The Solipsism Problem: How Contempt and Arrogance Are Driving Black Men Away

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All right. I want to talk today about the relationship divide in the black community in response to a particular piece written on Substack that has a very interesting depiction of the black dating dynamic right now. All right, so let's check it out. This comes from your corporate BFF, uh, Black Wealth and the dating divide it creates. How money reshapes identity, intimacy, and aspiration. All right. Um, yeah. So, let's check this out.

So, it reads, "There's something fascinating happening in modern dating right now, especially among high earning black professionals." Now, this is already part of the problem. Black women are fixated on high earning. That's part of the issue because in every community, that's always going to be a relatively low percentage of people. Last I checked, roughly around 9-10%. But if you're talking about over six figures in a community with historic lows in regard to wealth, this is an asinine focus. This is an asinine choice of what to focus on as a standard for a good partner, a good relationship, right? But it continues, and I don't think we're talking about it honestly enough.

For the first time in history, we're seeing large numbers of black women attain real financial mobility, advanced degrees, six-figure salaries, property ownership, investment portfolios, luxury experiences, access, freedom. This is [ __ ] This is [ __ ] Let's just cut this off at the knees before we go any further. Welcome to uh, blackdemographics.com. This is a breakdown of African-American income, right? So, you look at this chart. This is median weekly earnings, 16 and up. 16 to 24, 25 to 54, 55 and up. And the middle column is black folk, men and women. And the last column on the right is all races. So, we're just going to focus on this middle column. For 16 and up, men make $1,053. Women, $942. 16 to 24, right? Males make $719. Females, $609. 25 to 54, men make $1,085. Women, $975. 55 and up, men make $1,154. Women, $921. All right. So, we're not seeing this fantastical rise in numbers that she's pointing out.

This chart here, black weekly wages by education, right? So, we can look at the green is black men, the red are black women, and the blue is black folk altogether. Right? All right. So, it reads for men less than a high school diploma, $597. For women, $532. For men, high school graduates, no college, $754. For women, $653. Right. Uh, for men, some college, no degrees, $757. For women, $707. Right. For men, associate degrees, $782. For women, $736. For bachelor's degrees, $1,070. Bachelor's degrees, $995 for women. $1,070 for men. Oh, crap. I was looking at the wrong one. My bad. I've been, you don't understand how long I've been looking at these charts today. My eyes are blurring together. What? Jacked it up. Anyway, some college degree, $814 for men, $707 for women. Um, $899 for an associate's degree for men. Uh, $736 for women. Bachelor's degree, $1,167 for men. Uh, for women, $995. And advanced degrees, $1,561 for men, $1,248 for women.

The only category where you see women outdoing men is single millennials, and it's only in a couple categories. It's in the, the $50,000 to $100,000. It's actually under $50,000 to $100,000. You see amongst millennials, there are some black women that have pulled ahead of black men. But every other metric, it's pretty much men outperforming women. You look at black family income, uh, married couples, $100,640. Man with no wife, male head, $57,932. And female head with no husband, $44,267. So, this magical, mystical, you know, space of women who are just running circles around men is nowhere near as large as she's talking about. And it might be generationally based, but that's not a reflection of the black community as a whole. So, I just wanted to get that straight out the gate. This is already being framed in a fantastical context that only applies to a very small percentage of people. It's like talking about the very tip of Mount Everest, but you're going to ignore the entire mountain underneath it. That's what she's doing. And that's what these conversations, overwhelmingly, uh, led by women over the decades about finding men that make more than six figures has led to. You know, even though they attribute it to black men in regard to Kevin Samuels and high and what it means to be a high-earning man, high, high value, that Kevin Samuels was a response to black women's demands, right? They treat him like he was the beginning of black men talking about being high value. That was in response to decades of black women requiring high-earning men, regardless of their income. As a matter of fact, she's talking about high-earning women in this piece. But black women who, you know, work at liquor stores, you know, low-level jobs, blue or white collar, are making demands of six-figure earners, all the way to eight-figure earners. I mean, we're seeing on K. Cynthia Wizard or Kendra G's, uh, channel where you got women with three kids making $50,000 a year demanding men that make $300, $400,000 a year. I wish I was joking. But this is the reality of it. And this might be as fantastical an article as that. But I digress. Let me go.

