Obama said that too many young black men make “bad choices.”

“Growing up, I made quite a few myself,” Obama said. “Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.”

But, the president implored, “we’ve got no time for excuses.”

Too many young black men make bad choices. We’ve got no time for excuses.

Like I already wrote, the message is clear for those that are listening: There will be no new programs designed to help black men, black women, children, or black people in general; whatever future gains individual blacks will lay hold to, those gains will come from individual effort and achievement. President Obama has already said he is “not the President of Black America,” he is the President of the United States of America.

In the Morehouse speech Obama paid lip service to the usual platitudes about racism and discrimination, but he also tempered his acknowledgement of the harsh reality that America is not yet a completely fair and equal society with the admonishment that such harsh realities can no longer be used as an excuse for young black men to not succeed:“In today’s hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, with millions of young people from China and India and Brazil, many of whom started with a whole lot less than all of you did, all of them entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven’t earned,” he said. “Nobody cares how tough your upbringing was. Nobody cares if you suffered some discrimination.”

Nobody cares if you suffered discrimination.

Most poignantly, the President told the graduates not to shirk their family responsibilities. The overwhelming majority of black children will not grow up spending the majority of their youth in a married household. And being raised in a household by a single mother may actually be worse for boys than for girls. In the end, the only way to reverse the cycle of family disintegration and it’s negative effects on all family members is for more black men (and black women!) to be raised in two-parent households and for individual black people to excel on their own merits–and even the President of the United States of America has said as much.

Watch the entire speech below.

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Jamila Akil is a senior Editor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil

In a 2006 interview with Salon that started receiving major attention only a few weeks ago, Jeffries is quoted as agreeing that sex appeal is the cornerstone of his business. And, in keeping with the idea that sex appeal is what the Abercrombie brand is built on, Jeffries only wants those who are what he deems conventionally good-looking to model and buy the brand’s clothing. He explained the Abercrombie marketing strategy to Salon:

“That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that,”

Jeffries continued: “In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids…we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

While there is nothing wrong with a brand being exclusive and only marketing itself to a very niche market, Jeffrie’s words struck a chord because of how he said what he said. Abercrombie and Fitch does not stock extra-large or double extra-large sizes in it’s stores, which, in and of itself is nothing controversial. A&F is not the only brand to make clothing only for smaller sizes.

The problem is that Jeffries words make him sound like an asshole and they make his company sound snobbish. Even snobs don’t want to look like snobs to other people. And, considering the rising movement to put a stop to bullying and other tactics that leaves outsiders (especially those outsiders in high-school) depressed, lonely and in increased danger of committing suicide, Jeffries words make his sound as if he is a part of the problem and not a part of the solution.

Since late April when Business Insider published a story on A&F’s brand reputation–highlighting what Jeffries said in his Salon interview–and compared it to similar retailers that have begun to offer clothing in larger sizes, the company’s reputation has tanked.

Perhaps Jeffries should have keep his big mouth shut?

Doesn’t Ms. Washington look so purrrtty?

Dodai Stewart, of Jezebel, was wondering, only a few months ago, when would Ms. Washington finally get a cover:

Washington has been on the covers of Essence, Ebony and Women’s Health, which is great. But these are not the mainstream glossies that really confirm a celebrity has arrived. Washington was on a version of Elle’s Women in Hollywood issue, but as with Octavia Spencer, Washington’s cover was not on newsstands. Sarah Jessica Parker was awarded that honor.

With this cover, Ms. Washington is finally playing with the big boys (and girls), but did she squander a bit of her hard-earned new celebrity star power and cache with her role in Peeples, a Tyler Perry-produced flick which just flopped its opening weekend?
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Jamila Akil is a Senior Editor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil

India-Jewel, a writer over at xojane.com who just so happens to be a fashionable, globe-trotting black woman, has been chronicling her online dating journey in a writing series so good that she was able to snag a book deal. And, this makes me very happy indeed because 1) I like Ms. India-Jewel’s writing, and 2) I’m tired of hearing about promiscuous, drug-addled, rich white girls getting book deals to tell their tales of what it’s like being rich, drunk, and promiscuous when there are other talented writers whose works languish and never see the light of day at a major publishing house. So I guess you could say that I feel like Ms. India-Jewel getting a book deal is one of those times when a publisher gets it right, but I digress.

