Over the past few months we’ve been discussing, in fits and starts, little by little, issues pertaining to Sexual Politics as they manifest and play themselves out in contemporary Black America, primarily through the eyes and perspective of “Tyrone”, the smart, solid, level-headed Blue Collar Brotha who’s made a decent life for himself, and who tends to be either a lesser-romantic option for better-heeled ladies, or an Invisible Man to them altogether. He is based on the little more than a page (out of more than 260 overall) written about him in actor-turned-Black-relationship-guru Hill Harper’s NYT and Essence bestselling book, “The Conversation”. I’ve decided to write using this literary device for a whole host of reasons, at least a few of which I intend to share with you all today.

So, let’s get right to it.

Since Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s (in)famous 1965 report/study “The Negro Family”, there have been literally scores of books written about Black mating patterns, practices and the like; for example, I have sitting in front of me tomes written by such well-heeled researchers as Stephanie Coontz, Charles Murray and Edin & Kafelas, just to name a paltry few, and they all seem to have a bent to them that goes something like this: the studies always seem to focus on the ladies’ side of things, and when the guys are discussed, they are usually ne’er do well types.

On the more “literary” side of things – here I’m talking about the spate of “Black relationship books” that have become all the rage over roughly the past decade and some change – Tyrone is all but absent, other than as a last-ditch option for ladies who’ve either taken the wrong turn on the onramp of love, or who’ve crashed-and-got-burned by the prototypical Alpha Guy that she couldn’t tame. In any event, it is extremely rare that you actually hear from Tyrone himself, in his own voice, obtaining on these matters. Here, the eggheads and “Black relationship experts” have something oddly in common: neither, for some very strange and, to my mind at least, fascinating reason, don’t see it to be terribly important to actually talk TO the Tyrones of the world, to get their take on things. For example, I’ve read somewhere over 50 books obtaining on these topics, and I know more, often in painstakingly exhaustive detail, about the mating habits and patterns of poor, middle and upper class White Men and Women; poor, middle and upper class Black Women; bullfrogs, African weaverbirds, and other fowl and fauna; and hunter-gather tribes in far-flung areas of the world, like the Yanomamo of the Amazon in South America(!), than I do about the same as it pertains to Tyrone.

Why is that?

Well, some would argue when it comes to the ostensible “Black relationship experts”, they’re only following the money trail – they discuss that which Black Women – the chief purchaser of their wares – want to read about, and Tyrone simply ain’t it, for the most part. Okay, fair enough, that’s the way it goes in a free market.

So, how does that explain the Egghead side of things? Where the BRE’s hands may be(?) tied, one would expect the Ivory Tower to have a bit more latitude on this score. After all, as I’ve pointed out above, they certainly seem to have the time, interest and money, to delve deeply into everything else; why not Tyrone?

After giving this a tremendous amount of thought over the years, I have personally come to the conclusion that the reason as to why there is scant academic interest in approaching these issues from the perspective of Tyrone is because of deeply held biases on the part of researchers. Nor is this anything particularly new to those who may be a bit familiar with how the social sciences sausage is made: researchers, being very much human, cannot help but to bring their biases to the table when it comes to such hot button issues as human mating in the various contexts in which I tend to discuss them – which is steeped in themes of Race, Class and Gender in unorthodox – some might even say, “blasphemous” – ways.

For example, please share with me, this lengthy quote from Hanna Rosin’s popular book, “The End of Men”, where she gets prominent researcher Kathryn Edin’s take on how working and lower middle class America has become a Matriarchy:

“The sociologist Kathryn Edin spent five years talking with mothers in the inner surburbs of Philadelphia. Many of these neighborhoods, she found, had turned into matriarchies, with women making all the decisions and dictating what the men should and should not do. “I think something feminists have missed”, Edin told me, “is how much power women have” when they’re not bound by marriage. The women, she explained, “make every important decision”-whether to have a baby, how to raise it, where to live. “It’s definitely ‘my way or the highway'”, she said. “Thirty years ago, cultural norms were such that the fathers might have said, ‘Great, catch me if you can.’ Now they are desperate to father, but they are pessimistic about whether they can meet her expectations. So they have the babies at nineteen or twenty, but they just don’t have the jobs to support them.”

