It’s 2017 and #MenAreTrash. There is a clear divide between genders over R. Kelly’s sexual assault allegations where men argue for Kelly and his girlfriends to be left alone and women urge that the young girls are being held hostage are sex slaves. Rapper Kodak Black received large dispute after saying he’s not attracted to black women because they are too angry, and because of Serena’s marriage to white Reddit CEO, Alexis Ohanian, black men feel chose over. In all of our exhaustion with the opposite gender, we still look for love- black love, specifically- and support within our counterparts. With time only moving forward, we have set high expectations for where we should be as a race, as our respective genders, and as Blacks in love. Despite what we expect, not much has really changed in regards to our perspectives on the opposite sex and the way in fact we view ourselves. Both have a lot to do with why we can’t find happy love anymore, and more specifically why we can’t be in healthy intra-racial relationships.

Our fears, our identity, and sense of love have been both impacted and hampered by White American impositions which tell us how we should regard black people and gender roles. Compared to the rest of the world black folks live differently and love differently; and our experience with gender roles is, in fact, different. Our outlook on love and communication is shaped by our systematic experiences, our intimacy with Black culture, and even our familiarity with gender norms, among other things. It’s 2017, and world wide there is a spring of bold minds speaking up for their right to define what gender norms mean to them. It is also the first time in our millennial history that we experience the global uplift of Black unity and sanctity first hand. While race and gender cross for every person, the Black experience of the intersectionality between the two is completely different from that of a White person’s experience. The expectation of Blacks to prescribe to gender standards that relate to the White American experience is simply unfair; and the resentment that lingers because these expectations have gone unmet is what keeps us from holding healthy relationships with others and ourselves.

For centuries, humans have learned, practiced, and applied gender norms in order to feel socially accepted. When we find out a baby girl is on the way, we deck the mother’s shower in pink balloons and ribbon. When a boy gets into a tussle with his friend, parents laugh it off and say “boys will be boys.” These practices continue tradition of limiting persons based on their gender and even sexism. In the 1990, author Deborah Tannen wrote the debatable book You Just Don’t Understand! that elaborates on each gender’s learned practices. In the book, Tannen declares that men in America are typically raised to be proactive problem solvers. The text says they suppress their emotions and are trained to focus on working independently to resolve issues. Women, according to her, have been raised to be nurturers: empathetic, expressive, and desiring of community in which they can relate to each other for comfort and resolution. This sort of dialogue is generally false and problematic. America’s understanding in accordance with these generalizations of gender behavior has left black men and women especially to approach emotions in unbalanced manners. If a woman is angered and wants to take out her aggression physically, she is told it’s not lady like- and she is discouraged from doing so. When a man is crying, he tells us he’s okay even if it’s not, because “men don’t cry.” These practices hinder black people especially. We are not typical. Yes, generally our men still want to be problem solvers and our women empathetic. In the same breath, our women are also fixers and our men need empathy too. When we follow American gender roles, especially with our trauma and experiences, our struggles with suppressing emotion sometimes seep out through acts of self belligerence or harm against our loved ones. Challenged by our understanding of how a boy or girl is supposed to behave versus what is instinctual for us, we have experienced great struggle in navigating self love and love for others.

The exhausting battle of the sexes is even more harmful within the Black community. Living by American gender standards in combination with our black experience is often how our understanding of love and communication is skewed. When our partners can not deliver on our expectations, we lose faith and ask “Why can’t we find any good men,” or lament that there are no “real women” any more. Both responses encourage a resentful alienation of intraracial dating. For our partners living the Black experience, we sometimes uphold behavioral ideals and standards that are unfair to who they are in that moment. It is important to keep in mind that we, as Blacks, deal with incomparable, deep-rooted trauma, that affects each gender differently, let alone each person. Self-love and relationships with others is the first place in which we see how our peers handle their traumatic experiences.

