Murder the Messenger–The GAT-DL Blacklash of NWNW

 Rosie S I just finished reading that article. Wow!! Ok this Nytimes article plus its comments NEEDS to be a BBW post. Oh and don't forget the attached chart showing the rise of OOW rates. Black women's rates are so high! This needs to be thrust in the face of every one of the GAT-DL crew. 

 keimiasmoon  Rosie S To be honest, it's better to serve as a warning for sensible persons who wish to avoid the problem all together. I don't count the GAT-DL in this regard because these people are the CHAMPIONS of dysfunction. And they can't hear you with their heads thrust purposely in a hole in the ground. There's no reasoning with them. :/

They're pretty much lost causes.

 keimiasmoon  Rosie S I'm working on it for a feature on Monday.

 Christelyn   Rosie S I look forward to it!

 Rosie S

 Thanks, Rosie, for posting that article.  While it certainly illuminates the general list of problems associated with OOW births, what it doesn't do is tell us WHY.

Why, in an age of virtually free and convenient birth control, do women persist in having children with men to whom they are not married?  You can boink Ray-Ray until he's ready to move on to his next victim without becoming pregnant.  Why saddle yourself with an 18-year, 24/7 obligation?

Why, after Ray-Ray abandons you with a child to raise alone, would a woman have another child with Pookie, who will also leave her and their child to shift for themsleves?  Isn't one child to raise alone enough?

Children cost more than a crack habit.  Why have them when you can't afford them and doom yourself and your children to almost certain poverty?  Why burden your family with their care and feeding when the guilty parties have no interest whatsoever in making a contribution to their upbringing?  What did you "think" would happen?

I'll never understand it.

 MixedUpInVegas  Cycle, reward and ignorance. Some actually think this is what they are supposed to do. I met a young hispanic woman who asked me why don't I have kids. I told her I was too young, not in a relationship and not married. She didn't respond.  Many think this is what they are supposed to be doing. They are blind and 'ignant (slang mine).

 MixedUpInVegas Because there are women who believe that they can CHANGE Ray-Ray.

Let me leave that there to sink in. Or sit and fester.

I'm still in the middle of reading the article and I'm at the point where... lemme just cut and paste:

"Ms. Schairer has trouble explaining, even to herself, why she stayed so long with a man who she said earned little, berated her often and did no parenting. They lived with family (his and hers) and worked off and on while she hoped things would change. “I wanted him to love me,” she said. She was 25 when the breakup made it official: she was raising three children on her own. "

I watched the video, took one look at the kids and thought 'Oh, no, goshdarnit, she done hooked up with a Ray-Ray.'

 MixedUpInVegas  Rosie S "Why, in an age of virtually free and convenient birth control, do women persist in having children with men to whom they are not married?"

I'm with you on this one but I'll take it further and say "why do women and men persist".  When they celebrated the 50 year anniversary of The Pill, several newspapers marked it's passing.  The LA Times had a great article and I'll take a quote from it:

"'The thought of out-of-wedlock pregnancy struck terror in women in midcentury America,' said Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard University who has studied the pill's effect on professional women. 'The proper course of courtship was to go steady, become pinned, then engaged.'" 

Her implication is that The Pill changed that dynamic but what she didn't address is why people stopped using any form of birth control or even protection (in the face of the dreaded STDs).

I asked a group of teens (I was working on a project) if they knew about birth control.  They said yeah, it's old hat, blah, blah, etc.  When I asked if they knew about STDs, they said, "We don't have to worry about that.  Those are old diseases.  We don't get those anymore."  Um, what? 

 Karla  MixedUpInVegas  Rosie S 

http://i45.tinypic.com/s1ovuo.jpg

 Karla I'm more worried about AIDS and STIs than kids personally. I don't understand. That is reason enough not to be getting it raw. 

 Karla  MixedUpInVegas  Rosie S 

' ...When I asked if they knew about STDs, they said, "We don't have to worry about that.  Those are old diseases.  We don't get those anymore."  Um, what? '

http://goo.gl/rhvgl

http://goo.gl/qnm8u

 Toni_M  Karla  MixedUpInVegas  Rosie S 

 Toni_M  I feel just like that Pochie gif.  -.-

 R. Kamaria Exactly!

 JessNYC There may have been a monkey wrench, but it wasn't thrown at black women. Remember: For many, the single black mother is a norm to the point of blasé (Notice the "Teen Mom" show only focuses on white teen mothers?) It's not of great concern to the greater American society.

