Another Sad Love Song (Toni Braxton feat. This Black-Ass Life)
Welcome to This Black-Ass Life! We want to talk about love, interpersonal relationships and white supremacy because Love Is Blind, Black incels and the Divine Feminine are WILD. Also, what do y’all think Halle is cooking with Jermaine Dupri, Johntá Austin and Bryan-Michael Cox?
I. The Facts
From social media to reality television and dating apps, white supremacist ideals of desirability can seep into how people, including Black people, perceive each other.
Let’s start with the Black Manosphere, an online network of incels. A subset of these men believe Black people are going to be a permanent underclass in the future. To prevent their descendants from being part of this underclass, they’ve committed to dating and marrying non-Black women. These incels are vocal about their commitment to both their future beige babies and to yelling about how repulsive they find Black women. YIKES!
Although not as virulently hateful as incels, the sort of counterpart to the Black manosphere is the Black feminine dating coach. This growing “field” of Black women preach, among many other empty brained ideas, a concept known as Divine Femininity, which tells Black women we are innately feminine (i.e., soft-spoken, delicate, submissive) and that racial oppression has made us collectively more aggressive. To revel in our divine femininity, we need to marry up financially. Since most Black men are, in their words, “broke & dusty,” Black women need to invest in interracial relationships, particularly with white men. YIKES!
Side note: I (Jumoke) very much believe in hypergamy, and it doesn’t matter, race, color, creed, gender, orientation, expression, I WILL TAKE MONEY FROM ANYONE WHO WANTS TO GIVE IT TO ME. Team #sugarbabymeASAP!
Essentially, these are two sides of the same coin. They both spend an excessive amount of time letting Black people know that as we are, we are not enough, and the path to wholeness is through white or other non-Black people.
WHERE IS THIS DAMN RAPTURE?
**Please note that we purposefully did not link to Black incels and dating coaches because we don’t want to give them views. Check out this For Colored Nerds episode and this article on the Divine Feminine, Black Incels and whatever the hell high-value partners mean for a more detailed analysis.**
Why does it matter?
We love LOVE. We share a deep appreciation for romcoms, dating shows, romance novels; we are here for all matters of the heart! It’s shitty that what is so essential to being human (companionship, longing, desire) gets tainted with this fuckshit.
Black women deserve love, whole love, sans misogynoir.
White supremacy has a hold on us all, and the centering of white desirability plays out in so many insidious ways intra-racially across the world. For example, the can of worms that is Indian and Pakistani American actors (looking at you Aziz Ansari, Ravi Patel and Kumail Nanjiani) erasing or making caricatures of Indian and Pakistani American women in pursuit of white women on film is a graduate-level sociology course.
Nanjiani’s breakout film The Big Sick is particularly hateful.
What can my Black ass do?
It all comes back to bell hooks. Read All About Love.
Read about these single Black women who are choosing to live lives with friends, children and anyone else they want while they take their time finding a romantic partner (IF THEY WANT ONE) who is worthy of their time.
Recognize and invest in love in every sense, romantic, familial, friendship, etc.
Finally, for those of y’all Black incels or divine feminines whose hearts go aflutter for that alabaster over all else, who believe Black people will never measure up to their “just salt and pepper will do” ways, those who enjoy micro-aggressions during Thanksgiving dinner at the in-laws, can you leave the rest of us out of it? Love who you love! We LOVE love for you. But please don’t put anyone down.
II. Other Things
Black-ass happenings.
You must get into @mizzymiz_, who makes Love & Hip Hop and Real Housewives spoof series that are more compelling than the source material. Click here to start Love & Hip Hop: Tik Tok.
Season 2 of Harlem. We (literally) love to see it.
On The Baltimore Sun’s apology for 185 years of racism, which was initially behind a paywall (lol).
How do y’all feel about a Martin reunion?
👀
Sports: Shout out to Erin Jackson, who made Olympic history on the ice, which she first stepped onto six years ago, and all love to the Jamaican bobsled team for their first race in 24 years.
One of my (Jumoke’a) favorite artists, Faith Ringgold, is celebrated for being a genius.
Rest in Power, Jamal Edwards.
Our Black-Ass song(s) of the week (Mitu):
There are Mo’ Tales to Jazmine’s Heaux Tales. Here’s BPW.
Things we look forward to / don’t look forward to:
I (Jumoke) look forward to crocuses.
I (Mitu) look forward to warmer weather. Has anyone else had to fight the ashy extra hard this winter??
lll. Text from a Black-Ass Parent
My (Mitu’s) mom and dog are coming together to remind me of my place.
Stay Black, thrive, and remember that love is so much more than the West’s obsession to make the nuclear family “a function of capitalist production.” Ha! You thought we weren’t going to bring capitalism into this newsletter? You thought wrong! We'll hit your inbox next on March 7.