Are controlling pastors keeping good young black women single?

As per my profile disclosure the majority of my posts are born out of either my own experiences or observations; this one is no different. I am going to use three real life examples of my friends' lives to make my case. My intent is not to be malicious, but to constructively share my opinion. Let us get right into it.

 

Case study 1
I have a male friend (let's call him Jonathan) who happens to come from Nigeria and you know what they say about Naija boys and fraud right? Well Jonathan and a few other Nigerian guys I have befriended have not fit that stereotype at all; although I am fully aware that I may have dealt with exceptions rather than rules. Anyway, Jonathan is a very switched on chap, I met him when he was in the UK pursuing his studies and I was very much intrigued by this brother's mind. I did not only learn that he is intelligent but also that he is a very humble and creative man. During the time he was around many afternoons were spent conversing about the political, moral and socioeconomic issues we both observed here amongst @Africanindiaspos and he also provided me with much insight about the situation back home.

 

When his studies were coming to the end, Jonathan and I were talking about marriage and the idea of how to raise children when he told me about a girl he knew back home (let's call her Rachel). He really liked her and their parents were family friends; he felt this was a really solid foundation upon which to build a life and she seemed to share the same sentiment. Fast forward a few months, Jonathan was now back in Naija and was pretty much courting Rachel when they started having conversations about children, family values etc. They were in agreement about virtually everything until it came to the church ritual of tithing. Jonathan is of the opinion that tithe is not applicable to the New Covenant believer whilst Rachel has been indoctrinated that to not tithe is to rob God (I will give my opinion in another post). To cut a long story short; Rachel told her pastor and church 'brothers' that her potential suitor did not believe in tithing and she was instructed to discontinue the relationship and like a good girl she followed daddy's recommendation. Jonathan was devastated to say the least but effectively moved on whilst conflicted Rachel still calls him from time to time, full of regret, unable to reconcile and also failing to find a good man.

 

Case study 2
Another male friend of mine (let's call him Frank) who is a semi-decent guy with good intentions was also in a relationship with a girl (let’s call her Nneka) many years ago when she 'gave her life to the Lord'. In actuality Nneka gave her life to her pastor because the way she treated Frank changed overnight and it was not as a result of listening to convict music I mean being convicted, lol, pas du tout (not at all). Instead it was because Nneka, who had grown up without a father, now had a Daddy in this pastor whose church she was attending and he had given her orders to stop seeing Frank the heathen and only be interested in his sons, i.e. his men who attended his church. Nneka, like Rachel, zealously obliged her pastor's commands and ended the long-term relationship. The wild thing is that Frank, if I remember clearly, was willing to travel on this righteous path with her had they both received proper guidance. Anyway he was hurt but managed to move on and form a stable (horse shelter) relationship which he has enjoyed for some years now actually so good on him. In regards to Nneka, well she ended up being treated like a blunt by the pastor’s sons. Yep it was puff puff pass in the church and she ended up really broken after many years of being committed to the ‘man of God’ and now actually despises religion. This is very sad considering that Frank held her in high regard.

 

Case study 3
Lastly a gentleman I once spoke to (let's call him Eversharp, lol in Zimbabwe there are people with such names) told me of how as a 'righteous' brother he was in a relationship with a very decent girl (let's call her Lorraine) when she started dealing with prophets. You know the type of prophets I am talking about right, the type of prophets who wear sharp tailor-made suits and have the supernatural ability to throw people on the floor by just waving their hands?

 

 

I don’t know what that achieves but anyway Lorraine started receiving hidden knowledge from such a prophet. She learned of how she would do well in her studies and become wealthy one day and it went straight to her head so much so that she began to view herself as superior to Eversharp. Eversharp reckons that she was probably told that he was not the man for her as well because around the same time she began to distance herself from him although he had helped her to get into university and had not, during the course of their relationship, tried to sleep with her as a sign of respect to her father and God. Like the other men mentioned above Eversharp was hurt and he was single when I spoke to him. One would think Lorraine had become more spiritual with all the ‘prophecies’ that she was receiving but that was not the case (murder was). Eversharp told me she started dating a weed-smoking drunkard instead. J.Lo would only have one thing to say here, ‘ain’t it funny’ in reference to yet another case of a good girl gone bad/mad at the hands of pastors.

  

Conclusion

All of the women I have mentioned are in their mid-20s to early thirties and have, in my opinion, been misled by controlling, self-serving pastors who have very little concern for them. They have been refrained from marrying men who may have been good to them by these conmen who only want to maintain sufficient control over them in order to extract financial resources from them indefinitely. All the while these sisters have become and less and less desirable to men as they have grown older, wider and more embittered by their loneliness and sense of entitlement (daddy’s promises must come true).

  

Although I do not drink let us pour out some liquor for our brothers and sisters who have missed out on good relationships because of prophets.

 

 

What are your thoughts? Am I way off? Are the sisters partially to blame? Let me know.

 

Until next time, let us share and let us grow!

