Think About It

THINK ABOUT IT

Nathan Hare's Foreword
to Dr. Julia Hare's new book,
The Sexual and Political Anorexia of the
Black Woman: The Pain Guts and Glory
of the Black Woman

When your woman tells you something to
do, over a period of time you know what
you have to do, but it was nevertheless a
satisfaction to me when my wife asked me
to write the foreword to her book on the
pain and the glory of the black woman.
Proceeding with caution, I hastened to read
her manuscript in full, because I know my
wife, and anybody who knows her knows
that she is gifted with a very sharp tongue,
which I have learned over the years is
buttressed by a keen eye for uncovering
any mischief in a man, not to mention her
swift and surreptitious tactics of
investigation.
So, armed with a secret aversion to the
possibility of being seen as a traitor to my
fellowman, I vowed to proceed with caution
but with confidence accrued from years of
collaboration with her in the cause of black
male-female togetherness, in which I
watched and learned in many ways her
insider’s awareness of the almost
unbearable frustration and agony of the
black woman. I also gained a deeper level
of empathy with the black woman’s
historical hurts as “the backbone of the
black family,” when the black woman was
sometimes going it alone and “going in the
dark” with no man to stand beside her.
The black woman is weary now of being the
backbone, but proud of it and at the same
time secretly afraid that her strength will
someday be the death of her relationship
with her man; so that most of the time,
when you see a strong black woman she is
looking for a strong black man. And most
strong black women will tell you they would
give their right arm to have a strong black
man to stand beside them.
Not surprisingly, we are being introduced
here in this book not only to the black
woman’s pain and glory but also to a new
way of looking at the black man and his
connection to the pain of the black woman,
as well as a new psychological malady, an
epidemic the author labels “sexual
anorexia,” to which she adds the interesting
corollary, “political anorexia,” now rapidly
emerging in a morally decadent world.
I can say only that I came away imbued
with an escalated awareness that to know
the black woman fully you must walk in her
shoes, so that as a black man writing a
foreword to a book on black women, it is
necessary to be both wary and brave. What
can I as a black man say to black women
who have had to deal with the white man’s
unparalleled wrath as well as the black male’
s misplaced rage in retaliation for the
oppression of us all? Maybe it’s a bit too
much for a black man so much as to show
his face, let alone open his mouth, but I
decided to take the liberty to operate on
the principle that if I am a part of the
problem I should like also to be a part of
the solution.
Maybe as men and women we can never
really gain a full familiarity with one another’
s heartaches and disappointments.   But
being outsiders to the natural experiences
and conditions of the other, the opposite
sex (though we are locked together in the
same race indelibly), we can come to know
each other completely only by fusing our
imaginations and our caring in creative new
ways designed to ensure that our empathy
and our bond will be unbroken. And it will
be good for us to arm ourselves with the
understanding that it is our very
disagreements and the way we handle
them – not our agreements – that will
constitute the remedy for our hurts and the
tenor and longevity of our lives -together.
In any event it will always be necessary for
us to understand that after all is said and
done, in the end we are locked in this thing
together, we are on the same side, and we
all want the same thing: love and
happiness.
Thus it is that black men, marching in
atonement one million strong, will dare to
demand a modicum of forgiveness from
black women, if not a full understanding of
the impact of oppression and its decimation
of our devotion and our relentless sense of
duty.   Our women reply that we should
stop crying on the black woman’s shoulder
and stiffen our backs and “man up” to
break the chains of self-pity and a
purposeless life, even if we cannot free the
black woman and her children from the
white man’s deathly grasp.
“Give me just a little more time,” the black
man cries, but it is apparent from a reading
of this book on “The Sexual and Political
Anorexia of the Black Woman” that the
black woman is “sick and tired of being sick
and tired” -- and more and more the black
woman will not wait.

PREFACE
By Julia Hare

Just before the outbreak of the AIDS
epidemic in America, there arose on the
sexual scene a little known emotional
disorder, an affair of the heart that
threatened the safety and the sanctimony
of black women everywhere. We at the
Black Think Tank were quick to discover this
new malady in our clinical work, including
the Kupenda ( Swahili for “to love”) black
love therapy groups we were leading, and
our torchlight studies in black male-female
relationships.

Then, on the eve of troubling signs of black
family decay in the 1970s, there appeared
a curious syndrome we began to call
“sexual anorexia” (loss of interest or
appetite for romantic relationships, in a gut
reaction to feelings of being unloved and
unlovable). Soon this condition was noted
by psychologists and psychiatrists in other
races and quietly but quickly began to
strike the black woman with the full force of
an emotional tsunami.

One day in Seattle, I saw a wall high
portrait of a solitary black woman hanging
in the black student center on the campus
of the University of Washington. Beneath it
lay the caption, “Bearer of Pain,”
illuminated by slivers of sunlight shining
through the window pointing the way to that
painting and this book.

Julia Hare
San Francisco

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The Pain Guts and Glory of the Black Woman

The Miseducation of the Negro
"If you can control a man's thinking,
you don't have to worry about his
actions. If you can determine what a
man thinks, you do not have to worry
about what he will do. If you can
make a man believe that he is inferior,
you don't have to compel him to seek
an inferior status, he will do so
without being told and if you can
make a man believe that he is justly
an outcast, you don't have to order
him to the back door, he will go to the
back door on his own and if there is
no back door, the very nature of the
man will demand that you build one."`

-- Carter G. Woodson
The Miseducation of the Negro, 1933

Don't forget to run out and
check out the November issue
of Ebony magazine (with a trio
of divas, Queen Latifah,
Jennifer Hudson, Alisha Keys).
It's
already on the stands with Dr.
Julia Hare's " Ebony Advisor" to
the sisters "Seeking Sex by any
means necessary," telling "how
to get control of your romantic
life without giving up on sex."
A related Ebony cover kicker
points to the other side of the
fountain, "when too much sex is
not enough." Something like the
difference between anorexia
nervosa and bulimia. It's a taste
of the sexuality without the
politics of Dr. J's new book,
The Sexual and Political
Anorexia of the Black Woman:
The Pain Guts and Glory of the
Black Woman." Dr. J's Ebony
article introduces us to three
main traps that stymie women
with "romance disorders" in
their effort "to compensate for
what they consider unbearable
feelings of anxiety when it
comes to love and sex,"
including the Status Seeker, the
Scorned Woman and the Social
Nymph. Get the book for the
rest and the full lowdown on
such as "Men Who Play" and
"Men Who Fear Love".

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