On the other hand, black men abandoning their offspring by non-black/white women is something you're hearing more and more about. If it becomes a common place stigma that black men will abandon their children regardless of the race of the mother, I don't see that negatively impacting black women specifically.

Though I imagine this stigma would be the motivation for the BC "suddenly" deciding to care about the OOW rate.

 Rosie S  Toni_M Thanks for bringing your POV to my comment as I initially didn't think "see" that. I took this as a warning to white woman to let the BC keep this dysfunction to themselves. While I do notice that 16 and Pregnant focused and continues to focus on white teens (and note how often their mothers had children OOW as well) I doubt that the programs target demographic is perusing the Times and analyzing this article as well. But as you ladies mentioned, this is serving to highlight the same struggles that BW go through with DBR BM.

Toni_MJessNYC

This reminds me of an interesting "encounter" I had with a white woman at Target a couple weeks ago. I was standing in a check-out line at Target. In front of me was a white woman with who I assume to be her two biracial daughters. I smiled at the little girls and kept unloading my trucks. The minute the woman saw me, she put her left hand in her pocket. Now, this might have been a strange coincidence. But, throughout the entire transaction her left hand was in her pocket, which I thought was strange.  I automatically knew where this was going. So, I stared at her hand to see if she was going to pull it out. LOL. I mean, the woman was swiping her credit card through the scanner and she was going through all types of acrobatics to not remove her hand for her pocket. Finally, I guess she realize the angle was uncomfortable. So, she pulled out her hand and voilà no wedding ring (which I anticipated given the physical theatrics she was going through). Here was this attractive, tall, thin well put together upper middle-class white woman who did not want me to see her without her wedding ring. Now, this is all speculation, but I'm a very discerning person with off the radar good instincts who picks up on anomalous behavior: I suspect she didn't want me to see that she was unmarried with two biracial kids. I'm going to speculate even further and assume that she was divorced, 'cause she didn't give me the vibe of someone who would just have kids without a marital commitment. But, she definitely didn't want me, a black woman, to see that she had fallen prey to what many black women encounter with black men.

Anyway, what I've gathered about [some] of these ww/bm relationships is that, in many instances, the bm show their true colors and end up dogging these women just like they would bw. (By the way, I don't think that all bm in IR relationships behave this way, nor that all black men are pathological. I'm specifically referring to pathological men who seek out white women and trash black women.) And the white women who think these men worship them because of some intrinsic quality they posses over black women would be wise if they learned quickly that no one can cure pathological behaviors, even the coveted wm.

I live in a town where all you see are bm/wm couplings. And I cannot tell you how many times I've seen single, white women riding the bus with their oow biracial child looking just as washed up as the struggling, since black mother. It's sad. All for some pathological, ratchet black peen. I don't even envy them.

 Toni_M  JessNYC  Correction. In the first sentence of my last paragraph, I meant to write: "I live in a town where all you see are bm/ww couplings."

 Cocuya  Toni_M  JessNYC 

I mentioned in another thread, how my friend works for social service in a heavily black populated area. 90% of the time, any case involving a black mixed/biracial child, the father is usually a BM. She's also talked about how in the few years she's worked in SS, there has been a steadily increasing number of WW primariy, but other non-BW also, who are relinquishing their parental rights and giving custody of their biracial kids to the states.

Of the cases she and her colleagues have worked on regarding this issues, 98% of them involve black mixed/biracial kids.

 Cocuya "And I cannot tell you how many times I've seen single, white women riding the bus with their oow biracial child looking just as washed up as the struggling, since black mother."

This sounds just like the situation with my brother's stepson.  When my brother remarried, he married a woman with two sons.  The older son is in his 20's and "dating" a WW with whom he's had 4 little girls (very close in age).  My brother's wife even told this WW at one point her son had no intentions of marrying her and she should stop having babies with him.  Last I heard, SIL's son was in jail and the girlfriend was stripping to support herself and the little girls.  My brother says sometimes when he and his wife pick up the little girls, they are unclean and unkempt.  Just a sad situation. 

 Cocuya That is so common here in the Detroit area. Lots of single WW with biracial kids. Makes no difference. These dudes are obviously narcissists. They just want little replicas of themselves so they go off spreading their seeds. Losers. 

 JessNYC Making a video now about BM  and their rates of fatherlessness with mixed kids. This is great. I just met a ww who divorced her bm husband after two years of marriage. She is back at home with her parents..

 JessNYC I saw this article this morning. The race of the children's father was the big elephant in the room, although I think the reporter did that on purpose in a way. A number of the NYT comments mentioned this, and made the connection between the 70-80% OOW rate in the black community and this WW's predicament.

