Kenton’s Corner: Don’t Believe the Hype: Black Men Love Our Queens

Kenton Gibbs | Staff Writer

There are so many lies uttered about black people as individuals it becomes hard to understand what the truth is. For example, there are the ideas that there are more black men in prison than college. That is not true. According to Politifact, “the latest federal figures we found show 75,000 black males in [the college] age group who were in prison in 2013 and in the range of 690,000 to 779,000 who were in college.” Another example is the myth that black women are uneducated, but on the contrary, by race and gender black women have the highest percentage of current college enrollment.

However, the propaganda being levied against us may be the most intense in the area of family relations. Outliers are used and pushed as the norm which simply is not an accurate depiction of what the data says in various areas of family life. An example of this is the use of Mike Colter and his wife being juxtaposed with his role as the bulletproof black hero, Luke Cage. The same is done with almost every high profile black man with a wife of a different race.

Then there are those few memes and videos that show D list black male celebrities slandering black women. Like the recent remarks of Trick Daddy saying via Instagram, “These Spanish and these white h**s getting very spiffy on y’all. They f**k around and learn how to fry chicken you h**s is useless.”

It’s constantly pushed that all black men share the deplorable and nonsensical hate for black women that he does. Well, I personally do not associate with any man who sees a woman’s entire purpose as “being spiffy” and knowing how to fry chicken. Furthermore, the facts show that this attitude towards black women is held by a slim minority of black men. The overwhelming majority of us love our queens. That truth is reaffirmed by statistics.

Kanye West said in the song Gold Digger, “So, stick by his side/ I know his dude’s balling but yea that’s nice/ And they gone keep calling and trying/ But you stay right girl/ But when you get on he leave yo ass for a white girl.”

It may have been life imitating art as he went on to do that exact same thing by marrying Kim Kardashian, who is of Armenian descent. However the stigma of successful black men ditching their black wives is simply false. According to research by Dr. Ivory Toldson and Dr. Bryant Marks, 83 percent of married black men who earned at least $100,000 annually got hitched to black women. That’s four out of every five.

The problem is that these types of conversations normally start from someone saying something outlandish. It’s hard to see the fact that black men still do love black women when the only time black love is spoken about it’s in context of a reaction to an ignorant and hate-filled rant from a black man. These voices may be the loudest but they aren’t representative of the group. There will always be Trick Daddys of the world who would say any and everything to demean, belittle and devalue black women. But idiots who make these baseless claims and their attitudes will always be outnumbered by black men who see black women as more than their sexual prowess and cooking abilities.