I want to thank all of you for your interest in this
ongoing discussion regard Prof. Ralph Richard Banks' book. I think it's a very important issue from a number of angles and for a number of reasons, that really deserves the time and attention to address.
So, let's continue with a more detailed response to a longtime reader and commenter of the O-Files, one Ms. Deery. Now, before I begin, please allow me to briefly layout her position:
She is largely in agreement with Prof. Banks - that highly educated Black Women, should seek out relationships/marriages with non-Black Men, on the grounds Banks has laidout in his book and elsewhere online. Though she has never specifically mentioned a particular religious faith, by her previous comments and statements here at the O-Files, she seems to be a proponent of the "equally yoked" bullshit argument, and has said as much in previous exchanges I've had with her in the past. In and of itself, I don't have too much of a problem with these views; they are easily dealt with alright.
But what I DO have an enormous problem with when it comes not just to Deery herself, but indeed Sistas like Deery, is that she/they are horrible listeners - and I think they are for the very reasons so many of them have such a hard time finding mates, regardless of color (and here I have to say for the record, that, last time I checked, Deery was married).
For example, please share with me the following exchange between Deery and myself:
OBSIDIAN: @deery:
Hi deery long time no hear! How are you? Now because i know you hav e a tendency to go off on tangents please allow me to ask you:
Have you listened to the interview banks did w/peterson per my original post? Its widely available on itunes.
And
Did you see what i said about singapore? If so how does that jibe w/what you and banks are talking about above? What evidence can you provide that such a scheme will fare better that singapore? Please explain?
Thanks!
O.
DEERY: I've read your comments regarding Singapore. It is interesting, but hardly the reality in the U.S. In fact, the more education a woman has, the more likely she is to get married, and even more importantly, stay married. This is true for both black women and white women. I don't know what the case is in the Asian countries, or Singapore specifically, but I know the smartest are encouraged to get together and breed.
I think more black men should get an education, not because it would make them better romantic partners, but better able to navigate society in general. Once upon a time we thought education was an objective good. Now we seem more concerned over whether it can get a guy some booty or not, and blaming women because a guy is too lay to get educated for himself, and his own concerns.
OBSIDIAN: @deery:
I see your penchant for not following instructions is alive and well! Gotta give you at least some credit though: you did answer the second question but neglected to respond to the first. Lets try this again:
Deery have you listened to the interview prof ralph richard banks did w/rev jesse lee peterson on the latters radio show? If your answer is no you cant really participate in this discussion because my points wrt singapore directly relate to points raised in the aforementioned interview and made by banks himself. Yes i fully intend to show both you and him where youre both all wet.
So...you were saying?
O.
This exchange took place in the previous week. Deery hasn't responded since.
Now,
of course she hasn't taken the time out to listen to the interview Banks did with Peterson,
just like another Sista here at the O-Files refused neglected to do. In fact, please note that even when she does address, however weakly, my comments regarding Singapore, just how piss poor they are(!) - for one thing, I didn't say a mumbling word about "the Asian countries" - I was talking about a specific country,
SINGAPORE, and I was doing so for a specific reason, which I should like to make clear over the course of the next few posts in this series. Deery, and I've found, Sistas of a certain cohort,
tend to have a very bad habit of being very poor listeners, and this is due not because they're dumb or just don't understand what's going on - by definition they're quite smart - it's because they have already made up their minds on the issues at hand, and are determined to "straighten out" "lesser" Brothas like myself
(please note the continual ad hominem attacks launched by Malia against me; this is a very, very important aspect as to WHY so many Black marriages/relationships fail, regardless as to the Brotha's educational/income level. More on this soon - stay tuned...)
Now, here's the thing: if Deery had taken the time out to actually listen to the interview, she would have found out that even Banks himself has said that HALF OF ALL BLACK MARRIAGES END IN DIVORCE - and do so at considerably higher rates than Whites. Since we know that most working class folk, regardless of color, don't do much marrying these days, we can reliably assume that said marriages breaking up in Black America are taking place largely among the Buppie set - so, what Deery said above about "the more education a woman has, the more likely she is to get married, and even more importantly, stay married. This is true for both black women and white women", is a bunch of bunk.