There’s more:

“Over the years, researchers have proposed different theories to explain the erosion of marriage in the lower classes: the rise of welfare, the disappearance of work for men, or in the eyes of conservative critics like Charles Murray, plain old moral decay. But Edin thinks the most compelling theory is that marriage has disappeared because women are now more economically independent and thus are able to set the terms for marriage – and usually they set them too high for the men around them to reach. “I want that white-picket fence dream,”, one woman told Edin, and the men she knew just didn’t measure up, so she had become her own one-woman mother/father/nurturer/provider. Or, as Edin’s cowriter Maria Kefelas, puts it, “everyone watches Oprah”-or whatever the current Oprah equivalent is. “Everyone wants a big wedding, a soul mate, a best friend.” But among the men they know, they can’t find one.” (pp. 92-93)

So much for the notion that Blue Collar Guys in inner cities like Philly are all Archie Bunker Mini-Me’s, and so much for the idea that inner city cuties are such relationship Egalitarians…quite the opposite, in fact.

Rosin’s come in for a goodly bit of drubbing from all sides of the Sexual Politics aisle, which, as far as I am concerned, means that she’s hit the nail on the head in her book – checkout her piece in the Atlantic about how and why the Patriarchy is Dead, and see the results for yourself, for example. Her book explodes some deeply rooted and held beliefs that many of our country’s most respected researchers have when it comes to gender relations and the assumptions they supposedly operate on. For this alone, I highly recommend her book, not because I agree with everything she says in it, but because it doesn’t (always) adhere to the same, old, tired, “Men=Bad, Women=Good” narrative.

And indeed, despite Ms. Edin’s remarks above, her own famed “Promises I Can Keep”, in so many ways, adheres to the aforementioned narrative; even her long-awaited followup, which dealt with inner city dads, “Doing the Best I Can”, which she cowrote with her hubbie Bill Nelson, adheres to a script of sorts, this time trying to make the case that many such dads want to be dads and not proverbial deadbeats and so forth. When I queried the two of them about the fact that cuckoldry rates in inner city Philly were quite high and did they address that fact, they hemmed and hawed. Bringing up that unpleasant fact that Women in these environments can and will do such things to advance their own interests – undercuts notions of the intrepid Baby Mama, doing the best she can against all odds, due to circumstances beyond her control – and of course, she would never, ever, lie in order to serve said interests – right? Yet, we all know that Maury Povich has created a long and highly successful second career for himself as a one-Man Paternity Tester: “You ARE/Are NOT The Father!”. If Oprah has cultural appeal and influence, it is difficult to logically argue how and why Maury, who’s show has been on now almost as long as Oprah’s herself, wouldn’t also.

So that brings us back to Tyrone – one of the reasons WHY so many of the ladies written about in “Promises I Can Keep” are in the dire straits they are in to begin with, is due directly to the mating choices and decisions THEY chose to make. You see, they may complain about how their baby daddy is violent (to them), but what they won’t tell you is how his breaking (other) people up like Jason Bourne gave them some serious tingles (“A Billion Wicked Thoughts”, pp. 94-100); they may bemoan his slinging on the corner and the occupational hazards it inevitably entails, but they somehow leave out the part about not having a problem partaking of the fruits of such labors, while at the same time, dissing the straight arrow Tyrones (ABWT, same pages); they may exhibit disgust and disdain for their Man’s cheatin’ ways, but didn’t have a problem when he was stepping out on another Woman to be with them, or how so many other Women wanted him and how that made them tingle down below (ABWT, pp. 117). No, these little factoids always somehow get left out of these lengthy tomes – among a great many other things.

Hmm.

You see, while Edin, Kefelas and Nelson might have spent some years out on the streets of the Badlands and Camden and North Philly, Philly is MY hometown, and what’s more, I’ve spent a heck of a lot more time out on those streets than any of them have – so while they may convince others of their admittedly impressive and in many ways groundbreaking work, my skepticism is justified. I’ve seen up close and personal the not-so-pretty sides of the ladies there, and the fact of the matter is, that Tyrones abound – they just don’t get the attention of said ladies…until it’s time to be the Clean-Up Guy.

