Forthetimes

One of the most important things as an African-American mother that I believe I can teach my son is that the true measure of a man lies not in his sexual promiscuity or machoism but in the respect and love he shows for women. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this issue lately because  my son who’s in second grade told me the other day he wanted to go out on a date with a girl in his class. After I picked my self up off the floor because what does an 8 year old know about dating, I realized this was a great opportunity to explore his thoughts about women. My son wanted to know whether he should buy her flowers or make her a card or what he could do to impress her. I didn’t have the heart to tell him at 8 that he probably wouldn’t be going out on a date with anyone, but I was impressed with the value he saw in women and his realization that they were to be respected and treated like royalty.

 It got me to thinking about how over time the relationship between men and women becomes so filled with animosity. In fact, the animosity has become so great that it has spilled over into pop culture, particularly rap music, with devastating effect. It saddens me to think that how such an innovative form of music has been used to degrade the women in our community and how women are referred to with expletives when women form the essence of our community. You simply can’t build up a community when you tear the caregivers down. I know there is so much anger that our youth experiences and a lot of the vile expletives are just misdirected anger. Even so, it’s unacceptable and I think we should teach our sons and the other men in our communities who degrade women that women are to be treasured, respected and valued and that they are kings because they live with, are raised by or have sisters who are queens!

In the last two weeks, I’ve had the privilege of speaking at several inner-city middle schools with a group of people I feel very passionate about and invested in: our youth. Afterwards, I had two young men, who also lost brothers to violence come up to me afterwards to say how deeply they felt inspired by the speech and could relate to losing a brother. One even asked for a hug and joked after I gave him a hug that this was the first hug he had received in years. Although he joked about the hug, I realized he, like a lot of our youth, are in dire need of having someone show them affection. I think many of us forget how important it is to hug and show love to our youth, particularly since society often casts them as the lost generation that is morally repugnant.