Let's Get Married

“I got a ‘Love Jones’, for your body and your skin tone, five minutes alone and I’m already on the bone, plus I love the fact you got a mind of your own, no need to shop around you got the good stuff at home” – Method Man; Rapper, Actor

I’m always in constant thought about what will help us get better? What’s the cure? Cure for what? Cure for the regression of Black America. Black Lives Matter is such a brilliant name to be out front of a movement to progress Black America to equality. Not supremacy. Equality. While I’m sure they have a full plate, I often wonder how effective Black Lives Matter could be with viable branches. I pose this question because contrary to popular belief, while not minimizing its catastrophic effects, cops killing unarmed black men isn’t our biggest problem. It’s not the murder weapon to our extermination. Our oppression. Or even our depression.

I don’t have all the answers but I have some of the dominoes. I think a lot of things have been systematically put in place to cripple Black America, but most of them come back to a fundamental war tactic, divide and conquer. What more effective divide than dividing us at home?

If you check the stats, black women are the least married demographic. Black married couples are the highest divorced demographic. If you check network television, there’s one black married woman on primetime. I know television is fictional, but art imitates life. As a 28 year old, I speak with a lot of people daily in this world of mass communication that we live, and the most disappointing part is how few of them want to get married. So many people have been hurt, maybe once, or they constantly see so many images and acts of betrayal that having a family has been removed from the “American Dream”. Scratch that, from the “{Black} American Dream”. Without going into his actual politics, this is one of, if not the number one, the most inspiring impressions President Obama and his lovely wife Michelle and kids left on me. That, THAT, should be apart of our dream.

This is why marriage is important in the black community, because what you practice at home is what you’ll consciously and unconsciously do once you leave your house. Unity was the number one weapon in the effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s not even close. No matter which group or leader you credit the most champion the most, be it Martin, Malcolm, Marcus, Fred, or other, their power came from the army of loyal followers behind them. An example for modern day times would be “The Beyhive”. Stay with me. I know everyone isn’t a die-hard Beyoncé fan, I am, that’s my aunt and Jay Z is my uncle who taught me everything my parents didn’t, but have you ever seen what happens to anyone on twitter that speaks ill of Beyoncé? Her dedicated militia of followers “get in formation” in the hundreds of thousands to defend her honor. While on an entirely different spectrum of sacrifice and importance, my point is, there’s strength in numbers. There’s strength in unity. There’s strength in unwavering support. There’s strength in love. Those are all the underlying proponents of marriage. We have to get back to getting married and staying married. A loving couple provides balance in a world of dysfunction. It provides balance of influence on a generation of kids that have more information, true and incorrect, at their disposal than ever before. Children have age requirements on a lot of things because they haven’t had enough experience or brain development to know how to reason in the real world. By never showing them HOW to love and that love is NEEDED in the household we leave their brains undeveloped even into their adult years. By not prioritizing marriage we leave a trail of single parent homes that have been proven to be a perpetuator of poverty. We have to get back to loving each other fully. Too many of us have lives that resemble love and hip-hop and not Uncle Phil and Aunt Viv.

On a personal level, separate from the social level, I think we were put here primarily to love. All of us. That’s the true happiness in life. Can you be happy and single? Yes. Can you be fulfilled and single? I don’t think so. So many different things happen in this life that nobody should have to go thru alone. Not even the good things. I don’t want all the money in the world. But I do want to make exceptional money to live a comfortable life with luxuries. The main luxury to me is time. Affording the time to do and see certain places and things… I don’t want to do that alone. I don’t think being rich is better than being in love mutually. I know people with millions that still long for companionship. If I became a billionaire and never found a wife to live for and die with I’d ultimately feel like I wasted time. Being the richest person shouldn’t be the goal for everyone. We have to change our priority. We have to change our future. We have to change our hearts. We have to change our division. We have to change our children.