All of the above, and much, much more, explains – and answers – how and why Tyrone won’t “stay in his lane”, i.e., date/mate assortatively – because one, the options are so piss-poor, and two, who really wants to be a Clean-Up Guy to any of these gals? I mean, the “high standards for marriage” that many of these ladies have is a real knee-slapper – as they have two, three or more kids, often by as many baby daddies – in tow(!). I mean, really, you have got to be kidding me. Don’t take my word for it, read Promises I Can Keep for yourself, and see how these ladies regard marriage – it is not at all unusual to see some of them say, that getting hitched at forty-plus is the ideal(!). Who in their right mind wants to wife up a worn-out (and old) Baby Mama many times over?!?!?

And yet, as Edin and Kefelas points out in their book, some 70% of all Baby Mamas do go on to eventually marry – proof, if there ever was any, that the Thirst, is most definitely Real – and so is the (female) mating strategy known in certain cirlces as “Alpha Fux, Beta Bux”. So there.

But, we’re talking about Tyrone – the kind of Blue Collar Brotha who, in the words of Hill Harper, is just as smart as anyone he went to Harvard Law School with…and Smart Brothas, well, they just don’t get down like that.

Which brings us to the next burning question: if Tyrone’s so smart, why didn’t he go to college?

The Sistahood & The College Sorting Machine

In his book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010″, Charles Murray discusses what he considers to be one of the largest and swiftest factors that account for the Class divides we see more and more evidence of in our time – what he refers to as “The College Sorting Machine”:

“The initial mechanism whereby people with distinctive tastes and preferences are brought together is the college sorting machine. Exceptions like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs notwithstanding, almost everyone in the new upper class has finished college. But the simple possession of a bachelor’s degree does not come close to capturing complicated relationship between education and the nature of the new upper class. The key to understanding why the new upper class has formed and why it has such a distinctive culture is the interaction between high cognitive ability and education in general, and more specifically the interaction of high cognitive ability and elite colleges.” (pp. 52)

Murray continues:

“Before the age of mobility, people commonly married someone from the same town or from the same neighborhood of an urban area. The events that threw people together seldom had anything to do specifically with cognitive ability. Similar cognitive ability was a source of compatibility between a young man and young woman, and some degree of cognitive homogamy was high, because hardly anyone went to college. In large proportions of married couples, both had less than a high school education or both had a high school diploma.

As the proportion of college graduates increased, so did the possibilities for greater educational homogamy at the top, as college graduates found that they had more potential marriage partners who were also college graduates…They found that homogamy has increased at both ends of the educational scale – college graduates grew more likely to marry college graduates and high school dropouts grew more likely to marry other high school dropouts.” (pp. 61)

Murray goes on to explain how the American college system over the past half-century has done a wonderful job of taking the most talented people from just about every walk of life and putting them onto the college track…a wonderful job. But by no means, a perfect one.

Indeed, it is not at all unusual to come into contact with guys like Tyrone, who were “tracked” into the Trades and the like in school, and that’s assuming they got any consideration at all; put that together with crumbling, crappy, inner city schools – increasingly staffed and ran by Black people themselves (and Black Women in particular, cough) – and the fact that girls have gotten increasingly more focus and attention over the past few decades in particular – and the fact that those who go to college increasingly come from homes where at least one parent attended college themselves – and the fact that Black Women now attend college more than anyone else in contemporary American life – and it’s very, very easy to see how and why Tyrone wouldn’t go on to college himself. Simply put, he wasn’t groomed for it. His environment didn’t support it, didn’t reward it, didn’t incentivize it.

