by TAMARA WINFREY HARRIS
Steve Harvey is convinced you could use a few lessons in being “a lady.” So he says in his relationship advice tome, Act Like a Lady; Think Like a Man, in a chapter titled “Strong, Independent–And Lonely–Women.” Ladies are those who let men take the lead in picking a dinner spot. They don’t ask a date in for a nightcap until he has earned “the cookie” (i.e. sex) after a 90-day probation period. Ladies do not fix household items or mow the lawn. But “don’t be afraid to make a meal or two–the kitchen is both your and his friend.”
Though the comedian and radio personality avoids mentioning race explicitly in the book, it has been targeted to his largely African American fan base and. this week. debuts on the big screen as Think Like a Man, featuring a heavy-hitting black cast including Gabrielle Union, Kevin Hart and Chris Brown. Harvey’s work is but the latest in a narrative that focuses on single black women and the alleged missteps that keep them from marrying, and it is emblematic of the sexist and racist critique and regressive advice bombarding black women in the era of the “black marriage crisis.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7VmU8aHAtw
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Harvey’s bestseller is but one of a glut of books aimed at setting black women on the right course. NPR contributor Jimi Izrael names the problem plaguing black women “the Denzel Principle” in his 2010 book by the same name. Black women have standards that are just too high, argues Izrael. They expect partners on a par with actor Denzel Washington or President Barack Obama. In his 2011 book, Is Marriage for White People?, Stanford Law School professor Ralph Richard Banks suggests that black women date nonblack men to level the romantic playing field.
It has also become de rigueur for R&B artists to weigh in on love and marriage during media tours. In a 2011 video interview with gossip site NecoleBitchie.com, actor and crooner Tyrese warned black women not to “independent your way into loneliness.” Barely a month later, R&B singer Robin Thicke weighed in on the black marriage question in an Essence interview, saying, “Maybe the women have to take better care of their men. Maybe you’re being too stubborn. Maybe you’re not saying you’re sorry. You have to take good care of him, too. You have to give love to get love.”
Maybe black women want too much. Maybe they don’t know how to treat men or choose them. Maybe they are too independent. Surely there must be something wrong with them if they are not being chosen as wives. The media’s eagerness to abet this narrative is as frustrating as society’s willingness to digest it.
The message reveals a patriarchal view of male/female relationships that positions women as objects of conquest rather than agents who make their own choices. Women should bend themselves to be more attractive to men; they should be less–less educated, less independent, less discerning, less themselves. While it is not surprising that many of the most prominent voices on the issue are not women, but men, the hyper-focus on black women’s marital status has its roots in a particular intersection of sexism and racism. Behind the relationship “advice” is the specter of Sapphire–the stereotype of the black woman as unfeminine, emasculating and unattractive–named for an overbearing character on Amos ‘n’ Andy. That black women are single in large numbers, that they are advancing in education and careers, that they head so many households, that they are independent is deemed proof of their deficiency as women. The trumpeting of statistics and media bias also creates a narrowed picture of black womanhood, effectively erasing married women, women who don’t wish to marry and queer women.
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