Category Archives: Commentary/Response

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Of Love and Relationship Roles ~ A Running Debate

Ok let’s talk.  I want to have a serious discussion about relational roles of a man and a woman.   This discussion comes on the heels of both a radio program I listened to recently, as well as a running debate I’ve had with a good friend of mine who happens to be  a very progressive and liberal thinking woman.  This is a person I deeply respect.  A great thinker.  But every time this subject comes up, it’s battle stations ready! 

Now before I pose the questions let me put down the ground rules so we can eliminate side arguments and certain defensive posturing.

1) In the relationship scenario – we are using as an example a good man and woman who are loving,  responsible, and respectful.  No need to say, “Well if he is a dog hell naw I ain’t submitting to him.” 

2) The author of this post truly honors and respects the worth of a woman.  Her contributions cannot be counted, and her abilities are almost limitless.   There is no sexism involved that says a woman cannot do such and such.

3) These are general principles and should be taken that way.  No need for extreme rebuttals on particular words and phrases.  Please take the theme in perspective and give the author the benefit of the doubt.  You may comment on the lines drawn in the sand areas.  There are only one or two at most.

On to the discussion of the day:

As progressive of a thinker as I am, I still hold to some old fashioned values of chivalry.  For instance I believe a man’s first priority towards his woman is to protect her.  That could be interpreted physically, mentally or whatever.  If a burglar were to enter the premises,  I would not ask my woman to “go check on that.”  She can be a combat expert in karate, M16s and explosives – doesn’t matter.  I don’t think it’s her “role” to protect me in that situation.  (Now if we are all fighting in some Bonnie and Clyde circumstance in public, that may be a different thing.  I believe in opening doors and pulling out chairs in a restaurant.  I believe a man should also love and cherish his woman.  He should listen to her and do all he can to understand her as she develops and changes.  I believe he should provide leadership and vision – providing a specific direction regarding the goals of the family etc.  Does this mean that the woman is not providing ideas, feedback etc.?  Of course not.  In this day and age especially, the 21st Century woman is more versed in the general affairs of society than ever before.  Her voice is vital and her contributions priceless.   In the idea situation, the woman will compliment her man by having gifts and talents that he does not possess to add to the value of the relationship.  He will do the same for her.

I believe a man’s purpose is to provide for his woman.  Not that she can’t make money.  She may even make more money than he does.  He should not be intimidated by her career or her goals in the marketplace.  He should support them.  At the same time he should be looking to provide for the day to day needs.   Depending on the lifestyle a family wants to live, nowadays it takes two incomes combined to make it happen.  Still it should be his goal to better himself to the point of being responsible just in case she can’t produce for whatever reason, i.e. childbirth, sickness etc.  This to me would be idea.

In terms of functioning day to day – couples should work together to make the household go round.  Take advantage of one another’s talents and gifts to make things as smooth as possible.  For instance, whichever person is good with organization may be the one to physically pay the bills.  If she loves yard work, perhaps she will cut the grass or rake leaves.  Just as well he may decorate the house if he has a visual perspective for decor.   The roles for day to day ops, should not be delegated merely by gender.

Here is where it gets sticky in the aforementioned debate.  I believe that a man should be the leader in the household and in the direction of the relationship.  If he is smart, he will recognize the strength and wisdom of his woman and receive her input as vital.  If he is leading in a direction that she does not approve of, he could be an emperor with no clothes.   Men have blind-spots and his woman should be a partner of ideas of valued discussions.  Still he is responsible for the safety and welfare of the family.  Both man and woman should be “equal partners” in terms of value, but do not foster equal roles within the structure.  Everyone is happy when they can agree, but if the couple don’t agree and a decision needs to be made he should make it after careful consideration.  Being “the man” to me merely means being responsible for the overall direction and course of the relationship and the family structure.  If it fails its on him unless he did all he could and his woman simply rebelled or decided not to follow his leadership.  Again this is assuming both parties are totally committed to the success of the relationship and family.