What this means, in functional terms, is this: if you’re a Black Woman who’s in college – especially if you went straight from your AP-track high school into college and beyond shortly after graduation from the former, chances are extraordinarily high that you came from a college-educated household, at this point two generations running; that your entire social world has groomed you for it; that there are all manner of messaging and real policy that will support you; that you’re “too important to fail”, to borrow a phrase. (Yes, there are Brothas who go on to college, too – and more often than not, they come from the same kinds of homes and environments you came from, which explains in large part why they’re there in the first place. Compare and contrast to Sistas and Brothas all over the SES spectrum, and see the results for yourself. Far and away more Sistas are there than are Brothas, and there are very profound reasons for that…reasons that Black professionals in education, would rather not discuss.)

And, if you’re the kind of hardscrabble Sista who, after a few fits and starts, finally makes her way into a community college setting or second-tier institution to get a relatively quick credential like say, in medical billing, nursing or pharmacy work, once again, the environment supports you (The End of Men, “Pharm Girls”, pp. 113-143, and “Degrees of Difference”, pp. 145-167). Indeed, you can look to the highest levels of your government and see – and know – that President Obama’s got your back.

Tyrone cannot be so sure…in fact, by all accounts, the evidence is pretty strong, that Obama’s gipped him. See longtime Black male/boys advocate, Jawanzaa Kunjufu, among a great many others, for more on this very point.

All of which is to say, simply this: the “Brain Drain” that has occurred in Black America, has occurred not just in class terms, *but in gender terms* as well. Sistas who are educated, are because, more often than not, and at least in part, they are smarter than the average Sista in the hoods that Edin and Kefelas studied, and which I know like the back of my hand in the darkest night; not only that, but their smarts was identified, catered to, and supported, from the parental to school levels and beyond. That means, for the Brothas like Tyrone, the pickings become even slimmer, because, to be frank, the Sistas that Remain, are Dimmer.

And that can be a serious boner killer. Anyone who considers themselves to be at least marginally smart, knows this – especially Black Women Who Read Good – because they’re the main ones to bemoan the supposed “lack” of “smart” Black Men for their choosing.

I’m just sayin’.

At any rate, what I’m saying here really shouldn’t be such a pearl-clutcher – that opportunities for Smart Brothas like the Tyrones of the world would be so limited – after all, we all know this to be instictively true, even if it’s not so politically correct to say in our time of expanded gender awareness – right? Even Murray says as much, though not directly, when he discusses what New York City did for their hiring practices in the NYPD in the late 1930s, by implementing an IQ test to weed out the more than 30,000 applicants for just 300 slots. (pp. 117)

Is there anyone out there who wants to hazard a guess as to how many of those applicants were Black males – and how many made it into that hallowed 300?

Anyone?

Oh, come on – do you mean to tell me that, in a city as big as NYC, with the most famous Black neighborhood in all of America in Harlem, that they simply couldn’t find a few dozen Tyrones who were up to the job?

Really? 

We know from studying Big City police departments, that they didn’t start integrating them racially until well after the late 30s; heck, even the fictional Virgil Tibbs, a detective from my hometown of Philly, didn’t show up on the big screen until the latter 60s(!). No, what Murray’s recounting of NYC’s NYPD hiring practices of the late 30s tells us, is that there was still quite a bit of thumb-holding on the scales of justice and opportunity, when it came to Black males – even smart ones like Tyrone…and Virgil Tibbs.

Consider the question of how and why the Tyrones of the world don’t tend to go on to college, definitively answered.

Got it?

Not Trusting & Refusing To Verify

One of the biggest insights I gleaned in the aftermath of my previous writings on Tyrone, per Hill’s quote and description of same in his book, was the visceral reaction on the part of so many Black Women; the sheer ferocity of their responses, is what really made me sit up and take notice. Immediately, they doubted Tyrone’s testimony; not only was he “aiming out of his league”, guys like Hill weren’t being honest either, because surely Tyrone had a “flaw” or two – a little D&A (drug and/or alcohol; as if the only ones who do these things are guys…riiight…), or a little too much interest in T&A, with a Baby Mama or two or three to boot, and so on. It was as if they simply couldn’t buy the idea of Tyrone as described; indeed, many Sistas fought against the notion as if their very lives depended on it. I’m no licensed clinician, but I know enough about human nature to understand that when that many people rail so instictively against something, it’s time to take a closer look…

…and that look is this: the reason why so many Sistas who read my missives featuring Tyrone reacted like a vampire does to daylight, is because (A) they weren’t/still are not attracted to him sexually and (B) the kinds of guys they were attracted to sexually were bad bets for the long term. This explains how “all the Tyrones they know” act like thus and so, because they aren’t Tyrones at all – they’re the more pedestrian equivalents of Alpha Males – with all the familiar drama that entails.

