AN EXPECTED END: Response to "Black Marriage Negotiations" YouTube video

My friend recently shared this YouTube video with me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgyg8vEHraE

After watching this, so many thoughts run through my head. I think some of the woman’s points of view are so screwed up, while others I can relate to! I feel this video was created to make a mockery of some women’s standards. But once I got over being offended (because I can relate to some of the character’s outlandish requests), I contemplated some of her requirements of her man. Then turned the focus to myself and put some though into the origin of this mindset. Of course the video is an extreme representation of a skewed mentality, seemingly created for comical purposes. I think there is a deeper side to this.

I won’t speak for every woman, but in my personal opinion, young black girls are being brought up to strive to become independent women. I know I was. Especially girls who grow up in a home where there is no father. “O child, you better grow up to achieve all your goals and be successful and make a name for yourself and make your family proud…” is what we’re told. So we go through high school setting & achieving goals, then college, then get a job/career. You’ve made it! In the world, doing your own thing, making the people proud who influenced you & you even find yourself giving back to others trying to come up. But you stop and think – all this advice & encouragement, why didn’t anyone teach me about how to nurture & maintain a healthy relationship? Here I am, a 26 year old, saved, smart & successful woman with a lot of good friends, but still single. When did I miss out on enrolling in the “Road To Marital Bliss” course in school?

So I say all this to say, black women are judged so harshly in the relationship arena because our desires are sometimes unrealistic, expectations sometimes unfair, and patience sometimes short – but who told you it was okay to judge and stereotype God’s creation? Forgive me for not having the model upbringing of a 2 parent home or the luxury of being able to sit on my father’s lap to experience and understand a pure and unadulterated masculine touch. Forgive me for setting goals for myself and achieving them – including as it relates to choosing a mate. Forgive me for being super-duper cautious about falling in love and giving my heart to you because I did that before and it was not taken care of as I’d hoped.

I end on this note – the aforementioned YouTube video may strike you as amusing, real, unfair, offensive, a mockery, racist or whatever else – but there are undertones of serious issues within. And if we keep pointing the finger, black men at black women and vice versa, we will only continue the cycle of ignorance, bitterness, and the demise to the unit know as “the black family.”

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”   Jeremiah 29:11 (KJV)