The Challenges of Being a Black Woman

The three black men that I thought were going to respond have already responded and I doubt that there will be any more to step up to the plate. I’ll open the floor up for Black women to tell you what they feel their biggest challenges are and let’s see if there is some overlap.

I’m not a mother but I will ATTEMPT to speak on behalf of those of my sistas who are. Being a single mother has to, by far, be the single most stressful challenge of being a Black woman. The evidence is there in outrageous numbers that Black women are raising our Black children alone. Parenting is, without a doubt, THE single most stressful, emotionally draining, demanding, challenging job ever. To do it alone, without a support system, or a support system that only shows up every other weekend, is damaging the entire race. The financial, emotional, and physical responsibility of rearing children is too much for one person to do alone yet Black women do it alone so much, that it’s seen as the standard. Every mother wants to provide for their child, to give them more opportunities, to protect them but it’s virtually impossible to do without a partner. At least not effectively. The absence of Black men in the home, as co-parents, is The single most detrimental challenge to black women POSSIBLE. It weakens our community and our spirits.

I’m not all Black women; I’m not even particularly typical in any sense of the word. I see things vastly different than most of my peers but I can share with you what my biggest challenges as a black woman are.

Every man that finds me attractive thinks he has some right to fuck me. I’m sure men think it’s a compliment but it’s annoying and offensive and it eats away at my very soul having to constantly be approached by men who don’t give a flying fat fuck about me as a person, who only see me as a potential hole to stick their dick. Educated men, homeless men, professional men, jobless men, toothless men, younger men, older men, married men, single men, Black men, white men. I’m sick and tired of being seen as an object, I’m sick and tired of having to deflect advances from men who don’t know me, don’t want to know me, don’t give a damn about me, or who pretend to give a damn about me just to get the panties. On the street, on the internet, at work, everywhere I go, I have to deal with men who are constantly trying to manipulate me for sex. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. It’s hurt so much inside to be constantly seen as just another piece of ass, to know good and god damn well that the men who want to fuck me couldn’t care less about me as a human being, when I’m a woman with feelings and dreams and preferences and an entire personality that exists beyond their need to fuck me. Many women have internalized the attention as flattering. They think it means that they are attractive, desirable but the end result is the same. They have learned to compensate for being objectified by objectifying themselves. But at what cost? What do they lose of themselves never being approached by a man whose first objective isn’t to fuck them? They shut down that part of them that makes them human in order to conform to the role that men will allow them to be, objects.

Being one of the members of the “highly educated” Black women clique, I can say that my second biggest challenge is finding a partner who is emotionally mature. I can find men who are intelligent, articulate, professional, successful, and attractive. Not a lot mind you, there are far more Black men who are not my equals vocationally, educationally, or intellectually which is a problem in and of itself because I need a man who is at the very least my equal in those terms. But of those Black men who are educated and professional, I can’t find men who have dealt with their issues, who are capable of being introspective, who don’t think of themselves first. In fact, the more money and success they’ve achieved, the more they expect women to just fall at their feet because they consider themselves “hot property” in the dating field. They feel like they have no responsibility to give of themselves, to even being just plain ole’ honest. I’ve done a helluva lot of work on myself, I’ve healed my demons, I’ve prepared myself to be a great partner in a relationship, I’ve relinquished the . Where are the black men who’ve done the same?

For all the Black men that accuse Black women of being “Toms” in the workplace in order to get ahead, that we are somehow betraying the Black race by climbing the corporate ladder, I say, “kiss my entire black ass.” Being a Black woman in the corporate world has given me more stress and heartache than anything else in my life. White men dismiss what I have to say without even listening to me because they don’t even see me as human, let alone an equal or god forbid a superior. Black men want to fuck me (see number 1) or want to discredit me because they think I’m going to take something from them. White women, dear lord, white women are the most ruthless, conniving, back-stabbing, manipulative, evil people when it comes to the workplace. White women have lied, cheated, stolen, and conspired to make me look bad and to make themselves look good in EVERY job I’ve ever had. White women are the instigators of more office politics, more interpersonal drama than anyone. Every disciplinary action that has ever come up in my career has been the result of a white women trying to discredit me to make herself look good. I’m under attack in the workplace from everyone as a Black woman and I get no support from Black men because they accuse me of trying to suck corporate dick in order to make them look bad because they aren’t as ambitious. I’m trying to build a future and provide a home for my family and I have to endure endless attacks of racism and sexism in order to do so on a daily basis. It’s what causes me to have high blood pressure, to have heart disease. Cleaning Miss Sally’s toilet was easier for Black women because it didn’t take years off of our lives. Climbing the corporate ladder is detrimental to our health.