'I'm black, single, and insulted'

Kansas City star columnist Jeneé Osterheldt says she's sick and tired of being sick and tired about the dismal state of dating for African-American women.
"We are not sad, pathetic, desperate women. Yet these stories paint us that way.
Stop talking down to me and the women I know. We don’t need to be fixed."
Osterheldt makes a good point. This story is almost half-a-decade old, but what she misses is that the complexion of the newsroom -- the people who pushed to have the story done -- is still changing. More and more men and women of color are exploring the issue.
Is it a dead horse? I don't think so, but Osterheldt does. Yet she offers a fresh perspective that is desperately needed: Yet I feel the need to stand up for black men. The women are unfairly tinted as go-getters with impossibly high standards. But the men get labeled as underachievers, dogs, absent. The conversations end up altogether divisive.

I have more than a few single, educated black male friends who say it’s hard to meet the right woman. They want to be married, too. They want to raise children. I have a good black man like that in my life. Yes, they exist.
Check out her column here.






Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/27/1904703/im-black-single-and-insulted.html#ixzz0nerHzDX0 Share

Dating A Felon: Would You?

You've heard the grim statistics for black men: Jail, prison, dead, etc.
You have a bunch of options in your late teens and early 20s, perhaps even having the luxury to be quite picky. But as the age bus continues to plow ahead, and those 30s roll around, you obviously run out of the Talented Tenth and into the wide open field of players, phonies and homies.
The number of single, eligible men dwindles faster and faster and you soon arrive upon brothers that are less than perfect.
The one you choose happens to have a rap sheet for "doing dumb stuff" as a teenager or adolescent. He's not a killer, but he may have been a robber, or went down with some shady associates who were up to no good.
If he tells you he's a felon, he obviously wants you to know about it.
If he doesn't he obviously wants it to stay hidden.
Either way you find out.
Do you stay or play?

Are Black Men Getting Tired?

Tired: Drained of strength and energy : fatigued often to the point of exhaustion
2 : obviously worn by hard use.

Go into your average barbershop and notice the looks: worn out, lackadaisical, even ill-looking.
Some of them look like they've been in car wrecks, and in alot of ways they have: emotional car wrecks.
The arguing, the accusations, the put-downs: From the looks of things, they're taking a toll. Tired, you say? Oh, been sick AND tired, for a while (but so is the black woman).
In the independent film, "Diary of a Tired Black Man," even the snide, sneering remarks of her girlfriends grate on the man.
But that can't be the only reason, right? Well, besides the fact that AIDS in the No. 1 cause of death for black men aged 25 - 34; and the fact that they are being hit hard(est?) in the recession; and of course the lower life expectancy and higher mortality rate from disease, and well (1 in 3 with prison record?), you see, a little, why the tiredness.
But is tiredness an excuse to walk away, to give up?

Twitter Study of the Sexes Raises Eyebrows

In a new study by Harvard University Business School, it's been noted that there is a social phenomenom inside Twitter that analysis clearly shows: Men don't tweet each other.
Oh, they follow each other and keep tabs apparently in silence, but the resounding sound coming from dude-to-dude communication is, instead of "Tweet tweet," "CRICKETS."
Seriously, an eye-opener for me was that Twitter is mostly male-dominated, which they say is in reverse to most other social networking sites (Could it be you must tweet within 140 characters?).
Other gems from the analysis:
Men have 15% more followers than women.
an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman.
Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one.
the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

Are Single Moms and Single Dads Viewed the Same?

A controversial study trumpeted by an ob-gyn leads off with the following hot-button sentence:

Judging by their behavior, American women appear to think that fathers are optional. According to the recently published birth statistics (Births: Final Data for 2006), the proportion of births to unmarried women has reached 38.5%, the highest rate ever recorded.
"Judging by their behavior?" Her whole column just starts off all wrong. But the underlying question is, if we look down on men who abandon their kids, what about women who choose to not have a father in their kids' lives? Thoughts?

They Don't 'Dress' No Mo

Dudes stopped dressing years ago.
Used to be a time when we as much as went to the corner store, we put on a belt, combed our hair and tried to look upwardly casual. Now, the lazy look has taken over. What happened? Some would fault the hip-hop culture, but are there economic reasons as well? Brothers have slipped financially in the last 10 years, like never before. Money has gone to the sisters, as evidenced by the plethora of single women in the ATL with homes. But does that excuse a brother from dressing up sometimes, besides going to church?

Octuplet Mom: 'It was a Dream of Mine'

She loves the kids.
That's the simple, insane reason why octuplets mother Nadya Suleman, who lives with her parents, was artificially inseminated despite already having six kids, according to a "Dateline" interview.
Well, that, and the depression she suffered after being injured in a riot in a mental hospital. Sounds fishy to me. They call them riots in mental hospitals, they're called "episodes." And I think Suleman just had one.
She says a big family has been a reoccuring nightmare since she was small.
"That was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family," she said. "I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that ... I really lacked, I believe, growing up."
She'll also lack a husband as there are currently no eligible sane-thinking males that would marry an unrich woman with 14 kids who knows her way around a hospital like Suleman. But that's just me.

Does Black Hollywood Have A Lonely Wives Club?

Black Hollywood actresses have money, style, bodies to kill for, everything except ... men. Why? Is there a eligible man shortage in black Hollywood? Is there a smorgasbord of single females, too many to all be happily mated? The biggest names seem to have the emptiest nests when it comes to men? What's the matter? Is it difficult to keep the peace?Are there any available men left?