In a post titled “The Great Online Dating Debate: I’m still at it, plus I’ve got great “must-read” news!,” we hear about India-Jewels’ latest nuggets of hilarity from the dating battlefield. Something one of her dates, whom I’m guessing was a black man, said caught my eye. One this particular date, the guy was so negative that she dubbed him Mr. Anti-Everything.

At one point, Mr. Anti-Everything said he–and I quote and paraphrase at the same time–hates to “see beautiful Black women out with White men because White men are stealing all the Black women that Black men want.” And this came from a black man in freakin’ London, England. Aren’t black men in England dating out at like 3 times the rate of black women in England?

This same black man said along the lines of all black women having kids and that’s why he doesn’t want to date them, blah blah blah. Same old stereotype you’ve heard already (but apparently the White men are getting all the high-quality black women with no kids?–we may never know…).

After reading Ms. Jewel’s vignette we can all say that we now know what was only discussed in certain circles is becoming mainstream: More and more black women with options and sense are looking to get the best mate they can get–whatever that man’s race, color, or creed–and those who once felt entitled to the exclusive affections of black women are getting some healthy competition.
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Jamila Akil is a Senior Editor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil

Defiance is for you sci-fi junkies out there.

The cast of Defiance, from left to right: Datak Tarr and his wife Stahma Tarr; town sheriff Amanda Rosewater; Amanda’s sister, bar owner Kenya Rosewater; Nolan; Irisa; and, Rafe McCauley, owner of McCauley Mines.

In Defiance the year is 2046, three decades after seven alien races have come to Earth for a new beginning after their home worlds have been destroyed. The show is set in the town of Defiance, which used to be the city of St. Louis, Missouri. A human, Nolan (played by Grant Bowler) and his adopted daughter Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), wind up in the town of Defiance as they were attempting to make their way to Antarctica, which is now supposed to be a paradise. As Nolan and Irisa settle in, the town becomes increasingly unsettled, as one social climbing couple attempts to accumulate power, and the town encounters a steady stream of threats which could bring it to destruction.

Defiance airs Monday nights at 9/8c and Deadline is reporting that the show has been picked up for a second season.

Mad Men is the 60′s come to life.

Jon Hamm (the star of Mad Men) surrounded by the shows’ leading ladies

This is the sixth season of Mad Men and Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is still up to his old tricks–having sex with beautiful women other than his wife and being a successful creative director of an up-and-coming ad agency.

Teyonah Parris, who plays Draper’s secretary, Dawn Chambers, is the character I’ve got my eye on this season. It’s the sixties, which was a very turbulent time for civil rights in the United States. Basically, the only reason Dawn, a black woman, was hired in the first place was because Don’s colleague thought it would be funny to poke fun at the racism of a competitor ad agency–the end result being that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce had to hire a black person in order to cover up their own racism. Thus far this season the show has dealt with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and, in one of my favorite scenes so far, what it was like for single black women to find a date to a wedding in the 60′s.

Winter is coming and the battle for the iron throne still rages.

Tyrion Lannister (played by Peter Dinklage)

With three houses in open revolt against the throne, can the House Lannister (led by Lord Tywin Lannister, the Hand of the King and grandfather of the current King, Joffrey Baratheon) regain control over the realm and ensure his family’s continued legacy? Threats to the throne abound. The King in the North, Robb Stark, moves his armies closer and closer to the city of Westeros, in a bid to avenge his father’s murder at the hand of the Lannister’s. Robb’s half-brother, Jon Snow, has abandoned his post with the Night’s Watch, an order of men who swear to protect the North, in favor of joining the Wildings, a people who have been forced to live north of the wall after long ago having their lands taken.

Daenerys Targaryen, mother of dragons and the last of the Targaryen royal family, is gaining strength and resolve to take the iron throne upon which Joffrey sits. Will her resolve, the dedication of her army, constructed from freed slaves, and her fire-breathing dragons be enough to conquer Westeros?