Um, she, uh, for the first time in history, we. Okay, so we got that. But something else happened alongside the money. Black women almost over-evolved. Now, I just want to let you know the theme of this whole piece for her is that black women over-evolved when making money. And black men who made money, you know, if anything, they hypo-evolved, meaning they probably moved backward in her assessment. Now, the interesting thing is she's ignoring men who earn less than six figures altogether. And she's talking about high earners as being deficient for black women. So, who's left? And that's actually how she's framing this article. She's suggesting that there's no one left for black women because black men who earn enough are just undeveloped children, and other black men who don't earn as much aren't even, they don't even make the conversation. So, the framing of this is already highly problematic. And this is why I called this particular video the solipsism problem. How contempt and arrogance are driving black men away. Right? This is the, the solipsism right here. And I don't mean that as an insult. I mean, survival demanded evolution from us. We had to be twice as good to, uh, uh, you know, as good for half as much. Anyway, to attain wealth as a black woman often required emotional intelligence. Now, understand, she assumes that black women are emotionally intelligent just because they're black women and that they've earned a lot. She's saying that the, the process of making more money has become synonymous with, uh, doing well, right? So, she ignores the scores of black women in high-level positions that are being hit with fraud, that are, you know, finding themselves, uh, going to prison for embezzlement. I mean, and I've been covering this for the last two years, since the beginning of 1995, I should say, last year and a half, actually longer than that, but I've been really focused on it in the last, uh, year and a half or so. And there are a number of high-profile, you know, politicians, even, you know, mayors and, um, you know, high-level positions, white, you know, for black women who are going to jail. But she ignores all of that. And she makes the argument that because certain black women are making more money, they have, they immediately possess emotional intelligence, adaptability, hyper-competence, self-awareness, discipline, education, emotional regulation, and healing. And you're going to see healing is a big theme in this piece for her. She makes the argument that these women are healed and that it's tied to the fact that that's how they made their money. The two processes came together, which is already a fabrication. She says, "So, as a result, many black women did not just pursue money. We pursued wholeness. Therapy entered the chat. Boundaries entered the chat. Pilates entered the chat. Journaling entered the chat. Rest, rest entered the chat. Healing our inner child entered the chat." Right? For many women, success became deeply intertwined with self-development. The journey inward happened alongside the journey upward. She makes the opposite argument for black men, of course. Right.

Well, let's go. Um, and I, I just, you know, I should say what she's actually arguing here is basically that black women overall, you know, as she's saying, for those that are doing well, developed all of these characteristics, these inward-focusing characteristics. And this again is a very arrogant position to take that's rooted in the idea, the fundamental idea that they are fundamentally better than their men, which has been the conversation in the black community for decades. Let's continue.

But when I look at many successful black men, I see something very different happening because wealth impacts men and women differently in the dating marketplace. For women, success often narrows the dating pool. For men, success expands it exponentially. A high-earning black woman often becomes more selective. A high-earning black man often gains more options than he has ever had in his life. And I think that distinction changes everything.

