinking about Madonna and black male meaness. I'm thinking about our beautiful Obama who appears to have escaped this particular soul sickness. But most of all, today, I'm thinking about Chris Brown, the young man recently alleged to have beat up his girlfriend and pop counterpart, Rihanna. How could anyone so young, beautiful, talented, and rich be so violently, hurtful? Whatever else we might conclude, we must also admit to this: Brown is an abuser.  He is an enemy of black love and black community.  He is another mean black man and inside the black community, this meanness is not only allowed, it is in many cases celebrated, excused, ignored and explained away.  Almost always, especially when the victim of meanness is a woman, she is questioned.  What did she do?  How did she provoke him? Our gaze ever external, we will continue to buy his records and nod our heads as the cruelty rampages on.  It's like that y'all.   

I understand the socio-political-psychic experience of black men as well as a black woman can. I was raised middle class, in a nuclear family, with a black American father, who went to one of America's finest universities on a football scholarship.  On my fathers side, I am first generation out-the-ghetto, my dad having spent his formative years a child of sharecroppers on a plantation in Arkansas, and his teen years growing up in the Hunters Point Projects of San Francisco. As  a young man, and before he found the Lord, my dad brags he was a Black Panther and a Black Muslim.   He spent two years in jail in the 60's for possession of one joint of marijuana. He has four sisters and three brothers, one of whom recently died of cancer and crack.  My dad pastors a church of indigents in California. He often uses his bible the same way many rappers use their lyrics-to prove that women are inferior and to invoke Manifest Destiny in his relationships. He's been divorced three times.  Pops talks much shit while playing dominos and can still school you on the basketball court, son. My father is passionate, gregarious, funny, and charming in that "intelligent thug" way that drives some women wild. He is also angry, emotionally stunted, and both physically and emotionally abusive. My dad, much like yours, is mean.  

I understand how this country and culture have shaped him. I understand why the black community is hesitant to criticize him.  He's fragile.  He's attacked constantly by the Media News and Entertainment Complex who have nothing nice to say about him. Police hunt and kill him with immunity. He is incarcerated today at a greater rate than blacks were in apartheid South Africa. He is envied, denied and dissed and still, I don't believe that his meanness is inevitable.  Like men who beat their wives and girlfriends, I know that violence begins first with an erosion of self, in both the victimizer and the victim.  This is almost impossible to hear by the victim (which is another conversation) but can be great relief for the perpetrator who is open to self-examination and healing.  There is hope if we can identify the point of erosion.

I believe that honest and loving critique is hard, but possible and necessary if we are to be a self-defined community.  This blog and post  are here to begin a dialogue of "real talk" critique with the goal of healing our experience of ourselves.  To ask the painful questions aloud and to be in this illusion of blackness as we are, in this moment, and not as we wished we were.   If we are to come out of the misery that so often describes our experience in this country, I believe it is important to start defining our issues outside of the greater media's agenda for what we should be concerned with.  

I'm concerned right now with black men and basic human kindess. 

I would love to hear your comments. 

PS-"Are Black Women Mean?" is my next post!