Clay Puppington
rabid
What Black Men Want and Need
Love, devotion and respect, that’s what black men need, along with a little kindness from someone who cares for them and believes in them. Black men also need to be touched and held and played with affectionately. What their fathers had with their mothers is what they want. And just what was that? Love, devotion, respect and kindness from someone who cared about him and believed in him. Black men need and want the security and unconditional love they knew as a child. They also want to feel that same sense of companionship and of feeling needed.
What they also need and want is to be thought of as human beings rather than things. Everybody else seems to be a part of the human race except the black man. It is almost like he is a species all unto himself. Hardly anyone understands him, and typically where there is the unknown, there is fear. Nobody knows him, so nobody trusts him. Needless to say, a racist white male dominated society has done its fair share to perpetuate as well as traumatize that perception.
Today’s black man also needs to have society’s expectations of him reassessed. Instead of being criticized for what he is not doing, he needs to be praised for all that he has done, in spite of the overwhelming obstacles he has had to overcome. For example, black men are blamed for not working, when they are not the ones doing the hiring. Black men are accused of being lazy, worthless no accounts, when their blood and sweat built this country. Those who wanted to parts of work said that he was trifling and the label stuck.
Today sociologists and psychologists caution us about putting our children down, ridiculing them because of the possible adverse effects. Black men in America have been put down for over 300 years, by almost everyone. Even his own ally, the black woman, has bought into this myth. That person with whom he once shared love, devotion, and respect is all too often his enemy too. If you tell a child, “you’re nothing but a trouble maker” or “You’re never goin’ to amount to anything,” he may not. These are the messages black men have always gotten.
The blame for the black man’s failure has always rested on the black man himself. Because he was not there to take care of the children he had made, he was especially suspect. Although he did make these children, he was not creating a family. Let me draw an interesting little parallel for you. A rancher in Arizona wants to build up his herd so he mates a stallion with five of his mares every year. At the end of five years this stallion has had 25 mates and at least 25 offspring. How could he possibly be the head of all 25 families at once? After all, he was only one horse. And how could he possibly keep up with the offspring of his offspring? Was the fact that he was bred really his fault at all, except for being properly equipped and good at what he did?