Scandal is still scandalous.

Olivia Pope once said, “I want painful, difficult, devastating, life-changing, extraordinary love.” And this season she had been getting exactly what she asked for and then some. Olivia and the President are still going back and forth, despite having taken a break after President Grant discovered Olivia’s role in his election. While President Grant and Olivia were apart she briefly became involved with someone else, someone very close to the President, and Grant doesn’t yet know about Olivia’s dalliance. Mellie, the President’s wife, in a bid to save her marriage and bring her husband to his senses (and also, to hurt him because he hurt her) has exposed her husbands’ philandering to the American people on national television. Will President Grant be able to get re-elected now that the people know their President has cheated on his wife? Will Olivia be able to expose the mole before he thwarts the President’s re-election campaign? Now that the President has unambiguously declared his love and devotion to Olivia but at the same time he is running for re-election, what does this mean for their relationship?

What are you watching?
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Jamila Akil is a Senior Editor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil

In his coming out story, Collins admitted that he had dated women for years while he tried to figure out and accept his sexuality. He was even in a relationship with one athlete, ex-WNBA player Carolyn Moos, for 8 years, before finally calling off their engagement.

Actress  Gabourey Sidibe was questioned about her thoughts on Collins’ big reveal by Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, and she quipped, “Who hasn’t dated a gay dude?!?” Sidibe said that she caught one of her recent boyfriends trying on her heels, and even though he never admitted the truth about his sexuality to her, she said she put two and two together to figure out he way gay before finally ending the relationship. Luckily for Ms. Sidibe, she didn’t end up losing eight of her most fertile years dating the gay boyfriend.

“Who hasn’t dated a gay dude?”

While it’s definitely a weight off ones shoulders to finally be able to live your life openly if you are a gay or lesbian person, it can also be argued that there are benefits to heterosexual people too when society is accepting–if not exactly encouraging–of people who are gay, lesbian, or transgender: There might wind up being fewer straight people who find out their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend was actually a gay or lesbian person who was afraid to come out.
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Jamila Akil is a Senior Editor at Beyond Black and White. Chat with her on Twitter @jamilaakil

So lets suppose you see yourself celebrating Mother’s Day at some point in the future, how do you see yourself celebrating that day?

Do you imagine yourself sitting down to dinner in a nice restaurant, seated next to your husband, perhaps the in-laws, too, and your toddler to the left in a high seat?

Or, are you a single mother, sitting down to eat dinner in a chic eatery with a group of friends who are also single mothers?

Are you meeting your extended family for dinner at a relative’s house later, and you’ll show up at the front door with your husband and kids in tow?

If you never intend on having children, don’t worry–this little imagination exercise isn’t about you. It is about the millions of black women who want to be mothers one day. This is a chance for those women to make a conscious choice and decision about the circumstances under which they want to celebrate Mother’s Day in the future.

While you can’t plan everything, most of your life will not be an accident. Your life will be the steady accumulation of decisions that you make. And any of the above scenarios that I’ve described–or any scenario that you dream up–is almost certainly possible if you put your mind to making that scenario a reality and refuse to settle for less than what you imagine for yourself.

You deserve the best and so do your future children. Remember that.

Happy Mother’s Day, to all the current and future mothers.

Beyonce (left) and Jay-Z (right) with Blue Ivy (Image credit: People.com)

After seeing Blue’s hair, blogger Sandra Rose wrote “It’s a shame that Beyonce brought her daughter out in public with her nappy hair looking like Buckwheat. Bey doesn’t carry a brush in her purse for emergencies?”

Yes, a 15-month-old black baby was described as looking similar to Buckwheat because the child’s natural hair was doing what naturally curly baby hair does by forming a halo around the head.

This comment is from the same Sandra Rose who said Chris Brown was full of self hate after Brown wrote a series of tweets mocking Rose for her dark skin. So if Chris Brown is full of self-hate for mocking a dark-skinned woman, can we also say that a dark-skinned woman must also be full of self-hate if she dislikes the natural hair of black people so much that she would go as far as to mock a baby for having a head full of curls?