Furthermore, in my opinion a discerning woman will realize that her brilliance is never undermined when she accepts these precepts.  As a matter of fact, any man will tell you if his woman is not happy, the whole house is not happy. Any leading that he does she has to “let” him do anyway.  She can in her wisdom and love build him up to be the greatest leader he can be, or she can tear him down and attempt to make mincemeat out of him.  Like it or not, James Brown said it best.  “This is a man’s world.  (directional functioning) But it wouldn’t be nothing, without a woman, boy or girl.”  I’ve long had a saying, that God’s great equalizer to a male dominated society is a woman.  Because I don’t care how much a man accomplishes, his greatest desire after his purpose it to be loved, needed, appreciated, and respected by his woman.  Period.  So she is invaluable – and as I said women today especially are more skilled, sharp and able than ever before – and have carried men for a long time, especially black men in the midst of the struggle we have faced within society post slavery, Jim Crow, self identity crisis etc.  What a woman has to do and what a woman should be doing to me are two different things. 

The benefits of the progressive woman are obvious.  The advances have come hard fought and well earned.  Our society is still not progressive enough in my view in appreciating, protecting, and valuing women.  But the downside is this competitive paradigm for a power struggle.  Equal partners in terms of input and value does not mean equal parts of functionality.  I believe most women accept and even embrace the theory.  The problem becomes an issue of trust because of a negative track record with immature, ignorant, (ignorant in the derogotory as well as the without knowledge sense) and selfish men.  (Of which I have been in my day)

My friend thinks this is a sexist way of thinking.  That equal partners means equal everything.  There are two chiefs and no one is more in charge or responsible than the other. 

So chime in on this discussion.   What do ya’ll think??  Are my Fred Flintstone ideas merely prehistoric?  Is the old school way the best way? 

Please respond with love and intelligence as I have presented it with such.

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Commentary/Response

Readers, I came across this commentary on blackamericaweb.com.  Normally I wouldn’t blog a response to an article but this one is so beyond reproach to me in terms of it’s content, that I had to offer a rebuttle.

Commentary: We Talk About How Ministers’ Kids Tend To Be Wild-What About The Preachers Themselves?

Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008
By: Gregory Kane, BlackAmericaWeb.com

My stars, the words that come out of the mouths of some ministers!

You’ve all heard or read what Jesse Jackson — you’ll pardon me if I don’t put “reverend” in front of his name — said he’d like to do with two certain parts of Sen. Barack Obama’s anatomy. That may have surprised a lot of black folks. It didn’t surprise me. I’ve been writing for years that the man isn’t worth a tinker’s dam, only to have black folks whip out the Uncle Tom/Sambo card on me.

But while I expected such language from Jackson — Mumia Abu Jamal claims Jackson called black folks in Philadelphia’s MOVE organization “a bunch of nappy-headed niggers who don’t wash” — my concern isn’t about Jesse. It’s about the man Jesse once worked with.

I’m starting to wonder if we should re-evaluate Martin Luther King Jr. If there’s any truth to the adage “birds of a feather flock together,” maybe we should. King biographer Taylor Branch wrote in “Pillar of Fire” that FBI wiretaps revealed King saying something about a grieving Jackie Kennedy that was even more revolting than what Jackson said about Obama.

It was so revolting, in fact, that I can’t repeat it in this column. BlackAmericaWeb.com editors have too much class and dignity for that, so I won’t even bother to so much as let them edit the words out. But what King said about Jackie Kennedy as she knelt praying at President Kennedy’s coffin is on page 250 of the hardcover edition, if you care to have a look.

There’s more of King’s raunchy language of page 207 of “Pillar of Fire,” in which FBI tapes caught him in the sex act shouting “I’m having sex for God!” (Note: the sex wasn’t with his wife, Coretta.) But King didn’t say “having sex.” He actually dropped the old F-bomb. On the same tape, King is still engaged in a sexual act when he shouts “I’m not a Negro tonight!”

That line has prompted three questions from me since the first moment I read it.

1. What was this woman doing to King that made him forsake his race and ethnicity?
2. Who was she, exactly?
3. Most important, why can’t I ever find women like this?

King’s extra-marital affairs have been known for years. I got confirmation of them around 1970 from a guy who should have known: Rev. James Bevel, a former King aide.

My BlackAmericaWeb.com colleague wrote about Bevel a while back. He was recently convicted of having sex with his own daughters when they were underage. I saw that conviction coming almost 40 years ago.

Bevel arrived in Baltimore circa 1970 to, he claimed, start a new organization called MAN, an acronym for Making A Nation. It turns out Bevel needed a new organization because his old one, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had fired him. I didn’t know the reason then, but I sure as heck have some inkling now.