‘I don’t even know what to say here’ - @Africanindiaspo

Why do black men think that they are all that and a bag of chips?

My @Africanindiaspo sisters this is the moment you have been waiting for. I know it is since my previous posts have all been about things that sisters do and do not do. Well today I am going to lay into the brothers. After all we all need to share and grow from challenging one another.

 

A couple of incidents that have occurred have caused me to ponder on the subject matter above. The first one being when I was in the gym, walking to the water fountain and minding my own PLC (I mean business), when I saw a brother walking in front of me. He happened to be crossing paths with a white girl when he gave her this look that said, 'yo shortie what it do?' and looked back at her to check her out as she walked past. I would be remiss to eliminate the fact that this brother was walking like those rappers in the 90s videos, the era in which Mase and Puff Daddy wore shiny coloured suits and stuck their faces in front of video cameras. I wanted to cry but only managed to cringe as it all happened so fast. I was in shock, it's not as though this brother was very handsome and built like a tank or anything, he was just an average-looking guy and I wondered to myself 'where does he get such confidence from?'

 

Anyway, I thought I had seen it all after that moment but I was wrong - there were more black men to observe and interact with, lol.

 

In the second instance I was in the gym, yet again, chatting to some precious young @Africanindiaspo brothers I had met a few days before when a girl I know, but have never spoken to, came and started working out next to where we were. I immediately knew that things were potentially about to go left. The staring began, and the youngest brother who is approximately 18 years old started talking about how he could get this girl's number even though the girl is about 24 years old and happens to have a well-paying full time job. In order to save face for when I saw her again, I told the young men to behave. I did not know that I was only pouring fuel onto an open flame as the young brother felt an even greater urge to prove to me that he was the man. He wanted to even bet on it but I, being the person that I am, did not dare push this zealous brother beyond the point of no return. I simply kept quiet and thankfully it worked, although I still saw him trying to sneak her that look 'yo shortie look'.

 

(Sigh*) I was dumbfounded once more. Here was this young black man who probably still lives at home with his parents and doesn't have much to offer a woman, yet he was convinced that he could get this white girl who works a professional job to be interested in him. 'What would he talk to her about and where would he take her', were the questions I asked myself. That is when it hit me that these men were not confident at all, I deliberated that they were conceited and unrealistic instead. This is because to me confidence is being self-assuring and self-actualising, rather being delusional or having thoughts of grandeur.

 

I will generalise a little bit and say that most middle/upper class white girls in their 20s, especially those in the UK, are not typically into black men. If you doubt the legitimacy of such a claim then please do a little investigating to find out who the childhood crushes of such women were. I will bet you good money they were not LL Cool J, Denzel Washington or B2K, they were most likely Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or N'sync instead. Therefore to be of a similar socioeconomic background, a handsome black man and be of the same age or older is not the best case scenario as it does not guarantee such a woman's interest. Now to be younger and black without any socioeconomic leverage is not to be like David vs Goliath, it is more like a 5 year old toddler against Goliath. You have to honestly be delusional at best, even faith will not work in these circumstances and yet it seems my brothers consider themselves to able to do all things. Without being crude, this is partly due to the sexual prowess they imagine themselves to have or are at least depicted by pornographic films to possess. This stereotype, I have found, causes black men to consider themselves very desirable. Unfortunately for them most young, 'attractive' white women are not looking for sex like that in a gym and if they are it is not with some young black player who cannot afford a lifestyle such as the one they lead. I am almost certain that the same truth is applicable for young, attractive, black women who enjoy financial success, the only exception being that a black man's looks do go further for him with the sisters.

 

I do not know what emboldens my brothers to even have the slightest thought that they can actually get some of the women they go for. Perhaps it is also due to the constant exposure to hip hop culture in which they see men like LL Cool J, who is in his 50s, still licking their lips for the ladies (Lip-Licking Cool James). The thing is, you will never see LL Cool J licking his lips and rubbing his own body in front audience of women like Kate Middleton, Michelle Obama or Condoleezza Rice. Men like him only behave this way in front of tasteless women such as Lil' Kim, Vivica Fox, Jennifer Lopez, etc. The essence of what I am trying to say is that us @Africanindiaspo brothers need to learn our demographic and market ourselves appropriately; we cannot be creeping out innocent white women in gyms like that. We are not as handsome or as desired as we think we are.

 

My @Africanindiaspo sisters what are your thoughts? Was this post fair or was I unreasonable? Do you like this licking of lips and winking of eyes? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

 

Until next time let us share, let us grow and please let us stop licking our lips. Lol.

 

'Black men respect your limitations, lol' - @Africanindiaspo

I fell in love with natural afro-hair

It was one fine summer day (a few years ago) in the beautiful streets of Her Majesty’s United Kingdom when I was walking down the main street of the city I live in and spotted this beautiful specimen of a woman. Even to this day I do not know how to explain that precise moment and the feelings I felt in it. The lady was not skimpily clad at all, no. It was not her body shape or public display of her upper epidermis that put me into a trance, no. It was her hair – an afro.