Now, one of the things she ignores in this entire paper is because she's complaining about, um, black men with means and how many more options they have than black women. That's half of the SMV dating chart. Because if you look at the charts, and I, I didn't, you know, think to bring one on here, so I don't, I don't have it with me at the moment, but the two dominant figures on the sexual marketplace dating chart, sexual marketplace value chart, are young women, young pretty women, and older men of means. Those are the two dominant figures. And the men are older because it takes that long to acquire wealth. All right. Now, there are other features about being older that younger women appreciate. So, I shouldn't discount it altogether, but I am saying those are the two dominant figures, and she's only focusing on the latter half in regard to men. She ignores the fact that when men are younger and often have very little, they're very low on the priority list for many women, most particularly the prettiest women. And this starts early for women. I mean, we start, the charts really focus on the adult years for obvious, uh, purposes. It's a moral argument. We're talking about over 18, but really, I think Chris Rock said it best. He said, "Men have been trying to [ __ ] you since you were 13, sometimes earlier than that." She said, he's, he said, "Every time a man offers to carry your bag or asks you how you doing, tells you how beautiful you are, he's offering dick." Now, it's a crass way of approaching it, but Chris Rock has a point. When you talk about women's beauty, that is what men desire, right? Now, there are other characteristics, sweetness, femininity, you know, loyalty, and a number of others. But the conversation starts for men in regard to what they want from women with beauty. For women, it's, it's there. You know, looks are definitely a feature, especially for black women, but resources are very high on that list. So, she doesn't talk about when women are at the upper end in their from their teens through their 20s, and men are virtually ignored if they don't have, you know, a pot to piss in. See, what you, what you often have happening with the kind of women that write these kinds of pieces, especially if they're in their 30s through 60s, and especially if they were pretty at one point in time, they knew what it felt like to command the room, to command the attention of the men they wanted, and then slowly lost that capacity, that ability as they got older and resented it. Right? But ignore how men have the opposite paradigm happening, where they only start to get attention the higher up they climb on the status, income, you know, uh, uh, uh, chart side of the chart. See, so she's complaining about the latter half of it, but ignoring the first half of it. Usually, women, men are not looking for women who have high income. There's only a small subset of men that do that. For the most part, men aren't concerned about that. Men are concerned first with beauty. And when it comes to that, younger women command the market. And many of us have seen this. You know, [ __ ] starting in middle school, you know, the most, the prettiest girls that everybody wanted, she was dating someone in high school. And in high school, she was dating someone in college. And in college, she was dating someone who had graduated and had his own business and his own house and so on and so forth. So, you're sitting next to her in class. You live in the dorm across from her. Everybody wants her. She ain't dealing with nobody on campus. And if she is, he might, you know, and again, if she's really pretty, she's, she's dealing with the best prospect she can find. NBA, NFL, option, the guy who looks like he's going to the league, or some guy that already has his own outside of the campus. This is the dynamic. Women are oblivious to men's experiences with that part of life, but they're frustrated when they no longer can get their way and they can't have the same access to the men they want. But the problem is not the men. The problem is, well, one for women, it's women's choices, cuz they require the elite, which they're just never going to be enough of. But also, you completely ignore that men don't have it easy. See, she's, what she's arguing here is that amongst black men and women that have done well, women just have it hard and men have it easy. But what you're ignoring is a lot of those successful men did not have a pot to piss in for a good portion of their lives, and women didn't care. Many women didn't even pay them the time of day until they got resources. So, what you want to punish men for, men have already experienced up to the point where you decided to start paying attention to them.

Anyway, let's continue. Um, because when a man suddenly has access to women of all ages, races, body types, backgrounds, and lifestyles, the internal work can get delayed. Not always and not in all men, but often and in many, because the reward arrives before the reflection does. I completely agree because that's what men have already experienced with pretty women because pretty women went through this when they were young. They were, they did no internal work. Man, there are people who made arguments for years that, you know, women's emotional development stops when they start getting male attention. You know, in other words, you got a bunch of 50-year-old, um, uh, 13-year-olds out here, right? Women who, at the moment they started getting, you know, found themselves in high demand, kind of stopped. They stopped doing any kind of internal work. There was no incentive to. And sometimes, if they did deal with internal work after, which wasn't until they lost that perspective, that interest from men, usually in their 30s, 40s, and 60s, 50s, and 60s, you know, their 30s through their 60s, when they lost that attention, then there was a, a kind of push for internal work. But how many people do internal work when they can, they can pretty much get whatever they want? Well, that doesn't, you know, and I'm not, I'm not arguing that she's correct about men, but I'm saying if you're going to take this position, you could easily make the counterargument that when women, pretty women at younger ages could get whatever man, whatever man's attention they wanted, how much emphasis was there on their internal work at that point? Are young, pretty women known to be highly empathetic toward men that they're not attracted to? Sensitive to how they re, you know, um, turn him down when he asks them out? Is that, is that what young pretty women are known for? Huh. Interesting.