Free love and nude encounter sessions were part of the MAN agenda. Bevel advocated that every man in MAN was free to have sex with any woman, and vice versa. I had a chance to join Bevel’s “organization.” I was 19, horny as a tomcat and, like any red-blooded heterosexual American male of that era, dying to get laid.

But not badly enough to join MAN. There were just some things a nice Catholic kid from West Baltimore didn’t do.

Bevel wasn’t just a basket case when it came to sex. I first saw him in action during a speech he gave in a classroom on the campus of Johns Hopkins University. Some white kid asked a perfectly innocuous question. Bevel grabbed a walking stick he carried, barreled through some desks, shot up to the white kid and grabbed him by the hair.

“I ought to beat you with this stick, you white boy you!”  Bevel snarled.

I sat there thinking, “This NUT was an aide to Martin Luther King?”

Indeed, he was. And, according to most histories of the civil rights movement, he was a very skilled and effective organizer. Jackson at one time showed promise as a leader and activist. King’s record of achievements in the civil rights field is almost without peer. But it’s clear now all three of these men had a side few ever knew.

There’s a theory that the children of ministers — preachers’ kids or “PK’s” — tend to be a bit on the wild side. But maybe it’s not the PK’s we need to keep an eye on.

Maybe it’s the preachers.

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Hmmmm… Ok let’s start with my first question.  What is the purpose of this commentary?  Is it to discuss PK’s or MLK’s sex life?  The latter seems to be the case as there is not an attempt to discuss the challenges and behaviors of PKs.  When the writer suggests that we re-evaluate the way we see Dr. King, I wonder what is it that he plans to re-evaluate.  I’ll return to that point shortly.

First of all it’s general information that Dr. King was not faithful to Coretta during their whole marriage.  I recall when Ralph Abernathy wrote his book back in the day and appeared on the Donahue show to talk about it.  In that book he discussed King’s affairs.  Michael Eric Dyson’s book, “I May Not Get There With You,” was written for the sole purpose of balancing the King legacy in terms of showing King to be fully human including the flaws who accomplished extraordinary things for the nation and black people in particular.  Dyson’s book dealt with how American whites generally want to turn King’s words and work into merely a dream speech – without tackling the meaty issues that he addressed that the nation didn’t want to hear then and do not want to hear now.  In short they want to make him a toothless lion.  For blacks we have tended to deify King to the point of making him like a Jr. God.  Branch, whom the writer references did several well researched scholarly books on the King years.  I would recommend them all.  King’s story is phenomenal.  And Branch touches on a history that is so detailed with facts and stories, it’s a biographical journey.  I blogged about these books recently.

But back to the writer again… What is he trying to say?  Because King came up short in his marriage vows and said some wild things in bed we need to re-evaluate his contributions?  What the….?  First of all let’s remember that the reason King was illegally wire tapped in the first place was because the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with ruining King’s life and bringing down the civil rights movement.  I would suggest the writer do some study on Hoover and all the callous work the FBI did especially during the 50’s and 60s.  Hoover had files on everyone in public life… Dick Gregory, John Lennon etc.  Anyone who represented independent though or had a following Hoover went after.  He even sent notes to King posing as Andrew Young to try to convince King to commit suicide.  Finally, I wonder if the writer knows that though Edgar was a fierce racist and homophobe, he was also a cross dresser himself.  Now with that said I wonder… who the hell makes a judgment on a man or tries to seriously examine words and phrases he says when he is engaged in sexual acts?  Sex involves reality and fantasy and therefore without speaking to King about it, it would be impossible if not silly and illogical to try to critically analyze it.  Second, if the FBI were to record the sexual acts and the words of the writer, would he feel it worthy of public critique?  It’s kind of a losing battle if you ask me.  If he says wild things from the outside it’s easy to ridicule the writer as he did King.  And yet if his language is simple and generic he’s gives the perception of being dull in bed at the very least.  I wonder if the writer really wants to go down that slippery slope. 

Finally I ask again… what is it to re-evaluate?  The accomplishment King and his supporters made for equal rights?  The fact that he personified the non-violent movement from the American perspective, and was jailed countless times for a people he loved and the justice he sought?  The fact that he is still arguably the best American we have ever produced?  Or the fact that he gave his life for what he believed in by being assassinated by his own government – the same government that tapped his phone, spied on him, sent black men to infiltrate his organizations?  The fact that the writer stands and judges this man with words that lack the reasoning of my soon to be 5th grader and can post it on BlackAmericaWeb is what we really need to re-evaluate.