Since We're Talking About Single, Black, Professional Women...again

Womanism is Not My Problem!

by Nicole Moore

Going through my blog I just realized that lately I’ve been largely writing in response to the shenanigans and ignorance that plays out on the Web and in the media. I’ve been playing defense and anyone who knows me, knows I appreciate the tackle, but personally I prefer to run the ball in. As a woman of color it’s so easy for us to find ourselves constantly defending our style, our politics, our culture, and our bodies, but as of today I’m officially over it! I’m tired of having to articulate my reasons for living a certain way, for having to defend the specific choices I’ve made about my career, about my hair and my love life. I have to reclaim my blog and myself from this insanity.

So starting right now I’m going to make a concerted effort to write more from an offensive point of view. I want to create spaces so tight, so authentically defined by my own womanness and Blackness, that only power, respect, and love can enter and reside. My body is a site of resistance, no doubt and that whole Nightline, CNN, Economist debacle reminded me just how much that it, along with my psyche, is still under siege. Furthermore I was stunned to see how I and other women, mostly women (and some men) of color fall into the trap of complaining, defending, venting and SMH’ing, and in turn we in a way become that “problematic” that the media makes us out to be.

Read the Full Essay @ theHotness

Since We're Talking About Single, Black, Professional Women...

How Does It Feel to Be a Black, Female, Single Problem?

by Farai Chideya

It’s open season on black womanhood. Nightline became the latest media outlet to tackle the issue of why black women aren’t married. The problem is not the topic, but the approach. Like a recent series of articles, books, and television segments (and one Nightline did last year), the show’s focus was on the purportedly low value of black women in the dating marketplace and the wisdom of black women’s choice to stay single versus marrying men who don’t fit their criteria.

Let’s get real for a minute here. Yes, black women are sometimes taken for granted by black men, and men of other races. (I’m thinking here of musician John Mayer saying he had a “David Duke c**k,” because it only responded to white woman. Black womens’ response, for the most part: awesome, dude! Less disfunction for us!) Black women also get oddly, back-handedly criticized for being too functional — for being the majority of black college graduates and growing old alone. In reality, black women with college degrees are more likely to have married by age 40 than those with high school degrees (70 to 60 percent). For white women, high school educated women are slightly more likely to have married than college-educated ones (88 to 86 percent).

Read the Full Essay @ FaraiChideya.com