Take for example, the Ballad of Carolyn Egan, who was featured prominently in Prof. Ralph Richard Banks’ 2011 work, “Is Marriage For White People?” (under the pseudonym “Cecelia”). Banks attempts to use Egan’s failed marriage to her Blue Collar Brotha ex as a case study in why such pairings between them and their better-heeled ladies don’t work; but where he trips himself up is in the mentioning of Egan’s ex’s fascination for the Thug Life:

“Their values gap went beyond money. Cecelia recounts a story that Daryl was fond of telling about his early adulthood. “It was about a friend of his who he freely described as a killer,” she says. “a dude who got off on killing people, if that’s what the situation called for.” Cecilia recalls a particular scene to which Daryl always returned. “Daryl and his friends were out drinking one day with this killer guy,” she recounts, “and he flicked open his switchblade, and it was so full of crusted-on blood that the blood splattered into their drinks.”

Banks continues:

“Cecelia regarded this story as “brutal and horrible” and interpreted it as an indictment of Daryl’s friend. “I thought he was telling me about some of the characters that he dealt with in his youth. I was expecting these stories to be part of his explanation for “this is why I’m here in my late forties and haven’t done more with my life.”

“It wasn’t until years later that Cecelia began to understand Daryl’s fascination with these stories. They were tales of his “glory days”, a glamorous past that, truth be told, he still missed. “I didn’t really understand that those stories were part of his identity,” she says. The ruthless killer was not the villan in Daryl’s mind; he was the hero. “Eventually,” Cecelia explains, “it dawned on me that he liked his association with this guy. In some weird way, he admired him.” (pp. 104)

Banks would have us believe that, because Egan has such a hard time finding a suitable Brotha as a mate, that she had little choice but to give a Blue Collar Brotha like Daryl “a chance” – only to find out, years later into the marriage, that he was pining away for his Boyz in the Hood days.
Does anyone other than myself see the utter disconnects at work here?

No, here’s the much more likely scenario: Egan knew of Brothas in her college days, and they just didn’t do it for her. Along comes “Daryl”, and his just-under-the-surface sense of danger and foreboding is tingly like a MoFo. She figures she can tame the savage beast and decides to go all in with it…and gets burned.

Badly.

It’s a very common story, one that a lot of Sistas like Egan are loathe to publicly admit, because let’s face it, in our days and times, being a Victim carries mucho bennies – among them a Full Nelson on the Narrative – which explains how and why Tyrone’s barely a pagefull of discussion in Hill’s book elicited such a visceral response from so many Black Women. He stands as a stark rebuke to the Narrative that they – and to be frank others, mostly White academics, writers, journalists and the like – have fabricated. Tyrone is living proof that all Blue Collar Brothas aren’t somehow “damaged goods” – that many of them are law-abiding, hard-working people.

They. Just. Don’t. Make. The. Ladies. Tingle. (At least not when it matters – i.e., when the ladies are in their latter teens-upper 20s, before the kids by the Mr. Bigs come along, etc., et al.)

And the ones that do, well, they don’t tend to be very good bets for the long(er) term.

It really is as simple as that, folks.

Why Writing About Tyrone Is So Vitally Important

The reasons why should, at this point, be rather self-evident; but what the heck, let’s sum up for old times’ sake:

1. Because it brings Balance to the Force: writing and talking about the Tyrones of the world puts things into a much more nuanced, and textured, perspective. It would temper the Narrative of the heart of gold ladies in our time who can do no wrong, and are beset with nothing but ne’er do wells on all sides, and are forced to drink motor oil in a desert with no water.