DIVINE IN THE BLACK DIVIDE

The crisis of the Black familial divide is nothing new. Since slavery the Black man has been separated from his home, leaving the Black woman to be the main caretaker for her family. While this does not apply to all familial types, the separation of the Black family has carried on throughout generations, and the percentages of families like this is staggering. In 2015, nearly 60% of Black children were born to unwed or single mothers. Another 2015 study showed that 1 in 9 Black children have a parent in prison, while the nation’s statistic was 1 in 12. With only one parental figure in the household, this parent is left playing both roles of nurturer and problem solver by themselves. For both men and women, the repetition of seeing this experience in Black households has trained us to normalize single parent homes and independence, even in circumstances where we should value partnership.

Typically, Black men want to contribute to this role as a good partner, or provider, and if they stray from the idea, they might attribute it to finding themselves feeling shut out or emasculated by their Black women. The man’s quick solution is to call her “too angry,” to align with White supremacy’s portrayal of the Black woman, saying she is undesirable or unable to be committed to. A 2017 Georgetown study examined how adults perceive young Black girls in comparison to white girls and in this, they saw that adults maintained stereotypes that Black girls were generally hyper-sexual and more combative. Our media image of the Black women circumscribes her experiences to being unable to find love, being extremely callous, and solely accountable for her misfortunes. As strong as she is, the rest of the world, including Black men, have alluded that her maverick demeanor is the reason why she is alone. In the case of Black love this is an unfair assumption. Although Black men want to be providers, often they are not fairly equipped with the necessary tools to do so. Whether it be within education, occupation, or in a familial sense (like nurturing their own mental health,) Black men have often been deprived of the resources that America blindly says all men should have access to. In outcome, they are not able to nurture these facets of their lives and they may be looked over by the Black woman who is supposed to equally partner with them. A Black woman who does not feel like she is matched in companionship may downplay her partner’s validity. Also known as “I can do bad all by myself.”

The Black culture has familiarized themselves with the black woman’s “Move Nigga, I’ll do it myself,” behavior. She manifests self-love through survival, without restraint to abandon anything that threatens her legacy, and she teaches this value to her children. This woman raises all of her youngins to be unapologetically independent. Her commitment to survival has both gotten her to where she is, and it has also exacerbated her battle in balancing her vulnerability and sense of protection. The suppression of her emotions, or the outpour of them are places where you will likely see this battle.

This is not to be confused: Black women are not unlovable, nor are they ignorant to what sweet love is like. Black women however, have to fight harder to bask in their sense of self love inwardly and outwardly, because so often they have been used, abused, denied and taken advantage of. She has anger and justifiably so. To love a black woman, the man needs to be understanding of her struggle, and respect that not every day in her black body will she be peaceful amidst a storm. This can easily be mirrored for a black man.

Our men need love too. Black men also have joys and heartache. From youth, White America’s race and gender standards have indoctrinated ideas that the black man is both hyper-masculine by nature, and negatively effeminate should he be openly expressive or openly emotional with others. He is lost in direction and this shows when he searches for self healing or when he interacts with family. Writer Amos Wilson painted a vivid picture in his speech on Love, Self hate, and Fear. Growing up as a black boy, their understanding of what a man is and is not, is often based on their mother’s illustration of men. When a mother presents a man’s role in a negative light, the boys grow up either resenting or becoming just what they were taught men were. To love the black man, is to firstly respect his displaced emotion within this world, and to also acknowledge that healthy manhood for him has always been desired even if he does not fully understand what healthy manhood means.

The black man’s experience throughout history has forced him to be super-suppressant in order to feel socially accepted. He fights consistently with America’s indoctrinations that have both molded and hampered him. While one may feel that he is not fully equipped to be a man sought after, practicing patience and open communication is a means to finding harmony with him. He wants to do well and he needs that encouragement. Gratefully, we see movements like #BlackBoyJoy that prove men can be both happy and affectionate without it having to compromise their masculinity. As much as times are changing, hearing Amos Wilson’s speeches today prove not much is different in our black internal struggles. To find harmony, liberation must first start within the mind, having respect for one another and compassion for self.