So while many women's healing journeys deepened as they became successful, that's an assumption. Many men's journeys became what I jokingly call a "ho phase with direct deposit." Yeah. Because a whole phase. Yeah. Men are the, the face of the hoof phase, right? Anyway, and I don't say that to be cruel. I say it because incentives shape behavior. If the world is affirming you, desiring you, validating you, and rewarding you socially, there is less immediate pressure to look inward. Completely agree. Let me know when you get to the part where women don't handle it much better, especially when you compare that to successful black women. Because many of us did not experience wealth as unconditional freedom. We experienced it as a responsibility, as pressure, as proof, as protection. So, we developed deeply. Oh god, she is, this is highly fantastical. Highly fantastical. And I think that's where the, this, I think that's where the disconnect starts happening in modern dating. People often frame the struggle of high-earning women dating as, she's difficult, she wants too much, she's too masculine, she can't submit. Yeah, 'cause those stereotypes just kind of come out of nowhere, right? I would argue that these are features in black women's culture, and they high-five each other. They teach their daughters. You know, this is something they internally celebrate, but they don't ask the question whether or not black men or any other group, for that matter, find these characteristics appealing. Much of the time, they don't. And these women are oblivious to that until it costs them what they want.

But she says, "But honestly, I think that explanation is lazy. I think the issue is that many successful men have not evolved internally at the same rate their income has. So now you have matched salaries, matched lifestyles, matched ambition, but completely mismatched emotional development." It's interesting. She frames this as emotional development. It's not. This is how you know women like herself see themselves in their head, but they're completely disconnected from how men experience them. See, she ridicules what she's heard from men about their own behavior, but she ridicules it and dismisses it because she lives in her fantasies. And in her fantasy, she's perfect. She's healed. She's evolved. Are you crazy? You know how many women who proclaim themselves to be healed and evolved are trying to slash men's tires and spray paint their cars and throw rocks through their windows because why? Because those men broke up with them or those men didn't do what she wanted him to do, or worse yet, he didn't live, he didn't allow her to live out the fantasy that it was in her head, even if he didn't know what the fantasy was. I had a colleague of mine, mine years ago that, you know, she tried to tell me that, you know, women don't really act the way you guys describe. They don't, they don't slash tires. They don't throw rocks. She was like, "That doesn't really happen." And she said, "And if it does, you're talking about ghetto girls." I'm like, "Do you know how many women I've seen with master's degrees and PhDs that have just done the same [ __ ] if not worse, and then would turn around and call the police and tell them that you assaulted her because she's mad at you?" This is what we call blue leashing. You know, I talked about the colleague that called me out the blue some years ago to tell me that about his best friend who had gotten out of jail and after a decade had built himself up and built a business and married a young beautiful woman. And one night when he came home from work too late and didn't answer his phone, she called the police and accused him of cheating as well as assaulting her, just so he could get arrested. She blue-leashed him because she was mad at him, not because he did anything. And because she had the capacity to do something to him out of anger that she knew that men couldn't do to her. And these are the same women that'll tell you that they're evolved and they're emotionally mature, and they will often work white-collar jobs and have graduate degrees. So, this fantastical construction she's making in this piece eliminates what men actually experience from women. And yes, difficulty, demanding, you know, too much, and being masculine are features that men are identifying, not because they're making this up, but because they're genuinely what men experience.

