Last week we celebrated TH’s “Moving On Up” ceremony where she officially became a first grader. The auditorium at her school was filled with folks eagerly waiting to see their little ones prance across the stage.

When the students marched in, we cheered them on. For 10 minutes, little boys with fresh hair cuts and sharply pressed pants and little girls with fresh braids, wearing pretty dresses walked by with their teachers and took their place in the allotted rows. The two children selected to say the Pledge of Allegiance were adorable, missing teeth and all. But after a rousing sing-along to Lift E’vry Voice and Sing, I noticed something…quite a few of the little girls had on high heels and a head full of weave. You read that correctly.

Now, I am not talking about the little white/off white “church shoes” or sandals with the nearly flat square heels that most of the girls were wearing. I mean 1 – 2 inch heels; higher than kitten heels. Shoot, they were almost as high as the wedges I was wearing. One little girl’s heels were Lucite; clear as every heel ever worn by a stripper.

And when I say weave, I don’t mean box braids, twists or some other child-like hairstyle. I mean these children went to a salon (or someone’s kitchen) and had hair either sown or glued into their head. A full-on weave!

As I go about my day, I hear adults grumble about girls being “fast” or “grown” and being “in the street.” Well, these girls don’t get there on their own. I don’t understand why people (primarily women) socialize their girls to be “little women.” I see little girls participating heavily in the “raising” of younger siblings and doing “big girl things” like buying necessities from the bodega when they should be jumping rope and playing hopscotch.

Look, I get that patents are often over-burdened, but that burden should not be placed on the shoulders of your children. And besides, 6 year old girls with diva weaves and hooker heels are not a choice the child made, that was Mama and ‘em thinking it’d be cute. It’s not.

I am well aware that some folks just don’t know better and it’s high time for those of us who do, to show them. Instead of chiding someone under your breath or clowning them to your people, step up. Open your mouth! Our girls deserve to be socialized appropriately and lovingly, not used as workhorses or little mini-me’s who we project our misguided ideals of femininity and womanhood upon.

We can all do better.

I see you every day. I smile, nod and bid you “hello” showing solidarity for our shared womanhood and Blackness. As I approach, you reciprocate, sometimes weakly, but you always return the greeting.

As our eyes lock, I notice the odd pigmentation, the slight chemical burns, how the color washes out, starting at your throat chakra.

I want to ask why? Why do you do this to yourself? Who made you feel so unloved, so incomplete, so less than perfect that you’d poison your body.

The cremes that you slather on your body that proclaim to “lighten”, “brighten” and “whiten” are speeding up your time on this earth.

You are beautiful as the day you were born.

Pretty soon, that lighter complexion will lead to cancer, the collagen in your skin completely breaking down and death. You will become a spectacle; a backroads sideshow version of the beautiful spirit that you once were.

Whoever or whatever told you you were less than, well, they were wrong. Your shade of Blackness, whether blue, chestnut or coal, is beautiful. Stop stripping your greatness away.

OK, OK…I wasn’t going to say anything about this ridiculous and multi-pronged attack on Black women. In fact, I was hoping it’s go away, but it hasn’t. I’m going to make this short and sweet (hopefully) because there have been lots of responses, both academic and from other critical perspectives.

The issue: Black women can’t get a Black man because they [women] are too strong, aggressive, educated, demanding, needy, unlovable, mean, independent and Black women are the reason the Black community is having the issues that it is. I think I got it all in.

Here’s my response:

• Not all Black women want to be with a man, Black or otherwise. Some are interested in other women, Black or otherwise.
• Some Black women want to be single; unchained, unyoked…FREE. They like, no, love the life of being a single woman. Really, they do. I know quite a few women who are not aching or yearning for Mandingo or Ray Ray to come into their lives on a permanent basis.
• You know the way some Black men only date non-Black women? Well, *gasp*, there are some Black women who only date non-Black men. Such is life.
• There are more Black women in this country than Black men, so we’re not going to have that match up, no matter how hard we try.

Now, there are some issues that go deeper, such as:

• Black male infant mortality is higher than that of Black females, regardless of socio-economic class.
• Black boys are more likely to be streamlined into “special education” programs, thus lessening their academic and social potential.
• More Black girls graduate from high school than Black males.
• The Black male incarceration rate is through the roof.

