People, let’s get serious. Either you think there is a problem or you do not, PERIOD. If you think there is no problem, then you are NOT serious about helping Black women and girls, PERIOD, END OF STORY.

Damn straight (no pun intended). Because you’d better believe you’ll encounter as many Damaged Beyond Repair gay black folk as you will heterosexual. Want a real challenge? Try having a relationship with a gay black person burdened by both homosexual and racial self-hate. Add religiously-conflicted to that and you’d better just run!

gem2001 wrote: “…who was the bully? Gates or Crowley?”

Exactly! I am weary of black folk acting like respecting authority is an affront to our racial dignity. Have a conversation with some of these black police officers in DC and MD and ask them the demographical characteristics of their most combative and belligerent apprehensions. But racial profiling aside (and I don’t believe the Gates situation is a case of racial profiling, by the way), it’s also “acting stupidly” (to quote our President) to provoke someone with a gun. That’s just basic.

In a clash of egos, the onw with the badge and a gun will usually win. Which is why smart Black folks know to let the officer go on his merry way THEN light up the phones.

No, Gates was NOT right to follow a police officer an encroach on the officer’s personal space in anyway. THAT message needs to go out to Black folks everywhere. Every Black Mama needs to teach her child NOT to do what Gates did. Because TRUST that anyone other than Gates would have ended up missing a tooth.

Nobody is yelling and screaming about the Black mother in South Carolina who is being charged with TWO FELONIES because her son is 555 lbs. She may be a crappy parent, but in most cases, these parents get charged with misdemeanors.

But, I stand behind my selfishness. What do you think about this? What about a different perspective? For instance, I think young men should be selfish in a different way. Be selfish, in that you want to be connected to your children forever…and since you don’t ever want to be in a home AWAY from your children, you have to be careful. You can take the risk of impregnating a girl that you may not be with two years or six months from now. You can’t deposit children with every willing female. Because now, you’ll never be able to fully participate in their lives.

For young women, be a little more selfish. You’re better than to be someone’s sex on the side. Your standards are higher because you recognize that you have needs that you want to have met, and you realize that being overly free with your favors is a losing proposition.

Be so selfish, that if you can’t wait for marriage, you can walk away if he looks like his feelings are hurt because you believe in protection.

I guess I meant, perhaps we have to teach our kids to look out for number one in a positive way…not in a negative way. Kind of like, if you can’t really love and care for yourself…how can you love and care for someone else? I think perhaps what we’re seeing is a lack of true self-preservation. If I truly love me…I must learn to protect me in healthy ways.

Not every young man leaves a child on every doorstep. Some of these young guys have figured out that they don’t want to live this lifestyle. There’s a new statistic out that suggests that the increase in out of wedlock babies isn’t among younger girls and women,…but rather in women ages 25 – 35. There are still young women, going to college, getting educated, and not beginning their adult lives with children. I think some of them have made a decision not to live a certain lifestyle. They want to start their lives differently. I’m just thinking maybe that’s what we should encourage. Love yourself and maybe the person you eventually hook up with will be better off.

Thank you for pointing out the obvious…We cannot have it BOTH ways & down THE MIDDLE : )

Granted I was raised by parents to treat everyone fairly and as I would like to be treated and hold people accountable for their actions especially as related to how they treat me. Not raised to be disrespect , used abused or mistreated by anyone – that means I can not and do not disrespect myself by remaining silent or in situations or circumstances that are not in my best interest – regardless as to the situation or circumstance I find all this BC nonsense a waste of time.

It is not my job to save folks who do not want to be saved. Saving the world – has been done in every religious tradition known to humans over the course of time and humans have not learned a thing especially in the collective BC and is done routinely on 24 every week and is proven to be self destructive and thankless.

It is past time trying to fix what is broken and move on to what works. Thank you for the reminder that it is not me it is ‘them’ Kook aid swilling, self serving, self destructing folks that are out of order – they are just that into themselves that they are self destructive and toxic with every exposure to the craziness.

But what kind of boys do we raise in an environment where their gender is irrelevant?

Don’t these boys become the same weak men that we complain about?

Way back in the days, this was called “common sense.”

Now it has become “radical” to believe that in life, we are subject to the choices that we make: both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.