WHY DO YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED..?

SO MUCH FOR THAT THEORY


Scouting out Downtown/Old Market after an evening workout I ran into Nebraska’s middle daughter this weekend! She was with a couple of other teens and I don’t think she wanted me to recognize her, in the way that teenagers do when they are out and about. It took a second for me to place her and I lit up when I was able to integrate the sensation of familiarity with a specific memory. Apparently, Omaha IS small enough for us to run into each other. I just thought with our different interests that most of our activities would not overlap. What was the deciding factor in that theory was how (to me) infrequency that we did see each other over 15 month of being local to each other.  I believe a lot of the instability between us, on my end at least, was an outcrop of how we both approached the integration of our relationship into our lives here in Omaha.  


I am still impressed with Omaha and the vibrancy of what I have seen of the city thus far. My location is could not be better and I feel very comfortable where I am at. I can either walk or roll downhill and I am in the Old Market and the Dale Clark Library is a pretty good place to sit around and relax with a book or see a movie.


I stopped at one of the food trucks selling Mexican food and got a taco. I hadn’t brought a lot of cash so I could only get one. Was it better than Taco Bell? Yes, but at Taco Bell, you can get a bag o’ stuff for a little less, so … now, if it was as good as Xochilmoco’s, that would be a different story!


Overall, the weekend was on the side of ‘the very okay’. It was good to have heard Jim McMahon describe what his life is like now and how it contrasts with the life that he lead before his brain injury took effect on him. In fact the feeling that I might have over-extended myself began that evening and I was in retrograde when I ran into Nebraska’s daughter. It hung over all day Sunday and made waking up for school a rough proposition. But I got up and out alright, went to school and I am none the worse for wear! At any rate, I will talk a little more about what I push through another time more than likely.


THE MINORITY EXPERIENCE – AMERICAN EDITION


Minority populations exist in nearly every country in the world and it is after its specific do they differ. For the most part that are kept internalized but some of the more barbaric atrocities that have occurred in the last 100 years, the ethnic cleansing in Serbia and the tribal warfare between the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s, not to mention the civil rights movement in the country in the late 50’ through the 60’s in America all have had their differences but they all come from the same place in the human conscious.


I think that if I was going to parallel the African-American experience with anyone else’s, it would be with that of the modern Palestinian in Israel. The complete and total disenfranchisement of humanity from the Palestinian is quite similar to that of the antebellum/Jim Crow era here in the United States, with the kind of oppression and denial of human rights that went on at that time. But after that, they branch off from each other, still on the same tree but off to grow and sprout in its own direction.


A factor that I never heard a lot about and would be shouted down for at A&T for was the idea that one of the problems between African-American men and women stem from the enslavement of our people. It was systematic and thorough in its breakdown of the family for slaves and I think that the patterns in African-American relationships that developed has played out over the subsequent generations. For most ethnic groups, marriage is firmly ensconced in the minds of children, with the idea of having a Mom and Dad being indelible in their image of themselves when they are asked about their futures.


While many children in Detroit elementary schools think about being married, it is also something that they are becoming increasingly unfamiliar with, as the numbers continue to trend down for matrimony in their community. By the time they are in jr. high, the concept becomes abstract, and by the time of graduation it is an ideal that is wholly separate for their happiness as an adult.




In an article about Black Marriage Day, its sponsor, Nisa Muhammad talked about the need for a celebration of marriage in African-American communities. As with other groups of people, the benefits of marriage are numerous and it is not even on the radar for most sister girls.
A quote that reinforces the aspect that history is a part of the overall problem in relationships is when Nisa Muhammad references the overall relationship/marriage dynamic in America when she said: "When White America has a cold, Black America has pneumonia. And we don't have the resources or history to rebound as quickly."


When it comes to the “resources” part of her inference that is where I really get on “the brothers” and why I try to separate my personal relationships with sister-girls from the broader view of African-American women. Looking at other oppressed peoples, I am hard pressed to see an example of where the basic structural integrity of the family was as damaged as the African-American’s was in the United States. And because the classic standard is the male as provider/protector, I cannot say that a black man has sufficiently filled that primary requirement in the male-female relationship dynamic.


The things that you expect of the male cannot be counted on with the brothers (myself included..? eh, I would argue that point but admit I ain’t always been what I’ve needed to be) in a relationship, from being able to provide and create a stable home environment for the family he is the head of. From giving the security that makes his partner feel secure and the children see their Dad as a source of pride and his Wife as one of emotional strength, the African-American male has been down on the job.


It is a beautiful spring day in the big O and I am not going to stay inside any more than absolutely necessary! But I will pick up from here because there was an incident that a friend of mine encountered that is a part of this trend of thought as well!