She says, "One person has spent years developing self-awareness, healing childhood wounds. You are full of [ __ ]. Nurturing themselves, building emotional vocabulary, learning boundaries, and creating inner peace." Word. How's it doing? Really? The other has spent years optimizing status, income, access, and desirability, and no amount of money fixes that gap because emotional elevation cannot be purchased. This is such [ __ ] First of all, to the extent that you have high-profile men that focus on income, access, uh, desirability, status, it's not because they do so arbitrarily or because patriarchy told them to. No, it's because in many instances, this is what women have demanded our whole lives. They demanded men that had high-level incomes, that had status, that had resources, that had desirability. We learned from our mothers and the women in our families that these are the qualities that women want. That's where we learned it, anyway. And this becomes especially noticeable among high-earning black professionals because the pool is already statistically smaller. Black women are now outpacing black men in college graduation rates and advanced educational attainment. High-earning black women are increasingly common. But emotionally available, healed, self-aware, high-earning black men, that pool is much smaller. First of all, emotionally available, healed, self-aware black women, that's an extremely small pool unto itself. It's just that you imagine that you are because you operate in your own fantasy. That's the, that's the whole crux of solipsism. You get to assess yourself and you pat yourself on the back and say, "Wow, I'm, I'm emotionally healed. I'm mature. I'm self-aware." Who told you that? Oh, you did. Ah, that's why. Yeah, that's why you can say you've achieved all these things because you're measuring yourself in your own head, but you refuse to listen to the people that actually have to deal with you.

But the other mistake she's making here in that second paragraph is she's making college graduation rates and advanced educational attainment tied to high earning. You know, she's suggesting that because more black women graduate from college and and and have high educational attainment and are thus making money, and I've already shown you that that's not an extremely high number, that somehow this is a connection that, you know, is the only way to evolve. But what men found out is that, you know, there are other ways to become high-earning, and many of them engage those other ways. Many of them engage those other ways and have been doing so for years. Right? So, this construction she's created between college and high earning, and if that's the lens she's using to assess men, she's already eliminated. So, she's not only eliminating men who make less than six figures, right? Who often, I mean, the kind of man she may need in her life, she's already eliminating strictly on the basis of income, which is an extremely ignorant position to take. But on top of that, you're going to also cut out a portion of high earners that don't have college degrees and advanced educational attainment. Plumbers, electricians, entrepreneurs, men who make over six figures. You're going to cut them out of the equation because your standard is college graduation rates and high earning as a consequence of that high-level education. So, she's, this, so in other words, what I'm saying is, as she's talking about the pool being small, she's actually the one that made her pool small.

See, one of the reasons that, you know, men, particularly well-performing men, have such a wide pool is not only because we're providing something that women want, but also because we don't have the same kind of demands. You know, for the most part, you know, a woman working at McDonald's has a shot with a millionaire. Sorry to say, it is what it is. I've heard brothers say you should only stick within your class framework. That's up to you. I'm not arguing one way or the other. I'm just saying women across the class spectrum all have a shot at a well-performing man, high-profile man, if she's attractive and he's interested. You really don't see the opposite the same way. You don't see wealthy women, you know, really entertaining the waiter at the local restaurant, you know? But for men, that's not as much a concern. Now, I will admit that, you know, high-performing men are not that, you know, women who are not in those circles are not easily going to meet those men. But yeah, if you see them at a gas station or in the drive-thru or something, you may have more, you'll have more of a shot than a man in that position would have with a wealthy woman. And it's because men are far more open to that. They have a larger pool. Men are willing to support women that don't have a pot to piss in. Women are not. Men are willing to date women that are outside of their class spectrum. Women are not. Men are not hypergamous in the same kind of way women are. Well, we only have to have a woman that has what we have or more. That's not how men function. Now, whether you think they should or not is a whole different argument. I've heard men over the last few years online saying, you know, men, you should only date women that have something to lose. Women that are in your class strata. Hey, like I said, I don't have an argument. I don't have a dog in that fight. Do it, don't do it, doesn't matter to me. What I am saying is men have the option because they're more willing to engage. Women shrink their own pool by demanding high-profile men. And the problem with that is it's not just high-profile women that are making these demands. If you watch Kendra G's show, you can see a woman up there with three, four kids from different fathers who's making $30,000 a year demanding six and seven and eight-figure men. That's where the level of delusion has just reached epic proportions. Instead of talking to the dude who's trying to get her number, who just delivered her packages, but she's waiting for Idris Elba to show up and knock on her door. I mean, you know, that's the, that's what's shrinking the pool.

