I Need You to Survive

There is an extremely powerful essay in Soul on Ice entitled “To All Black Women from All Black Men”. Everyone needs to read it. In this essay Eldridge Cleaver addresses the scarred relationship between black men and black women. He apologizes for the COLLECTIVE BLACK MAN not protecting, loving, and covering the COLLECTIVE BLACK WOMAN. He asks for us to come together and build a new community built on love and trust. He talks about the historical pain, abuse, and emasculation of the black man at the hands of white men which began during slavery and continues today. He links that historical and contemporary pain, abuse, and emasculation to the way black men relate to black women and how this has created relational dysfunction. The apology (a unique love letter) speaks to me because it is a black man being vulnerable to the whole of black women in an honest way. He apologizes and offers an olive branch.

Can we go back there to Eldridge Cleavers’ words and begin to build a new community on the ruins of our lost love and distrust? Can we cover the dust and ashes and build new monuments as a testament to our now unflenching committment to one another? Can we relearn how to love and trust and give and take? Can we somehow put to death the "old black man", uncertain and hypersexual and resurrect the new black man, devoted and resolute? Can we somehow put to death the "old black woman", afraid and dejected and resurrect the new black woman, confident and trusting? For these "old" beings are just shadows of who we really are. The are the lies that we bought into.

Black men, the whole of black women desire to say “men are not pigs or dogs” but reality shows us something different. I want to be in a healthy relationship with a man who loves me and who will not cheat on me. All women want that. Can you step up to the plate and do it for us? We need to come together and build a new community built on love and trust.