Post Traumatic Relationships

"It's hard when your lady don't believe what you say and what did in the past you gotta live with today!" Common; Rapper, Actor, Poet


I was asked by a young lady to write about my opinion of why black relationships fail so often. Long story short, we don't know how to treat each other. In fact, we were systematically taught how to mistreat each other. In the 60's there was a "No Man in the house" rule. A regulation that was formally applied to certain jurisdictions that denied poor families Welfare payments in the event that a man resided under same roof as them. Why would this ever be enacted? If you ask me, if you kill the head, the body will fall. The 60's were filled with what would be eventually known as the Civil Rights Movement. A movement in which black people, the disenfranchised and oppressed, were fighting for every right promised to us. To be treated as basic human beings. Barely 100 years removed from slavery, this was met with a lot of resistance. But what was our biggest weapon? Our unity. The accomplishments made to that point and beyond were products of good leaders and devoted followers. The family structure was of supreme importance. While both man and woman were both profoundly important in the movement and in their own personal households, men led. Men protected.  Men provided. All of which are traditionally the man's role. So like any other unified group, how do you dismantle it? You take down the leader. In the civil rights movement they killed most of the male leaders. From Martin and Malcolm, to Fred Hampton and Medgar Evers; you name the leader they killed HIM. The ones they couldn't kill they discredited, banished, and silenced; see: Huey P Newton, Minister Farrakhan. So it is my belief they planned successfully to do this with the black family. This "rule" was a big part of that plan. Under that rule they made poverty a bargaining chip. They made a woman's decision on whether or not to stay with her husband a business decision. Not to say no mother should've or would've ever left her husband but this rule made it a decision that had to be about more than love and structure. See evidence of the domino effect now on social media. How often is it discussed on social platforms, amongst black people, about how much a man should make. How much a man should pay for this and that. How much rent should a man require his woman to pay. All of this is a product of this rule. The questions come from a generation of kids who need guidance and they didn't get it. We're the first generation where the black family was not a staple, majority wise. My mom was born in the 60's. My grandma's generation is the last generation in my family that had long marriages across the board. Then you think about the crack epidemic of the 80's. How "Iran Contra" was a planned, signed, and executed attack against the black community. Against the inner cities. Against black families. Crack was IMPLANTED into our communities to destroy us from the inside out. To decimate morals and structure with addiction and incarceration. Leaving mothers to fend for themselves. Leaving kids with both parents addicted to fend for themselves. Incarcerating black men at genocide proportions with mandatory minimum sentences that rivaled football jersey numbers.This was the genesis of the reason "we don't know how to treat each other".

So that's the backstory. The effects would be many and what I compare that to is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Commonly diagnosed amongst returned war veterans. People who have been to battle, seen catastrophic tragedies then when it was time to return their bodies to normalcy, their minds never could. Being black in America you almost inherit PTSD. So we have generations of women who have seen their mothers raise them and their siblings alone. Seen black women be the least married, the most abused, the most neglected. Seen black men not take care of their families. Put vices ahead of responsibilities. Because there's no order. There's no leadership. There's no recourse. Because the domino effect of the no man in the house rule and drug addiction, alcohol addiction (because there's a liquor store on ever corner in black impoverished communities) is a group of people that no longer take care of each other. No longer prioritize unity and education. So there's so much anger. So much neglect. So much violence. So many catastrophic tragedies seen your whole life, on a daily basis, so when it's time to have a relationship what is your normalcy? There's an argument in many subjects of nature vs nurture, I typically lean towards nurture in most cases. In the case of black relationships or lack thereof it's definitely a matter of nurture. This is what we've seen. It's what we still see. And even though the No man in the house rule is officially repealed, it's still enacted. Ask any woman on welfare. Now it's just a matter of combined income. The new "no man in the house" rule is reality tv. Or tv in general. Television networks "program". So it's no coincidence that the biggest shows and most prevalent shows programmed for blacks 18-25 are reality shows centered completely around dysfunctional relationships. Whether it's love and hip-hop or Black ink which have both fall and spring seasons so they're almost always in season. Shows where the very requirement to be on the show is you have to be cheating or violent or the victim of one of those two. There's no coincidence that two biggest black female lead shows on ABC are black women who almost exclusively date white men. I have no issue with interracial dating I'm just painting the picture of how they are teaching us how to mistreat each other then reiterating that black men aren't good enough or won't treat black women good enough. It's social engineering. So seeing this constantly over and over. These shows being on network television during primetime slots also allow kids to be predisposed to these things at an early age. While their brain, their habits, their desires, and their morality is still forming. So if you see murder everyday, that effects you and desensitizes you uncontrollably, what do you think this does? If all you see at home and on tv is black people disrespecting each other and their relationship, cheating and being hyper sexual, hyper substance abusers, you're programming this demographic to see this as normal.

The third and final reason I see for our relationships failing so much is the lack of forgiveness and desire to work things out. Lack of understanding. All learned behavior though. Through entertainment and social media people form the beliefs on what the recourse should be for mistakes in a relationship. You ever do something wrong to your girl and she never let's it go? You ever laugh at another man's joke on the timeline and your boyfriend can't deal with it but he jokes all the time with women? We're just so conditioned to not forgive and to not allow people to make mistakes. On a broad scale but even more in relationships. A lot of people stay in bad relationships too long but said relationships, the ones with potential to be good, never get there because the two people can't get past the things they've already been through. Sometimes we can't get past the things our ex or last situation put us through and we carry that baggage, that paranoia, and that resentment into a new relationship and poison it from the beginning. So all of these things play into what I see is Post Traumatic Relationships. How do we fix it? The same way you help with a PTSD diagnosed soldier, you talk about it. You listen. You empathize. You compromise. You have to be determined to be the change. You have to be determine work together. You have to be selfless and consider what the other person has dealt with and is still dealing with in their life.



Just my thoughts