Sandra Rose in 2010:

Yesterday, Chris Brown threw open that window giving us a wider insight into his self hatred in a series of tweets attacking the part of me that he despises the most — my skin color.

Laugh if you want to, but you should know that this is how Chris Brown feels about an entire group of people with brown skin — not just one.

If you have beautiful brown skin, you should be offended by his “spook by the door” insults and the message he sends to his young fans that it is OK to disparage and ridicule people with darker skin hue than his.

I am in no way, shape, or form defending Chris Brown, I am only pointing out that mocking black people for their skin color is just as bad as mocking a brown child for having curly hair.

Pot, Kettle is on the phone for you, she wants to know how long before you get there.

Unfortunately, mocking black children for having curly hair that isn’t glued down with various hair care products in order to make said hair appear to resemble the hair of straight-haired child is nothing new.

When actress Angelina Jolie dared to take her daughter Zahara out in public with the same hairstyle as Blue Ivy, black female critics attacked Jolie for supposedly not combing her daughter’s hair.

The same harsh criticism about her hair was thrown at Gabby Douglas when she was competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Here Ms. Douglas was, flying through the air, flipping, running, and doing all sorts of maneuvers that I don’t even know the name of, and some black women found the time to criticize this athletes’ hair for not being in place.

On xojane.com a commenter named Tyne explained the negative reactions on Twitter to Ms. Douglas hair:

This might come as a shock to some, but this backlash doesn’t really have much to do with hair. That’s just a distraction. The idea that “activity leads to sweat which leads to sweated out hair” is not an uncommon notion. The conversation is all about this young woman’s hair and her amazing accomplishments are just about completely absent. That tells me many of those commenting don’t have anything else to offer in the way of commentary. You see, something phenomenal has just happened to this young woman, but it is not necessarily something that is common in our community — so we don’t have much to say about her incredible ability, or the intense training she had to have committed to in order to achieve such a feat, the sacrifices she had to have made. What we do know, though, is that “brown gel ain’t it.” We want to be a part of the conversation (thanks, Twitter, for making that totally possible), but this may be all that we have to add. Gabby’s hair is not the problem — closed minds/limited life experiences are.

This is the part where a writer would normally begin detailing the reasons why there are black women that think naturally curly hair is ugly, but I don’t have time for that sh*t today, and frankly, I don’t feel like making excuses for black women’s bad behavior right now. I’m just going to say this: If you are a black woman who has a problem with curly hair on black kids, you need to do better.
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Jamila Akil is a Senior Contributor at Beyond Black and White. Follow her on Twitter @jamilaakil

But never fear, David Richo, Ph.D., a psychologist with years of experience working to help his clients become more mature adults, has collected and abbreviated many of the nuggets of wisdom he acquired over the years and packaged these nuggets in book form to help you become the adult you want to be.

Some of us had idyllic childhoods, where we learned how to express our needs, wants, and desires in a constructive way. We learned how to self-soothe during trying times and we learned how to be resilient in the face of set backs. Not all of us learned these things during our youth. And those who did not learn these behaviors may find themselves struggling as adults, moving from one bad relationship to the next, doomed to repeat the traumas of our youth until we heal our old emotional wounds.

As the saying goes, what you fail to learn from you are doomed to repeat.

David Richo has written “How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological Integration” to be used as a self-help manual for adults who are trying to grow their psychological and spiritual selves to the age of their physical selves.

“How to Be an Adult” is meant to be digested slowly. Only by taking the time to work through the checklists and diagrams and to reflect on what is revealed about yourself is a person primed and apt to grow from what they will read.

As an example of a particularly helpful checklist from the book, Richo provides a checklist to gauge whether or not you have a healthy sense of boundaries in relationships, both intimate and otherwise.

How do you know that you have given up your boundaries in a relationship? Ask yourself: Are you unclear about your preferences? Do you not notice unhappiness since enduring is your concern? Are you acting our of compliance and compromise? Are you continuing to try to create intimacy with a narcissist? If the answer to these questions is “yes” then you have probably relinquished your right to your boundaries.

On the other hand, these are ways to know that you still have a strong sense of self in relationships: You have a personal standard that, albeit flexible, applies to everyone and you require others to accountable for their actions. You only do favors you freely choose to do. You decide how, to what extent, and how long you will remain committed to a relationship.

