Since being invited to write on the Lies We Are Told, I have been pondering for about a good week and half of what lie I have heard coming up as a Black woman. The one that popped into mind was that as an educated and successful Black woman with many accomplishments and even more to yet be fulfilled, most in our circle except us to date a man that is also very well educated, has just as many degrees, and just as many accomplishments.
If we come up with the man from the streets, but that has his stuff together, they don’t want us with him because he is a “thug,” the “bad boy.” But men from the streets can just be just as educated, yet they probably didn’t go to a four-year university, and probably only taken a few classes at the local community college or graduated from a 1-2 year program at a Trade School with his Associates Degree, but who can say that he isn’t just as educated and will treat his woman with the respect she deserves. At the end of the day, it is how a woman is treated and the happiness that she feels when she is with that man.
We can choose to have a Hill Harper, an elite and handsome Harvard graduate who is scared of commitment, or we can have a Tyrese, the pretty boy from Watts who just married his soul mate and isn’t afraid of commitment. Which one do you choose ladies? Let’s stop the lie of the status quo when it comes to who we must date based on what we have accomplished and what we have, and that doesn’t mean you have to settle either.