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Dose of Relationships
Weekend Edition
October 25-26, 2008
The fractured nature of the Black family, coupled with the vastly oppositional life experiences growing between Black women and men, no doubt contributed to the horrible tragedy befalling Jennifer Hudson and her family.
While the details of the nightmare remain quite sketchy, it is clear that Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Hudson's mother and her brother were found shot dead in her Chicago home yesterday.
It seems that Ms. Hudson's 7 year-old nephew is missing as well. Current reports by the AP state that the violent dispute was domestic in nature and that one of the murder suspects is the stepfather of the nephew. Police reports note that in the stepfather's MySpace page, there was an overtone of braggadocio regarding his relationship to Ms. Hudson, her accomplishments and money. Further, this man had served hard time in prison for previous violent crimes.
So, what is a mega-watt talent like Jennifer Hudson doing all tangled up with these kinds of men and their incredibly damaging issues? Probably nothing unusual I am afraid.
I would point to the inevitable co-existence that many successful African-American women have with troubled male partners and relatives, as unfortunate remnants of strained and often conflicted relationships. Specifically, as African-American women find themselves increasingly more successful, statistics show that African-American male counterparts are not only lagging far behind the socio-economic achievements of their female counterparts, but in certain segments of the population, there are more of these men in prison than out on the streets.
This means that for every Black woman navigating Yale Law School, Mt. Sinai Hospital, top corporate law firms, The State House and the Oscars, she likely is related, in some way, to a Black man serving a prison sentence.
So what does this have to do with Jennifer Hudson? Well, to me, everything. It is actually entirely plausible that for the increasing numbers of well-to-do and well-educated African- American women finding success in the US, there is a real offset, a rolling back and a creeping problem brewing in that these achievements do not cross genders. Specifically, two separate and inharmonious cultures are emerging between Black men and women.
Jennifer Hudson's incredible success made her unusual among her family and peers. At this point in her career, she is off the Richter Scale regardless of her race. But, it is not her incredible fame and fortune that are an issue here, it is the overwhelming down trodden-ness and anger to which she became regularly exposed that forms the increasing juxtaposition of lives that crossed paths yesterday in her home.
What this means is that there is an imbalance in the African-American community that results in canceling out the progress of women due to the failure of the men to keep pace. So, while many popular Black women's periodicals blather on and on about the shortage of appropriate African-American men as husbands for the increasing numbers of successful African-American women, the problem is actually much deeper than that, as this tragedy illustrates.
Ultimately, there is a societal mismatch in the Black community between genders that can breed rage and violence in a way that is mind blowing and intractable. It played out yesterday in the very worst of ways.