Indeed, the whole point and reason as to why I mentioned Singapore, was to prove my previous premise: that extended years of schooling and career building for the Female, is inversely correlated to marriage and childbirthing/rearing. How do I know? Again, let's look at Singapore...
For those who don't know, if there's one country on the planet that has actually had, as a matter of grave national importance and public policy, what became known as
The Great Marriage Debate, it's Singapore. This is a country that has taken matchmaking very, very seriously - and is often cited by the HBD crowd as a model to be envied and emulated. I'll have a goodly bit to say about all that in due course. But for now, let us stick with what Singapore called the
Social Development Network.
On the evening of Aug 14, 1983, Singapore's Prime Minister,
Lee Kuan Yew, made an a nationally televised address; this is what he said:
"On the night of 14 August 1983, I dropped a bombshell in my annual National Day Rally address. Live on both our television channels, with maximum viewership, I said it was stupid for our graduate men to choose less-educated and less-intelligent wives if they wanted their children to do as well as they had done. . . . It had taken me some time to see the obvious, that talent is a country’s most precious asset. . . .
The implications were grave. Our best women were not reproducing themselves because men who were their education equals did not want to marry them. . . .
This lopsided marriage and procreation pattern could not be allowed to remain unmentioned and unchecked. . . .
I quoted studies of identical twins done in Minnesota in the 1980s which showed that these twins were similar in so many respects. Although they had been brought up separately and in different countries, about 80 percent of their vocabulary, IQ, habits, likes and dislikes in food and friends, and other character and personality traits were identical."
That's right, Deery - Singapore's been there and done that with regard to what you, Banks and others are saying here -
and it failed badly. In fact,
the running joke in Singapore was that the
Social Development Unit or SDU, was really an acronym for
"Single, Desperate and Ugly" -
sound familiar?
After pouring millions of dollars into getting its Singapore Spinsters married off and popping out babies, at present, with a total national population of upwards of six million people, only about 30,000 marriages have been created by the then-SDU (currently SDN) over the past roughly 30 years. Now, as Malia was so nice to point out, no one's gonna accuse me of being a math whiz. But I somehow, I don't think 30,000 doesn't stack up so well against 6 million - it's not even 20% - and that's not including the reproduction rate, which remains, to this day, well below replacement, especially among the Singapore Spinster set.
So, you see Deery, you, and Banks, and the so-called
BWE set,
are all wet when it comes to your notions of a Great White Hope coming in to save the day, because the very same forces that were/are at work in the Singapore example are at work here -
and then some. Please don't make me have to run out an actual listing for you as to why that is...and keep in mind,
that those spinsters in Singapore had the full support of the state behind them, in ways that I'll layout in an upcoming post.
The Singapore example proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I've been saying all along - that in the end, the personal life choices the Sistas Banks talks about in his book, contained within them real tradeoffs and consequences when it came to the dating and mating areas of life - and it wasn't quite for the reasons Banks, you and the BWE mob would like to think.
You know Deery, and I say this with all due respect, but you really, truly grate on my nerves - not only because you refuse to hear out an argument that is counter to your own, but also because of your tendency to look down your nose at Brothas who, for a multitude of reasons, didn't go on to university. For you, going to college=smart, and not going to college=not so smart, when this "truth" has been refuted so many times before it gets downright ridiculous recounting all of the ways. You are of the view that such Brothas (those who are not degreed) are essentially damaged goods, and as such are to be avoided. So wedded are you to your own notions of ideology and cant, that you simply refuse to hear out anything to the contrary - this explains why you refused to read Thomas Sowell, or why you refused to listen to the Banks interview. And this is why so many Sistas like you are such a turnoff, not just to non-degreed Brothas, but to the degreed Brothas as well (something tells me that the same thing is among the same reasons why Spinsters be Spinsters in Singapore, too). Simply put, most guys don't want to spend any length of time around Women who, because they have a degree and make a bit of money, can't tell them anything. Moreover, I am deeply insulted when you say the things you do about non-degreed Brothas, because I know scores of them who have done very well for themselves, including having beautiful homes and wives.
I could just about take your spinning and haughtiness if you could at least follow some simple instructions; I am not averse in the least to disagreement; indeed, I welcome it. But when you prove time and again your unwillingness to engage a debate honestly, it just winds up pissing me off.
Try again, Deery - and this time, please do as I ask?
Now adjourn your asses...
The Obsidian
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