2. Because it highlights the fact that the Patriarchy is Dead, and has been for a long time now: the idea that Men continue to run and rule everything has to be qualified like I don’t know what; as I’ve shown and proven above, when it comes to working and lower middle class America, if anything, it’s Women who run things – often, with an iron fist. Maggie Thatcher would be proud!

3. Because it throws a harsh light onto a deeply profound truth: that Women – even, perhaps especially Black and/or poor(er) Women, have far and away more agency and ability, not only to affect their own lives, but the lives of others around them – including their kids, and their baby daddies. This is hugely important because of the enduring notion in our time – a key feature of the Narrative and most assuredly NOT a bug – that Black/poor(er) Women are somehow hapless victims of circumstance, “caught up” by no means of their own. This, is FALSE.

4. Because it highlights something Black America continues to be in deep denial about: DESIRE. One of the key reasons as to how and why Black America is in the situation its in sociosexually, is due precisely to this. Black Americans, of both sexes, but disproportionately on the female side, is in deep denial about just how much Desire plays a role in mating matters – and how, if one isn’t careful, it can prove ruinous in so many ways. The idea that there “just aren’t any good Black Men out there” is false – what is better to say – and it is, make no mistake, a distinction with a huge difference, is that “there are no good Black Men out there who make me tingle”. It would be a much more accurate descriptor of the facts on the ground – but it does come with a caveat…

5. Because it forces Black Women to take personal responsibility for their situations in life. One of the dirty little secrets that Black Women in general, and their socalled “Black Power Feminists” in particular don’t want to admit, is that they are the double beneficiaries of the Civil Rights and Women’s movements of the past half century. As a quick Google easily confirms, Black Women as a group have benefitted more from the key aims and goals of both movements far and away more than have Black Men, again, taken as a group – and this, along with many other things, demands that Black Women stop trying to make themselves out to be Damsels in Distress – they aren’t. Owning their desires actually makes them free – living with the consequences of one’s choices, good or bad, right or wrong, is what makes life worth living.

6. Because it properly realigns public and social policy discussions: as I’ve shown via the many sources I’ve cited, it is woefully, painfully clear that the way we as a society have approached these matters is deeply wrongheaded, and in need of much revamping. But, in order to do that, we have to have the intellectual, dare I say it, moral courage, to deeply question our most deeply held assumptions about relations between the sexes, and how this intersects with Race and Class. All Women aren’t dainty, innocent angels; and all Men aren’t mean, callous brutes, womanizers or druggies, in and out of jail. Our public discourse surrounding the social and public policy implications of all this, can, should and must reflect these facts, as born out in books like “A Billion Wicked Thoughts” and “Coming Apart” and “The End of Men” and “Promises I Can Keep”, among others.

7. Because I for one, think Black people in particular, and America as a whole, is grown up enough for a much more honest, earnest, comprehensive, inclusive, and sobering conversation about all these things. Call me an idealist on this score, but that’s what I believe.

Let’s see if my valued readers agree.

The huge takeaway for me as I’ve been something of an amateur social scientist over these many years, is that it seems that everyone has an advocate EXCEPT the Tyrones of the world: White Men and Women of just about every class level; “unconventially attractive” people, most notably Women; Gays and Lesbians and folks who identify with one gender or another; the rich, the poor, and the (admittedly ever-diminishig) middle; poor and upper class Black Women; high flying Black Men; gangbanging and otherwise wayward Black Men. Heck, even various animal and plant life, as I’ve shown above, have advocates these days.

But, for whatever reason, no one was out there representing for Tyrone. And since, in many ways, Tyrone’s story is my own, and since Fate has chosen my hand to write all of this, until his Advocate shows up, the O-Man, will have to do.

Links:

Is The Ratcheted Life Worth Living? Living Contradictions And Their Consequences

What the Greeks and Plato Thought About ALPHA

Why The Other Guys Always Get The Girls

The Dating Game Vs Girl Game

I Don’t Kiss On The First Date

How To Handle A Nuclear Rejection In The Age Of Social Media

The Complex Nature of Sexiness and Its Impact On The Dating Game

How Women Can Stay Visible And Attractive As They Age

What Radical Honesty In Modern Dating Would Really Look Like