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In My Opinion
Black women need black men to share burden
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
lpitts@MiamiHerald.com
For some of us, it is the easiest thing in the world to idealize black women. To romanticize them, sentimentalize them.
Consider Legends Ball, a TV special this week produced by that ?şber black woman, Oprah Winfrey. I seldom watch Winfrey's programs, but her salute to trailblazing African-American women kept me rooted. There was something soul settling in seeing all those sisters, daughters, mothers -- Gladys Knight, Maya Angelou, Cicely Tyson, Dorothy Height, Leontyne Price and more -- gather in their big hats and finery to celebrate and be celebrated.
Or, consider a chat I had earlier this month with a group of academics and healthcare professionals about the fact that black women have among the lowest suicide rates in the country -- one-third that of white women, according to a 2003 University of North Carolina study. Asked why, I began to wax rhapsodic about the grounding that spirituality gives, the grace that hardship brings and that serene majesty that often settles in on black women of a certain age.
Point being, black women are the strength and succor of their community. They are the last line of defense.
By Joy Jones, A Washington writer, is the author of "Between Black Women: Listening With the Third Ear"
I grew up in a time when two-parent families were still the norm, in both black and white America. Then, as an adult, I saw divorce become more commonplace, then almost a rite of passage. Today it would appear that many -- particularly in the black community -- have dispensed with marriage altogether.
But as a black woman, I have witnessed the outrage of girlfriends when the ex failed to show up for his weekend with the kids, and I've seen the disappointment of children who missed having a dad around. Having enjoyed a close relationship with my own father, I made a conscious decision that I wanted a husband, not a live-in boyfriend and not a "baby's daddy," when it came my time to mate and marry. My time never came. For years, I wondered why not. And then some 12-year-olds enlightened me. "Marriage is for white people."
FOR the past four years, 34-year-old Dene Brown has knowingly shared her man with another woman. Gayle Scott, also 34, spent eight years in a relationship with a man whom she, too, knowingly shared. Similarly, Marcia Hinton, 33, shared her lover for close to a year before the relationship ended.
Single, young and attractive, Dene, Gayle and Marcia are a modern portrait of a social reality many may find startling: In the 1990s, at one time or another, many women will find themselves sharing the men in their lives.
Just how many women will face this predicament? According to some experts, as many as eight out of every 10 women have at one time shared or are currently sharing a man. "It's as common as the cold," asserts Audrey Chapman, a family therapist at Howard University and author of the controversial book, Man Sharing: Dilemma or Choice. "But, as one man told me, it's like masturbation. Everyone's doing it but nobody's going to admit it."
Verifying the number of Black women who man-share either knowingly or unknowingly is virtually impossible since, as Chapman points out, it's such a touchy, close-to-the-bone issue. "I wrote the book thinking if I came out with a well researched statement acknowledging its widespread existence, women could then start to deal with it," she says. "Instead, what I got was a lot of anger and rage for airing our dirty laundry.'"
Experts believe man-sharing--the practice and the concept--generates such intense reaction among women because it causes more emotional anguish than any other single issue. "Most Black women desperately want a committed, exclusive relationship, but for a number of reasons--the Black male shortage is a big one--huge numbers of them find themselves facing an agonizing choice: being alone or sharing their man," says Marlene Menifee, a certified Black psychoanalyst in New York City who specializes in counseling individuals dissatisfied with their personal lives and relationships.
Link to entire article:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n3_v46/ai_9312500
