My Single Sistahs, I love you and truly feel your pain, however, you are not Michelle Obama, and you will probably not end up with Barack ... or Denzel. If you want to find the right one, lose the high ideal and get your priorities in order.
I sympathize with Black women because it’s true that 71 percent of Black grad students are female and outnumber Black men in the general population 7 to 1. But maybe we’ve all heard the one about "successful Black women being unable to find suitable Black mates", well it's not about ineligible men. And if you are doing this by the numbers, ladies, then your outlook is bleak. But it’s not about the numbers—“successful” Black men made the same lame claim back in the day. It’s about choices and how we measure success. Black women sometimes resent Black men because, with all the educated Black women, they seem to have choices in mates that we don’t. I promise you, quantity and quality are different. Please trust that it takes more than an education and a successful career to be wife or husband material. And women think if we wait long enough, we will find our own Denzel Washington. The problem is, there isn’t enough Denzel to go around. If we want to marry a Black man, it seems as if we have only a few choices:
Sugar Daddy
ACTS LIKE: Your Dad
SOUNDS LIKE: Barry White
YOU KNOW IT’S HIM: When he collapses dead on top of you
Daddy-O is frequently the old guy in the club wearing a Chess King suit and Stacy Adams on his feet. He’s married and has worked at the same factory for 20 years. His wifey’s breasts are getting long and veiny, but he’s got the money to pay for the attentions of young ladies. So he sneaks out after second shift, goes line-dancing at the club and builds himself a stable of tenderonis who eventually break him for rent, clothes, cars and food, and he breaks them off four whole minutes of lovin’—if he can get it up. Wifey finds a hotel receipt, they fight, make up and it starts all over again.
Pierre Delacroix
LOOKS LIKE: Kanye West
SOUNDS LIKE: He needs some bass in his voice
YOU KNOW IT’S HIM: He carries a croquet mallet everywhere he goes.
Pierre thinks he is better than everyone, including you. He has a nice ride, an Ivy League education and the personality of an English muffin: White and flat, with lots of nooks and crannies to hold the remnants of his Blackness, that inherent connection most of us have with people of color from all walks of life. He’s got an English accent even though he’s only even been to London, Ontario. Pierre is a trifle dandy and intentionally doesn’t exude any masculine qualities people might find offensive, leading people to call him “Dela-question-mark.” Secretly, he wishes he knew who he was.
D'militant
LOOKS LIKE: A mailroom clerk
SMELLS LIKE: Dirty khakis
YOU KNOW IT’S HIM: He’s driving your car.
D'militant is railing against The Man by refusing to work for The Man. Scratch that. He works—kinda works—the system, if you know what I mean. He works, but just hard enough to keep a gig but not hard enough so anyone would notice. He’s nice enough, if only he wanted something out of life. He goes to work (late) and becomes what people pejoratively call the “goldbrick-on-shift.” He sometimes does enough work to get by, sometimes not. Sometimes, he lacks drive and just settles into a mailroom gig, where he can nap between mail runs. He often just keeps a job long enough to collect unemployment. He works fast food sometimes—which is a laudable, honest vocation—and will sometime get promoted to key manager (aka Straw Boss). He’ll keep that key for 10 years or better until finally someone asks him why he doesn’t try to get promoted. “I prefer not to,” he says.
…and the list goes on, and it doesn’t get any better, right? So by looking for an eligible Black man toting a brand-name education or an advanced degree (if earning potential or whatever is to be our measure for eligibility) they are effectively chasing a minority within a minority because we think that most Black men are all out stealing hubcaps, sucking on neck-bones, chasing down white women or, as magical as Black men want to be, maybe all three at once. Eligible Black men, we think, can have their pick of educated Black women (assuming they even date Black women), as if merely having a job, an education and a pulse makes a woman “wife material.” While there may be a lot of women available to Black men, Some may not be sistahs you want to spend your life with. They are mostly variations on a few themes:
Dr. Donhavaman
LOOKS LIKE: She needs some sleep.
SOUNDS: Angry. At everyone.
YOU KNOW IT’S HER: She’ll tell you.
She has five undergraduate degrees, a Ph.D. and three cars, but can’t butter toast. She was so focused on being a successful Black woman that learning the finer points of the womanly art of wifery slipped from her agenda. She can do outpatient surgery, but doesn’t know what a dustpan is for. She can draw up a budget for the entire year but can’t get down in the bedroom to save her soul.
Poetess
SMELLS LIKE: Patchouli and Kools
EATS: Hummus. And other women.
WORKS: Ha! Draws a check on some kind of work-study/SSI scam
Poetess is usually a reformed wanton woman of some sort trying to convince you that she’s healed her life through the power of poetry. She spent half a semester in Creative Writing 090, and she quotes Hemingway, for Christ’s sake. She normally has a typical name like Faloojah but has taken to calling herself “Bush Queen” or some made-up African name she found in Ebony magazine. She writes poetry and reads it at every opportunity, these mildly lyrical rants. She’s so deep; she stopped wearing deodorant and decided that fellatio is “not the way of the goddess.” Good luck my Sistah!!!
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