And again, I want to be careful. Are many men beginning the work? Absolutely. I see it at the job, online comments, and DMs everywhere and in between. Men going to therapy, men becoming emotionally illiterate. Yeah, see, all men are emotionally illiterate unless they go to therapy. That's [ __ ] Men confronting trauma, men learning vulnerability. That is definitely happening. But I also think we need to tell the truth about what wealth is doing socially. First of all, men do understand vulnerability and express it all the time. The problem with, you know, solipsistic women is they don't believe that men are vulnerable until they express vulnerability in the ways that women do. You take a man whose, you know, best friend was killed or whose mother or father died or, God forbid, their child died, and you see him cry. A woman will say, "Okay, now he's being vulnerable." He's probably given you a hundred signs of vulnerability long before it came to tears. But again, if it doesn't emulate what women do, many women seem to be oblivious to men's demonstrations of emotional vulnerability. You actually have to, you know, love, appreciate, and respect men enough to pay attention to how they emote. But increasingly, what we see is that women only pay attention to how men emote when they emote like women. And if they don't emote like women, as far as women are concerned, they don't emote. And that's ridiculous.

The other thing I have a problem with here is this use or misuse of therapy. Now, I, I'll be the first to say, um, you know, I have no problem with therapy. I do recommend it. I think it can be good, but it all depends on the therapist. And I usually suggest that black men try and find black male therapists, and there's such a small percentage of them, unfortunately. And that's no guarantee either. You know, you got to be real careful with gynocentric, uh, feminist therapists, whether they're male or female, black, white, or whatever. You got to be real careful with that. Black men in particular who've been trained in therapy but have never actually, you know, uh, stepped out of their training to look at the larger, you know, kind of macro ideological practices in their field. They can be extremely dangerous to men, right? By evoking and, uh, applying these feminist ideas that don't have any re, any connection to black men's lived experiences. This can be highly toxic in and of itself. But my problem is twofold. One, as much as I don't have a problem with therapy, I think it's, it first depends on the kind of therapist you can find. And two, I don't like how I'm seeing, um, you know, these middle-class aspiring black women using therapy as both a litmus test and some kind of transformational dynamic, right? Where they're forcing you to be feminized through therapy and feminized and, you know, in the sense that you're you're made to be more gynocentric. Why? Because the fe, the therapy itself and the field of psychology is, you know, moving, it's over, I think it's projected to be up to 95% female in sometime in the next 5 to 10 years. The field is inundated with women, right? The ide, the ideologies, the, the, you know, the standards, the ideas behind what you should do are cultivated mostly by women, and the practitioners are mostly women. And I can't tell you how many, many brothers reached out to me to tell me they went to couples therapy with their wives, and they had a female feminist therapist, and by the end of the, you know, the first few sessions, it turned into these two women henpecking him about what he needs to do, right? But no parity of any significance about what she's bringing to the table. They're almost oblivious to it. And men report this and don't want to go back. And strangely enough, and I've even seen some therapists talk about this online, when there is a situation when the therapist will critique the woman, the woman will often never come back again. I remember a therapist a couple years ago on Twitter came up with that. She said, "You know, I noticed when I have couples, I started, you know," she said, "I used to be critical with with the men, and everything would be fine." But she said, "I started to become a little more critical with the women." What, and what I found is that they would refuse to come back. And she was amazed at this. She was surprised at this. But that's the solipsism I'm talking about. That's the entitlement that I'm talking about. It's so deeply inculcated in African-American culture, and particularly amongst black women's culture, that they become oblivious to it, which is the nature of solipsism in and of itself. They can live in a fantasy, in a bubble that they reinforce amongst each other and is reinforced by media. Why? Well, media caters to women. Women consume more media than men, and as a consequence, they purchase more goods via media advertisement than men. So, what do you think the media industry is going to cater to? I mean, this market of women really reached prominence, or I won't say reached prominence, but it kicked down the door in the 1970s when, you know, women doubled the workforce, and from there, media attended to them in great numbers because they demonstrated the capacity to purchase and consume more media than men. This is why so much of it is female-centered media, which reinforces what's happening in the academy, especially in fields like psychology, which further reinforces this social bubble of solipsism amongst, you know, these, uh, middle-class aspiring black women who want to control black men. And if they can't control you with shaming, and they can't control you with blue leashing, they will control you with this idea of therapy, right? So, they use it as this kind of, oh, I just want you to be healed. But often, what it comes out to is it's the process of becoming more gynocentric by being shamed by somebody with a degree who's telling you that you are inherently flawed, especially if they're functioning off the, the Duth model, which has been debunked by the creators of the model itself. Shout out to Tommy Curry. But if they're invoking these ideas and using it, weaponizing it against untrained everyday men and women, using therapy to browbeat their men into some kind of control dynamic, that's my problem with how therapy is being used.