Typically when men as carnal as I was back then see a girl, their thoughts go straight to sexual matters but in that instance I was not thinking of any such thing. I was more interested in poetic things such as discovering the contents of her cranium - that is her thoughts. You see there was something about her natural afro-hair that demanded respect in the gentlest way, that said I have accepted that I am a black woman, that said I have an interesting mind worth discovering. You see in those days I used to sag my pants, as was the trend, but I felt I had to pull them up and come correct and that is what I did. I spoke very briefly with the sister and never saw her again.

I can safely say that that was the first time in my young adult life that I had met a black woman with natural afro-hair in the diaspora. Many of our sisters at the time were either rocking braids, weaves or relaxed hair and although I like braids I can safely say that the day I met that young lady was the day I fell in love with natural afro-hair (I am sorry for repeatedly calling natural hair ‘natural afro-hair’ but I must say afro-hair because women of every other ethnicity wear their natural hair so to say simply say natural hair is to be vague). I should really put up signs on my posts for digressions just like the ones they put up in the roads for diversions, lol. Anyway, I did not see another woman with an afro for a long time since that initial encounter. You see the trendsetters that be had not deemed the black woman’s crown as beautiful yet so many of our sisters hid their glory under wigs and weaves for a few more years until recently.

It seems that many @Africanindiaspos are now witnessing the renaissance of the afro. Many of our sisters are unapologetically going back to their roots (no pun intended, I’m just too good haha). Nowadays I spot a lot more sisters wearing their crowns and radiating the glory that almost rendered me mute years ago and it excites me a lot. Even my current partner is also on her ‘natural journey’ so I get to learn a lot of cool terms such as twist-outs, wash and go and protective styles, etc. If all else fails with this blog I am starting one on natural hair. I really need to stop digressing.

Personally, I have never been a fan of make-up or superficial beauty. Instead, I have always liked the natural look on a woman and so I thought myself to be weird and the only man with such a preference since many @Africanindiaspo sisters, from my interactions with them, did not really maintain natural looks about them. I just assumed they looked that way for brothers who liked weaves, fake brows, etc until I recently realised this to not be the case. One sister took to the streets of the USA to ask black men what type of woman they preferred, between one with weave and one with a natural look, and it seems as though they all pretty much shared the same sentiments as me. (Link to part 1 of the survey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrWdBiMAYWE).

Whilst I was elated to learn that I was not the crazy traditionalist who I am often labelled to be, I was left with more questions than answers - the most significant one being ‘why then do our sisters maintain looks which are unnatural to their ethnicity despite the fact that black men do not really like them?’ Who are they trying to attract and/or impress with blonde, brunette or red weave hair? Could it be that they are trying to impress or fit in with white people? Is this the media’s fault? Are our sisters so subservient to trends irrespective of the fact that the trends being set are for white women? This is a serious complex my dear brothers and sisters. We do not see white women with afro wigs do we? Even worse, imagine seeing a black brother wearing a blonde wig to look like a white man. That would be a comical sight and I do not think any such man would be taken seriously. Why is it then that this complex only affects our women?
 
In their defence for weaves, I have heard sisters say things like ‘it is easier to maintain white-looking hair than to maintain their own hair’. If this was a matter of convenience then why do our sisters not wear afro-weaves instead of European weaves? Also if our sisters have Brazilian/Indian/Synthetic hair to look like other ethnicities and we cannot touch this ‘glorious’ hair then is it a surprise when black men end up being attracted to the originators of the glorious hair? I mean if Samsung put Apple logos on their devices because the logo looks so great, would I be out of my mind to want to buy Apple devices only going forward?

I guess the point I am trying to make is that I wish my very precious sisters would all wear their God-given crowns, that they would not make any excuses to look like their ‘nemesis’ and that it would not be considered such a big deal. I mean I have never seen women from any other ethnicity say ‘I am going natural’ and even if they did, I do not think they would be hailed queens of the universe. In recent news we have heard of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who pretended to be black, can you imagine if she started YouTube videos of her going natural? Think about it @Africanindiaspos. Additionally, I must say that I wish that the increase in sisters wearing their afro-hair was not a just another fad to fade in a short while though I fear that that is exactly what it is. I also wish that when sisters wear their natural they embrace all things afro-centric which are to do with culture and values. There is nothing worse than an Afro whore, pardon the strong words but that is not who we are as Africans.

I have written a slightly longer post but I hope it has been worth your while to read and if I have been more poetic than I have been in other posts it is because I have been writing whilst under the influence – influence of neo-soul that is. Send me the ticket, lol. If you do not know what music that is then perhaps you should cease to be my cyber friend, I am just kidding. I must pen out my ink is running low.

Until next time, let us share let us grow.

‘Afro hair is the natural crown that God has given to the black woman, a crown that radiates of indescribable beauty worthy of admiration’ - @Africanindiaspo