Image: Polka Dot
You’re a successful, accomplished, attractive, stylish black woman. Yet, you have major man problems. Are economics to blame?
According to ThyBlackMan.com, financial status — or the disparity between men and women in that status — could very well be the issue. While some men are cool with a woman who’s climbing the ladder and taking home a bigger paycheck in the process, there are other men who simply can’t take it.
“It’s mainly because of how we have been socialized to see ourselves as providers,” the site says to its male readers. ”We’ve been stripped of that role in a sense, not because women insist on being breadwinners, but because, in most cases, they didn’t have a choice!”
So, the article says, while ego is the problem for some men, for others, it comes back to bigger societal issues like the education gap (black women are getting college degrees at a higher rate than black men) and jobs (“We tend to be the first fired and the last hired; overall, American employers shy away from hiring black men”). Because the gender roles have changed, the relationship between black men and women, in general, has changed.
The question is: Where do we go from here? While ego can be a good thing in moderation, driving us to be better people, we can’t let it dictate how we operate in full. And, certainly, women aren’t going to slow down, nor should they be expected to. ThyBackMan suggests that we need to take another look at what we need and what we get from our romantic relationships. It’s not just about money. It’s about the various physical and emotional comforts men and women get from one another. And men need to realize that women have it hard out there too. One need only read some of the stories on Madame Noire about women in the workplace and at universities to know that there are continued struggles on both sides.
“[W]e need as black men to realize that – politics aside – our women do indeed need us, just like we need them,” the author says.
What do you think of this analysis of the tension between black men and women?