But I digress, you know, because wealth does not automatically deepen a person. Most times, it simply amplifies who they already were. And if someone already lacking or lacked internal grounding, wealth can become an incredibly effective distraction from developing it. So, she's already assuming that women just have naturally internal grounding. Men don't have internal grounding. See, these kinds of man-hating, you know, definitions of men and women. Women good, men bad. Women smart, men dumb, right? Women mature, men immature. It's predictable and it's sad, right?

But notice something now. I've heard people say that, you know, positions, uh, like mine are just mirror reflections of feminism. You're just the opposite side. Women say this, and in consequence, you say the same thing, but in regard to men. Here's where I differ with that. Men in the spaces that I, I, I, I use, I engage in, right? At least use data as a reference point rather than feelings and stereotypes. Feminists often don't. But if you don't believe me, tell me. In the last, uh, good, the last 30 odd minutes, which one of us has used data and statistics to make their point? The person writing this slideshow or me? I use data to accurately portray the state of affairs between black men and women in regard to income. This woman just declared that women are running circles around men and they can't handle it. And the men that are gaining money are just doing so to their own, to their own detriment. But has she proven it? Has she given you any statistics or data, or is she just basically running off of her feelings and her perspective? This is so common that we often underestimate it. What's being done in this article or slideshow or whatever you want to call it, the Substack, it's a hit piece against black men that's dressed up as something substantial, and it's really nothing more than emotion, right? There's no emphasis on anything objective. Anyway, um, but I think there's another layer here that we rarely discuss honestly. Let me change my position here. All right. Sorry about that.

I believe that wealth pushes black men closer to the patriarchal dream that whiteness promises. Right. An allegiance to whiteness is a hell of a drug. Now, she immediately makes men who are achieving well, you know, the problem. She suggests that they're, uh, developing in the opposite direction, right? They, they're hypo-developing, you know, going the other way. And then she attributes it all to whiteness. In other words, this is an old argument that Tommy Curry debunked in the early, uh, chapters of the man, not that black men aspire to be white patriarchs. That's what she's essentially doing. And I've seen this language a hundred times from feminists. I know it when I see it. But one of the things I find interesting is the extent to which these kinds of women, when they're talking about all this class aspirationalism and their desire to be elite and their desire to be well-to-do, how many of them are actually emulating what they've seen in popular culture from white women. It's an interesting dynamic in the black community. You have black women that want to be in control of the family in many ways, often, you know, subsidized by white society, you know, and they want to be in control and make all the decisions like white men do, but they also want to be pedestalized and adored like white women seem to be by white men, or at least historically have been. It's a strange mix of things where black men in their imagination are these patriarchal monsters, but they themselves want to control the family while being adored like white women. They want the attributes of white men and white women. They want to cast black men as monsters, but then they blame black men for not providing them the narrative in their own heads. It's a very interested, conflicting, and confused dynamic.

