ClevaWords

Working in the health field can be overwhelming being a black woman. You hear the stats that rarely have any good news for black women. HIV, diabetes, lupus, heart disease, breast cancer....and the list goes on and on. Then you have those that tell us that we are the least desired (Black women and Asian men) in the US. Personally, I've always gotten more attention from non-American black men but understand what has happened to the psyche of some of brothers. I can't blame them 100%. But what does all of this do to the mindset of Black women living in the US? How do we push through the fact that we may end up unmarried, left as single mothers, and have to raise a family financially alone? AND then get blamed for why black children have certain issues? I even had a brotha tell me that me being educated is a part of the problem for black men. (sigh) He said that black women are being used as tools to break down black men because we are being "trained" seek out p...

After the verdict of the R.kelly trial, I thought about the response of the black community to this trial and other situations when black girls (women) accuse black men of molestation/rape. Secrecy permeates throughout the black community in this area and yet the rates of sexual abuse in the black community is the same as in other communities but who believes black women when we become brave enough to say, "I've been violated". This is less about R.Kelly and his issues with young girls but with how we need to protect our girls and women. Molestation/rape in the black community isn't new so we can't say its because of broken homes, absentee fathers, hip hop, etc. Our grandmothers have stories, our mothers, our aunts and cousins all have these stories. No one was taken to jail. No one received therapy and sometimes, even those in the church would tell women to just hush up. How do we think this abuse manifests? What goes in, must comes out, right? Black wome...