Liz,
Do remember my first post about relationships? Well, fast-forward two months and Nightline comes out with this bs—“Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?”
*SIGH*
You can find the rest of the program (about 8 parts long) on youtube. Honestly, I didn’t watch it all. I got through the first 15 minutes and couldn’t stomach the rest of it (I really don’t know why I did it to myself in the first place. Smdh.) Black women just can’t catch a break. Society and the media are just always so ready to “tell us about ourselves” (today’s topic of choice, character flaws…really?). I am also just sick of this never-ending conversation. I need a break.
Melissa Harris-Lacewell recently wrote a response on The Nation to this foolishness and I have to echo Jill Tubman on JackandJillpolitics.com, in saying that she is my hero. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I have pasted one of my favorite quotations below:
“…even if we accepted the simplistic framing of an extant marriage crisis offered by the program, Nightline was stunningly simplistic (even for mainstream media) in its response to the issue. The solution offered most frequently in Wednesday’s conversation was familiar: professional black women need to scale back expectations. Black female success is an impediment to finding and cultivating black love. Hinging heavily on humor and black female desperation, like so many other conversations, articles, and news programs before it, this conversation missed the opportunity to offer a thoughtful analysis of structural, sociological, historical and political realities that serve as an impediment to fruitful partnerships between black men and women….Ultimately this panel did little more than shame, blame and stereotype black women. It offered few original insights and called into question that continued relevance of Nightline as a source of meaningful social and political information.”
**Snaps**
Stay strong, sistas and keep (Naomi Campbell) walking it out.