What is the purpose?...?

The black man’s discourse has numerous, positive dimensions, but he also faces innumerable stereotypes and encounters various struggles during his tenure in this world. One struggle, in particular, that we as black men face, is the struggle presented through the battle between love and dominance; whether to embrace survival needs or the heart. Bell Hooks introduces it in this way, "black folks have felt conflicting tensions between survival needs and the demands of the heart." Hook’s usage of this struggle is the dominate reason for the formation of this website, and the source for the title of this project.

Where do we begin?...why don’t we start with how dominance so easily "fulfilled" love’s role. It is widely known that when slave masters learned that their slaves were using the same vernacular, they were separated in an attempt to gain and keep total control over their slaves. Leaving these types of situations emotionally and physically scarred our people, which left us without the much needed knowledge of love. This was not the only deteriorating factor of slavery, but it was an enormous contributor to our limited understanding of love. Some marriages were fixed, while other slaves were just used for breeding, and it did not matter who you felt you loved, whatever the master wanted, the master received. Tina Turner’s lyric, "what’s love got to do, got to do with it," is a perfect reference to show the black mindset during post slavery years.

As black men began to enter the work arena, they were confronted with the problem of being handicapped due to the color of their skin. Also, we did not see a path that would allow black men to accomplish and acquire things by staying true to their race, roots, and lifting their communities to new heights. Black men flew solo while adopting the dog eat dog/every man for himself rule in order to survive in the "work coliseum." On one hand, he was told to be loving, supportive, and to "get his brotha’s back," but on the other hand, he had to be cut throat, dominant, and ruthless in order to excel in "White America." His purpose for implementing survival strategies was not so he could coexist with the lions of Africa, not so he could endure the "cold summers" of Antarctica, not so he could survive during an onslaught of natural disasters, but he was implementing these survival skills to gain the approval of "White America" and flourish in the business world. You have heard of misplaced aggression; well let me raise the point of misplaced survival. Black men were ultimately forced to live a double life, so dominance became a central focus of our black men, infiltrated our communities, and affected every aspect of our lives.

Hooks writes, "Importantly, many of the survival strategies black people learned which enabled them to cope with life in a racist culture were not positive skills when applied to intimate interpersonal relationships." To summarize this quote from Bell Hooks, blacks brought work home and it became destructive to the family structure. Black men have a belief that the weak should be subordinate to the strong which stems from the cut throat attitude of business and the dominance that "White America" had (or is it has) over the black community, specifically black men. Dominance or Love? The fact that we as black people have applied the dog eat dog/every man for himself rule to the household, proves that we have showed an inability to live two lifestyles. A DOUBLE STANDARD...in our early childhoods we could not cope with trying to live two different ways, and this is manifested in our adulthood where it becomes a problem on a far grander scale. But why should we have to live two different ways…I mean, our “lighter skin brothers” don’t have to separate their lives into two different lifestyles. This subconscious, maybe conscious, assessment of life combined with the lack of loving knowledge caused the black man to display dominance in an unproductive, demeaning manner. He ultimately put himself above anything else in his life by saying, “Me First…I’m Gonna Get Mine”

Since dominance, control, and severance of love and feelings are associated with masculinity, black masculinity became the most important factor in the lives of black men. A passage from Frank Pitman’s book, Man Enough, reads, "The Great Passion in a man’s life may not be for women, or men or wealth or toys or fame, or even for his children, but for his masculinity, and at any point in his life he may be tempted to throw over the things for which he regularly lays down his life, for the sake of that masculinity." It is sad to think that black women, OUR QUEENS, have such a limited importance that it does not touch/reach the level of black masculinity. It is sad to think that our children are not as important as our masculinity. It is sad to think that our families and community do not compare to the plateau on which black masculinity resides. Hooks says, "...black males might lash out at women for no reason other than to exercise a male prerogative and to subdue independent spirits." This lashing out shows the level of importance that black masculinity holds over special, supposedly important, people in our lives. This is where abuse becomes the result of this double standard, the inability to live two lifestyles, and where the emergence of dominance as a central focus of the black male community is birthed. Yes, the male is the head of the household! Yes the man is naturally more dominant than his female counterpart, but this does not make physical and emotional abuse acceptable, permissible, or appropriate. We have come to a point where black men and abuse have become synonymous. We have to come to a point where we have to make a chose between love and dominance. And, aside from everything that has been mentioned there is still yet another factor...

The oppression from our white counterparts only reinforced our inability to love and our dominant nature. According to Leon Litwack, "Between 1890 and 1917, to enforce deference and submission to whites, some two to three black Southerners were hanged, burned at the stake, or quietly murdered every week." "White America" caused black men to suppress all of their hate, all of their frustrations, and this America openly castrated the black community. This turned black men in to powder kegs and filled them with aggression which put people we did have control over in a position that subjected them to the black man’s built up aggression. I am here to let the reader know that raising your hand to a woman does not make you a man; it makes you less of a man. But, this display of supremacy and power only fueled our inability to love and the acceptance of power through dominance and abuse. But, we have to unmask this problem and begin loving and rise from the shadows...