"And I tell you what I ain't gon' do ..."
Thanks to my favorite social media sources, last week I had a chance to watch two animated videos about Black Marriage Negotiations. The concept of the videos were simply a black man sitting across from a black woman in a corporate board room discussing what their expectations and requirements to marry each other.
This thing went viral. I saw both of them posted on Facebook. The links were Tweeted and ReTweeted so much I commanded TweetDeck to hide mentions of it. And if that weren’t enough, Jacque Reid discussed it with one of the creators on the Tom Joyner Morning Show last Friday.
SN: You know shit has hit the fan (and a nerve) when Jacque Reid is discussing it on “Inside Her Story.”
The original video was from the man’s perspective. The second, a rebuttal from a woman’s point of view. While I found humor in both of them, quite a few women were offended and downright pissed off at some of the things said in this video. Check it out:
The video suggests that black women won’t get married because there is an insane list of demands and unrealistic expectations she has for her man. For example, the animated woman in the video laid out that her man must earn six figures, be a thug and know how to handle himself in the boardroom. She also said she wanted her man to pay for everything and still wanted to maintain her independence.
On the flipside, the female’s point of view suggests that black men don’t want to get married at all. they want to string women along for nearly a decade, fathering children only to leave and marry a white woman.
Both of these videos come off as both black men and black women are falling victim to each other. Like black men and women, these videos throw out so many generalizations, it’s not even funny. I know people just like the ones in the video, but I know way more who are a far cry from them, too.
The creators of these videos took common themes from their relationships and the information being fed to them by their friends to come up with this comedic caricature of victimized dumbassery and folks are getting offended. Folks are getting heated and quite frankly, it’s all wasted energy.
Any conversation about relationships in a mixed crowd are going to get heated. People start calling up old hurts to make points and they just end up sounding wounded. Use this to have helpful dialogue. Generalizing saying all black men or all black women do this is not helping anyone or anything.
Some of y’all need to get over yourselves. It’s not always about you. If these are the kinds of men and women you attract, maybe it’s time to look at the man (and woman) in the mirror to find out what kind of crazy juju you’re putting out there. I mean, you’re the common denominator. While you’re engaging in the black man v. black woman debate, you’re all pissed, single, lonely and horny. #fixit
And when do we get the “I’m tired of this nonsense” video that talks about fruitless debates about black on black relationships? We need one. I’m tired of this madness and based on my Twitter timeline, there are way too many of us who are single and hating it than to be sitting up here generalizing and pissing off potential dates. Suck it up. We gotta put on our big girl (and big boy) draws and stop having these juvenile, asinine-assed arguments about nothing.
