It Really Is Up To Women

A few days ago a young man walked into my busi­ness inquir­ing about what it would cost at a bare min­i­mum to have a cell phone. I asked him a few qual­i­fy­ing ques­tions, all the time refer­ring to him as sir. He could­n’t have been more than 23 years old. He was big, with a boy­ish, almost child­like look.

To my sur­prise he retort­ed ” Mike why you call­ing me sir man?I ain’t nev­er done any­thing to you, you know me man , you know my Mom , if I did some­thing to you I apol­o­gize man”.

Then he said some­thing even more shock­ing . Man I miss my father , I haven’t seen my dad for so long Mike” !

In shock, I looked at anoth­er cus­tomer stand­ing close by. I was unsure how refer­ring to him as “Sir” could be con­strued to be an indi­ca­tion that I was mad at him. I was even more con­fused as to what him miss­ing his dad had to do with the foregone.

I con­clud­ed one thing , he was hurting.

The male cus­tomer stand­ing close by chimed in , “Sir is a sign of respect man” , to which he nod­ded his head in obvi­ous under­stand­ing and smiled. I was­n’t con­tent to let him walk away with­out at least try­ing to learn a lit­tle about him. After explain­ing to him that refer­ring to him as Sir was a sign of respect and cour­tesy, he smiled broad­ly then told me he had not seen his Dad in years. I had no solu­tion, so I told him I loved him. He pur­chased the ser­vice he could afford and left.

So what’s the moral of this spiel? Well… I’ve want­ed to talk a lit­tle about some of these very issues for years now. Having worked a decade in Law Enforcement I saw a whole bunch of young peo­ple whom I believed would have been expo­nen­tial­ly bet­ter off had their par­ents made the right decision.

Many of the prob­lems of our Society today may be traced back to the doorsteps of each and every home on this Planet. Whatever the prob­lem, they begin with deci­sions we made.

That deci­sion may be an emo­tion­al deci­sion to vote for some­one who should nev­er be elect­ed to office, or an ill-advised deci­sion by a woman to have sex with a male she knows will nev­er be a father to a child, in the event she becomes preg­nant. The deci­sion may be even more sim­ple, how about not tak­ing the chance of hav­ing a child, in the event she can­not forego sex?

This is a sub­ject we have tip-toed around for far too long, large­ly in def­er­ence to women. There is a rea­son most female Animals mate with the strongest male, The Alpha male. It is a built in defense against the break-down of the Specie. Imagine if Lionesses mat­ed with the weak­est most fee­ble Lion, pret­ty soon Lions would be hunt­ed by domes­tic Dogs. But seri­ous­ly you do get the pic­ture right?

The Human specie is not all about the need for brute force to sur­vive, notwith­stand­ing women are not absolved of their respon­si­bil­i­ty to be judi­cious with their bod­ies. I am in no way lay­ing the entire­ty of the blame at the feet of women, nei­ther will I shy away from ask­ing women to be more account­able because it is unpop­u­lar to do so.

Barring sex­u­al assaults, and oth­er events which takes away a wom­an’s right to choose a part­ner, It begins with a wom­an’s deci­sion to have sex with a man. It begins with her to decide to have unpro­tect­ed sex. It is her deci­sion to have sex with a man who has no job and nev­er had one. It is her deci­sion to have sex with a man who has sev­er­al women. It is her deci­sion to main­tain a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a man who can­not stay out of jail.

Ask your­selves this, how will a man be a suit­able father to your kids if he is a shift­less , lazy man who does not work and can­not stay out of prison? I’ll take it a bit fur­ther , why would you want a man who is in and out of Prison to be the father to your chil­dren? What kind of role-mod­el will he be? Is that even impor­tant to you women? This is a con­ver­sa­tion we need to have with­in the black community. 

We can con­tin­ue to bemoan what the “Man” did , or even con­tin­ue to do. We can con­verse­ly get up and change our cir­cum­stance. We can­not con­tin­ue to blame oth­ers for deci­sions we make. We can­not con­tin­ue to exco­ri­ate and vil­i­fy those in our com­mu­ni­ty who speak to these truths. No one owes us a liv­ing, not our par­ents, not the coun­try, not the President.

It is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to seek knowl­edge. There are places called Schools, no one owes it to us to get us an edu­ca­tion. Why does an American Citizen not have a piece of Identification? Is it an unrea­son­able request to ask that you iden­ti­fy your­self in order to vote? Why do you think those who would do us harm make it so we have to show ID? Don’t you real­ize it’s because they know we sim­ply refuse to go get a piece of identification?

Why do you women con­tin­ue to have sex with unwor­thy men you know will not stick around if you get preg­nant? Why do you then turn the male child from that union into that man who walked away from you, call­ing him your baby? Have you ever won­dered why he calls your home his Crib? If you enable him to live off you, not get an edu­ca­tion, not get a job. How will he be a man to the women he inter­acts with? How will he be a father to the chil­dren he will most cer­tain­ly sire?

It will be anoth­er hun­dred years and noth­ing will change for us if we shack­le our­selves to the belief that some­how it is up to some­one to teach us things. To give us things, to make deci­sions for us.

How much longer can we hide behind the fal­la­cy that some­how young women are to be pitied because they made con­scious deci­sions to have unpro­tect­ed sex which results in preg­nan­cy? Does any­one real­ly believe young women today do not know that sex leads to preg­nan­cy? On what Planet is that notion plau­si­ble ?I humbly ven­ture to say that in the case of young girls in High Schools who have kids , they actu­al­ly active­ly plan those preg­nan­cies, some­times with their friends so they may all have babies around the same time.

Those are the rea­sons 71% of all black babies born the US are born to sin­gle unmar­ried women. Whose fault is that? Is that the white man’s fault? I made this argu­ment recent­ly in a con­ver­sa­tion and some­one accused me of “judg­ing” the women.….….…

I was told that these women do not know they should not have unpro­tect­ed sex. Because they are not taught that they should­n’t. My ques­tion was, “whose fault is that”? How much longer are we going to pre­tend it is some­one else’s fault that a large num­ber of that 71% , are mere­ly fod­der for the Prison Industrial Complex?

We sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue with the non­sense that they are build­ing Prisons to house black peo­ple. It rather is that we con­tin­ue to have chil­dren we refuse to care for that invari­able end up in the pris­ons. The so-called- man is all too eager to prof­it from our mis­takes. It is the American way , it is called Capitalism.