So here’s what needs to happen:

• STOP listening to fake-ass “experts” on this issue, especially Black males who have hopped from wife-to-wife like it’s an Olympic sport.
• DO NOT buy into the diminishing yourself in order to get a good Black man school of thought. Please, be the amazing person you are and the rest will fall into place.
• A systematic overturning and remixing of our education system needs to take place. The American education system fails people of color across the board.
• A mass REEDUCATION of Black folks needs to take place. Women, if they knew and believed in their worth would not allow themselves to be used, abused and blamed for what’s wrong with the “community” and Black males wouldn’t leave a trail of tears, damage and kids behind if they truly loved themselves.
• REALIZE the mass media could really care less about Black people, or brown people either. Stop looking to them for answers to anything.
• COMMUNITY BUILDING: regardless of whether you are married, single, gay, hetero or somewhere else on the sexuality spectrum, we need to work together. We need to build schools, cultural and spiritual institutions that nourish us as a people. It’s obvious that the way we have been going about things hasn’t served us on a whole, it’s time for a change.
• We need to RECONNECT with our elders. I really see a lot of our issues stemming from knowledge not being handed down generationally. Who is teaching our boys to be men? Who is instructing our girls on WOMANHOOD? It’s not Grandma or Uncle Roy, it’s BET, MTV, YouTube and other nonsense. Adults have to do better. A LOT better.

So please folks, stop spreading and buying into the nonsense that says that Black folks are a lost cause. We aren’t. There will always be those who shuck and jive for a dollar or two, but we have to see through that falsehood and strive for and DO better.

HYPE kills. Don’t believe it.

In about a week, December 1st, another World AIDS Day will roll around and there will lectures, discussions and all sorts of programming at the international, national and community levels. But once December 2nd rolls around, most folks will go back to preparing for the holiday season.

I say this to ask where are all of the sustained, visible efforts, particularly in communities of color to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, a truly preventable disease? I know about the clinics and organizations who help those who are already infected, but what about prevention?

We live in a culture that seems to want to solve problems instead of preventing them in the first place. Why? Well, that is where the money is. Think about it: the diet industry in this country makes billions of dollars each year. People, particularly women, shell out dollar after dollar hoping to loose weight. But wouldn’t it make sense if a) people were taught how to eat properly, and b) were also taught coping skills to deal with stress, pain, fear and anxiety beginning at an early age so that they don’t use food as an escape? BAM, obesity problem solved!

The same goes for HIV/AIDS.

Let’s take a trip in the back in the day machine. Picture this: it was 1984 and a young girl is standing in front of her 6th grade science class reading her report on HIV/AIDS to her class. She has to use a lot of words that deal with sex, such as penis, semen, vagina, anal, etc. To her dismay, there are audible chuckles and she gets a tad bit angry and says “You all need to listen, because in 20 years either you or someone you know will get this disease!” They continue to laugh, but she manages to get through the rest of her report and is rewarded with an A.

Twenty-five years after I gave that report in Mr. Mellus’ science class, I, sadly, am writing that HIV/AIDS is ravaging communities of color. I don’t really care that the disease is more manageable with drugs. The point it, we shouldn’t be seeing the disease at the rate we do.

You see, HIV/AIDS is big business for pharmaceutical companies, so while I rarely, if ever, see public service announcements for condoms and spermicide in my community, I see ads on bus stop shelters that letting you know that “AIDS doesn’t have to be a death sentence”. Well, no it doesn’t. In fact, it could be diminished, or even eradicated if the right measures are taken.

What are the right measures?

Education. It’s amazing how there is no mandatory comprehensive sexual education across the board in the US. Seriously, what’s the problem? Sex education should be made a priority in all schools that receive government funding. Period. Instead, kids are getting drips and drabs of information from their peers, or, if they are lucky to participate in some sort of after school or out of school time program, they may get it there.

There is, of course, that vocal contingent that says it should be left up to the parents to educate their children. That would be wonderful. I wish all parents were like my mom in the sense that she noted my entrance into puberty pre-menarche and used anatomically correct dolls to break down the rudimentaries of sex and gave me books which were followed up by discussion (though I am still a bit scarred by the doll thing), but let’s face it, that perpspective is coming from a place of privlege.

We live in a culture that fosters shame, particularly in girls and women, surrounding their bodies. Parents are people too and many of them are either too uncomfortable or ill equipped to have the conversation in the first place.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 64% of women with HIV/AIDS are black. C’mon people, do we need any more of a wake up call? Instead of letting pharmaceutical companies get rich off of retroantivirals, there needs to be a groundswell, a movement to educate communities about how not to contract it in the first place.

I am committed to getting something started, are you?