 JessNYC I am glad they chose to compare two white women. Their audience is mostly white.

 MySmile I hope Chris sees this. Honestly, everytime people clutch their pearls about NWNW, I see things like this and want to put the message on every billboard in America. 

She is trying to put on a brave face while clearly crying out for help, especially from the child's father. And then she has a bunch of sorry persons instruct her that suffering in silence and asking help from NO ONE is some how the Christian thing to do.

How warped can you get? 

This is what you often don't hear about from people who run around spreading anti-NWNW nonsense. Where are there answers for women and girls like this? Who clearly want help and are not really interested in being single mothers with no love or support? Where is their answer to people who shame these women out of admitting weakness and unhappiness?

Silence in this regard is telling. And the denial and blatant lack of concern is disgusting.

 MySmile *their

 Toni_M Exactly!! I think the girl has a boyfriend now (I don't know if he's a good one or not) but he can not support 2 or 3 children at his age.. I think she has become pregnant from every serious boyfriend she has had so far. Her friend that commented that "that's part of being a woman" really bothered me. Part of being a woman is not dealing with multiple sorry babies daddies. I really don't know what she can do at this point. I know plenty of (black) women from high school who are currently going through (or have gone through) pregnancies alone. It really upsets me. It's clear that the girl in the example comes from a dysfunctional environment (I knew her in high school and could tell then, she was always taking myspace and facebook pictures 75% naked and she was known as an "easy" girl). This is just another example of a vicious cycle continuing.

 MySmile Tragic.Tragic.Tragic. And the responses are telling. "That's part of being a woman"? Really? These are the same people posting "take care of your child" messages on father's day. :-/ I don't believe in bashing single/out-of-wedlock mothers. Neither is marriage a guarantee that you'll raise a "perfect" family. But a single black woman's struggles can serve as an example to others. I think it's easy to misconstrue the NWNW message as one that is about bashing single mothers. And that clearly isn't the case. People are missing the point. And, I hope that women reading this will understand.

My mother was a single mother. I do not bash her, condemn her, or fault her for her choices; she was young and naive. I was very fortunate to have a support system of other relatives who stepped in to provide for me.  So my life doesn't reflect the typical path of children born to single parents. As a child I was a quiet observer, though. I did the "math" in my head and realized that was a stigma I didn't want to carry for the rest of my life because it would not benefit me. And I pledged to myself that I WOULD NOT get pregnant as a single woman. For me, that meant several things: 1)  postponing sex as long as possible (until I was a full-fledged adult); 2) being very selective about the men I dated (I've had very few boyfriends and the few of them that I had all got vetted; they knew they would have to marry me if I got pregnant; yes, they did); 3) at times, going through VERY LONG (I would venture to say miraculous, lol) periods of abstinence.

I'm in my mid-thirties, still  unmarried and getting ready to embark on another (unwanted, but necessary) stint of abstinence until my life circumstances change (i.e. I relocate to a more diverse area after I finish my PhD) because, well, there are no eligible men in my area. But I've avoided the drama that is reflected in the above-mentioned woman's FB post. I can barely manage myself; I can't even begin to imagine have to take care of a child as a single woman.

 Cocuya Exactly. I'm not trying to shame anyone either. I have a sister who has two oow children....That same sister was given birth to by my mother out of wedlock. I'm just saying that at some point, people need to start speaking out against this so bw won't keep making the same mistakes!!

 MySmile Oh I see it--this deserves a separate post, and it's gonna get one.

 Christelyn   MySmile Please and thank you!

MySmile "thats a part of being a woman"

As Robin would say, "Holy Eff, Batman!"  These women are delusional and completely indoctrinated.  It certainly isn't/wasn't part of my womanhood and I can name 50 BW off the top of my head who can say the same. 

 Karla  MySmile Well, if that's part of being a woman, we must not be women then, rofl 

Blackberry

" If there are women who have no issue with the OOW rate then perhaps they shouldn't listen to a woman who founded NWNW!"

This is a belief  because you are a logical human being that understands that just because you yell at someone for talking about things you don't want to discuss does NOT mean that they and the topic are going to go away.

Too often these people think that ignoring/not talking about an issue means there is none, so they want to harass others into silence.

It's why these persons stalk these boards, drooling in the dark, thinking of ways to obstruct and shut this place down: The mere existence of these spaces chaps their hide, and they don't have the good sense to cope by staying in other spaces with like-minded persons.

You don't see me on sites talking about how much they hate black women trying to change the minds of commenters. There's nothing for me there, and I have better things to do then waste my time on such persons.