The gender standards that we have grown up with, in ways set back this harmony. White American ideologies of masculinity influence men to stifle their emotions and dictate the behaviors of women; doing things like judging her for her sexuality and in the same breath engaging in infidelity or disregarding a woman’s rights to her own body. The global village has acknowledged and addressed behavior like this with tropes like “men are trash,” and still we fail to recognize why trash men have these thoughts in the first place. American gender norms place pressure on the idea that men have a right to take ownership of women, and completely ignore that a woman’s worthiness of finding a healthy partner should not be determined by a man’s standards for her. The adoption of this misogyny within Black relationships is in part where we divide. If a black woman’s actions do not prescribe to the American ideal of how a woman should behave, she faces backlash seven fold. We saw this in polarizing circumstances like when model/entrepreneur Blac Chyna was slutshamed by internet and her ex, Rob Kardashian, for her acts of sexual liberation, and when martyr Sandra Bland was murdered 3 days after her after her 2015 arrest, for what likely had been nothing more than her fighting for her human rights. Black women made this country, by now we should respect that her actions are her choice and just as a man is his own, she is her own, with rights to her body. Blacks, both men and women that shame others for stepping out against unfair gender standards, only continue the hampering of our liberation.

The values that are maintained by this society surrounding gender, only perpetuate lies and internal conflicts for each individual. Following these norms when they do not fit, mask our true selves and suffocate our relationships. We as black couples especially need open sense of communication, in order to better understand ourselves and to guarantee a strong partnership with each other. Unfortunately, we run from this vulnerable communication in fear that it will unmask painful truths about ourselves. Wilson says that we love people that help us escape our realities. We keep people around that embrace our masks and love our self agressions. When black men intentionally choose not to date Black women, they are not running from her bitterness, they are running from required communication and truth of self. Black men that avoid dating black women are looking for their own internal peace, and have estranged themselves from what they believe to be is existential pain. Non-black women offer the empathetic and nurturing traits of a woman- without the accountability or opening of Pandora’s boxes that comes with dating a black woman. All the same, when a male counterpart requires his Black partner to be vulnerable, it can be triggering for her, reminding her of past experiences where her vulnerability had been taken advantage of. Both sexes challenge themselves when engaging in Black love, as nourishing as it can be to water the garden, breaking through the concrete on top is painful.

We are reflections of one another. So, whether that is operating out of fear or love, the intolerance of the countering gender’s downfall within our race is, in a sense, an intolerance of ourselves. Love is to have the patience, respecting each other’s feelings and understanding that your counterpart still deserves to be treated with care, even when he or she can not present that for themselves. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves as well, and tap into the powerful feminine energy- a civil right that the patriarchy has forever tried to revoke from both men and women. In doing this, we would see that we deserve to be heard, respected, and understood. We also deserve the truth from our counterparts, who may point out areas in which we need to grow.

We should accept and give healthy love wherever it comes. Be gentle: as resilient as we are, we deserve delicacy. To completely alienate ourselves from black people, however, because we feel that we can’t find a black person that is where we are in life, is an unfair generalization. It is limiting and promotes this agenda for both Black men and women to be seen as undesirable. If you want a Black man who’s about his money, teach your man about IRAs and how easy it is to start investing. Love a peaceful woman? Encourage her to engage in activities that bring serenity like therapy or nature walks. The key to this partnership is patience. It is also healthy self-love.

Harmony is in some takes about compromising and learning. Gender norms are changing. Just because society says that a woman should cook, or the man should pay the bills- that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for you. Maybe it’s opposite. In manifesting what we ideate our relationships to be like, we have to sometimes learn to “take the L,” balancing out when we have a point to make and when we should be vulnerable to our partner’s message. In a sense, you can’t tell a black woman to not be so hell bent on her independance, because that’s all she knows. Still, we as black women have to let love in when it comes; we deserve it. And it is okay, to love a man while he is navigating his manhood. It is also okay to let him know when he needs to reconsider what actions fall under the umbrella of being a healthy man. We were not raised within the fair realms of White America – we are different and we are redefining gender roles as time goes on. The compromise comes in with being willing to accept the person as they are; we should love our partners for what makes them human, and have the patience to love yourself and accept the areas in which you need to receive love: both nurturing love and tough love. Balance is key. .

Writer’s Note: This may not be applicable to “ain’t sh*t N*ggas” that aren’t ready for growth. Both partners must be open and willing to grow in these respects.

Black Gender Norms

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