A funny, but also informative checklist compares and contrasts drama against true anger. While true feelings of anger alert us to when we are experiencing violations of our boundaries, drama is an avoidance of true feeling rather than a real expression of feelings. Drama is meant to mislead and to avoid the broaching of the real problem, an action that can lead to resolution of the underlying issues at stake. To love drama is to love negative excitement but to fear real confrontation and negotiation with those whom we have relationships. If you grew up in a household where people always yelled to get their point across but the same problems seem to bubble to the surface again and again, with no resolution in sight, you might have been raised in a household filled with drama.

Besides changing how we see ourselves, the other side of being an adult is learning to treat and respond to others. Richo, in a list of reflections, says that no one is loyal or truthful all the time. When we stop expecting other people to be perfect, when we stop expecting other people to heal our childhood wounds, when stop others to do for us what we can do for ourselves, we are on the path to adulthood.

“How to Be an Adult” is a quick read. It is a book that is meant to be picked up and put down as needed. None of us is ever done growing into our adulthood, and “How to Be an Adult” is a useful book for those who may need a guidepost on their path to true adult living and relating.

“Lean In” is a book written for the ambitious type of woman who wants to achieve career success but she may be unintentionally holding herself back with self-limiting beliefs and behaviors.

There is the public revolution that needs to take place in order to make the corporate ladder easier to climb for women–that public revolution includes the need for paid maternity leave and the ability to access and afford high-quality daycare for small children. There is also the internal revolution that needs to take place inside of some women–that internal revolution includes the need for women to stop holding themselves back, to stop being afraid of their own ambition, and to stop “leaving before they leave.”

“Leaving before you leave” describes when a woman begins holding herself back in her career in attempt to make sure that she leaves time in her life to have children, often a woman starts this leaving process years before she has had kids, and, according to Sandberg, sometimes a woman begins this self-restricting behavior pattern before she had even met a man whom she wants to have kids with. By taking themselves out the game in anticipation of having kids before kids are even a blip on the radar, women are making less likely that they will be promoted in the future. In other words, by the time a way is actually ready to have children, she could be at a higher pay grade and in a position with more flexibility, therefore making it less financially constraining and emotionally taxing to have children–if said woman had only not begun holding herself back years before.

But make no mistake, Sandberg is not declaring that women should care more about receiving accolades at work than at being happy at home and in your personal life. In a chapter titled ‘Make Your Partner a Real Partner,’ Sandberg details just how important making the right choice in who you choose as an intimate partner can be for your career.

Sandberg offers her sage advice about how to make sure that you don’t get the short end of the stick when it comes to household duties:

Even after finding the right–or gal–no one comes fully formed. I learned from my mother to be careful about role definition in the beginning of a relationship. Even though my mother did most of the household work, my father always vacuumed the floor after dinner. She never had to persuade him to do this chore; it was simply his job from day one. At the start of a romance it’s tempting for a woman to show a more classic “girlfriendy” side by volunteering to cook meals and take care of errands. And, suddenly, we’re back in 1955. If a relationship begins in an unequal place, it’s likely to get more unbalanced when and if children are added to the equation. Instead, use the beginning of a relationship to establish the division of labor…

And, lest you think that being less “girlfriendy” in the beginning of relationship will somehow stop you from finding love, Sandberg notes that the overwhelming vast majority of the women who make it to the C-Suite are married. Finding someone who loves you and supports your career will be the most important decision a smart, ambitious woman can make.

This is not a book for every woman, this is a book for those women who want to have it all–though Sandberg herself admits that doing it all is a myth. The reality is that we all have the same amount of time in a day. For some women, 24 hours is enough time to be married, raise kids, and have a full-time career. For other woman, 24 hours is only enough time to be a stay-at-home Mom and wife. This is not a book that attempts to pit women who work outside of the home for wages against women who work inside of the home for non-financial rewards. This is a book that tells women to go for the gold, if the gold is what they want. This is a book that says working inside of the home is so important that more men should be doing so. In one of her most famous quips, Sandberg has said “A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”