Many people remember “The Cosby Show”. It represented a wealthy African-American family where the father was a doctor, the mother a lawyer, and 5 children who grew up in privilege. For many it was the first time a black family was shown on television that made no money selling drugs, living on projects and having a house full of children all with different parents.
When I watched the show, a part of me was glad that it showed what life could be like for a black family if certain obstacles and the opportunity to reach their potential were removed. What I didn’t like was that the show didn’t really show life in a black family. When you start a family with a black man who marries a black woman, there are many skeletons in the closet that need to be addressed.
Many male children do not grow up seeing a man who cares for his family, loves his mother, and is willing to sacrifice anything for his family. Instead we see men who have low self-esteem, who do not live to be their best because for many they were not encouraged to do so. They do not take care of their women because they were not taught to do that. They abandon their children and let the mother take care of them.
Mothers do not teach many girls to support their men. They must learn to be strong and not depend on a man because he will probably not be there to take care of their children. Even when you meet a nice man who is really trying to be a good husband and father, it is not easy to become the kind of wife that he needs you to be.
Black men don’t grow up with a lot of encouragement. We don’t have role models that we can see, touch and meet on a personal level. All of our heroes are in sports, movies, or far away places. We do not see them when they have struggles, difficulties and how they overcome failure. We see Superman with Lois Lane loving him, not Clark Kent, whom everyone ignores.
Black women don’t realize how their support can not only make their man, but also sustain him. Hearing words of encouragement, being pushed to excel in areas other than physical work, being praised more and less ridiculed. These habits would improve men. Sadly, our family structure has taken the self-esteem of the black man and reduced it to nothing while implanting in our black women the feeling that black men cannot be trusted and that you must be strong to survive a relationship with him.
I don’t blame black men or black women; I blame a society that has spent centuries struggling to have a minority that feels and looks superior by belittling those who are different. Our history books have stories of slavery, oppression, the fight for equal rights, manic groups like the Ku Klux Klan who are so insecure in their dealings within their own lives that they had to attack black Americans to feel good about themselves. themselves. Our story shows not a love for humanity, but an innate deprivation of being less than what we were all created to be.
It is time for America to realize that we are all created equal, that there is no master race (ask Hitler where he got it from) and the only thing that separates us is that we look different. Inside we all bleed, we all want the best for our families, we all want to live a full life. It’s time to promote equality in America for everyone, not just the rich or the white.