She writes, "Somewhere along the way, as we all started drifting closer to the sun, that is unprecedented wealth within our lineage, wealth stopped feeling like a conduit deeper into blackness and started feeling like an exit from it, especially for men. Success became proximity to whiteness, proximity to power, proximity to the kind of freedom and desirability historically reserved for white men. And with that often comes access to white women, proximity to elite spaces, and a version of masculinity that suddenly feels validated by the broader system. That changes people. I could see it changing me if I were a black man. You don't have to wait to be. You don't have to be a black man to see it. Look at how black women have already changed. The more elite you see them go, how much blonde hair and blue contacts do you see? Skin lighteners and the whole deal. But it's black men that's the problem, really." She frames black men who are trying to reach for success as mimicking empowered white men. And she's saying that, you know, this proximity to whiteness is really, you know, what black men aspire to. And it's, this is a huge projection that's going on here, you know. But again, she also ignores when you talk about, uh, the, the cases I've been covering, as well as Pinkbook Lessons on her channel here on YouTube. We've been covering cases for the last year and a half, especially for me, but she's been doing it, you know, well, let me be clear. I've been covering these cases for years before Pinkbook had a channel. Pinkbook focused more so on them than I did on a regular basis. And in the last year and a half, I've been talking about them more fervently in relation to black women being ejected from, you know, the, this white supremacist paradigm we've seen in the last couple of years. Preceding the rise of Trump, you know, this right-wing wave began to push black women out of circles that they had, you know, found themselves quite comfortable in. You know, this is what we've been witnessing for the last year and a half. And the reason I bring that up is this article ignores the many high-profile black women that have been boosted or booted, excuse me, out of their positions for embezzlement, for misuse of funds, for poor behavior. She doesn't talk about any of that for high-profile black women. And I talked about that. Some of them are politicians. Some of them have high-level white-collar positions, positions of authority as directors of programs, academic, nonprofit, corporate, media-based. We have seen an expulsion of black women from high-profile positions. And there's no mention of any of that here. No mention of any of it. She just aligns successful black women with spiritual maturity or emotional maturity. But notice she doesn't talk about the high-profile black women that have been caught doing dirt because it's not part of her paradigm. It's not part of her bubble.

She says that changes people. I could see it changing me if I were a black man. But for many black women, wealth did the opposite. It pushed us further inward, deeper into ourselves, our healing, our communities, and our identity. Okay? Right? Black women were never really sold the fantasy that we could become anything close to white men. We understood very early that we carried both a race hurdle and a gender hurdle. This is such [ __ ] Black men also carried a race and gender hurdle. We were accosted on the basis of both race and gender. Every black man that's been lynched was lynched on the basis of being a black man. See, it's interesting how they want to erase gender as it applies to heterosexual black men, but it only applies to women and LGBTs. But when in reality, and this is what a lot of black male studies has been pushing over the last decade, that being a heterosexual man and all of the, the violence, right, and vitriol directed at heterosexual black men or presumed heterosexual black men is gendered. See, the problem is when you say the term gender, we think of women, but really gendered in and of itself applies to men, right? This is not just the purview of women, but this kind of one-way delusionalism is part of that solipsistic bubble that many of these women live in, right? And I think that divergence is quite reshaping, is quietly reshaping modern black relationships in real time, and it makes us examine the way we view our own intersectionality. Many black men identify as men first, then black. Many black women identify as black first, then women. This is absolute [ __ ] She says that distinction matters. It's untrue. Black men have never had the luxury of illusion. There's no black man that I've met that doesn't know the six degrees of separation that have put him to sleeping under a bridge from where he is now. And we know it doesn't take much historically. Hell, if you look at Raj Chetty's research in the last few years, even black men born into wealth are the highest group that the, the demographic with the highest capacity to fall out of wealth into poverty, more so than black women. There is no safe position for black men because we are in a system that has targeted us for elimination and underdevelopment since the inception of slavery. This is, this is the dynamic at play. Black men are not able to live this fantasy that you attribute to them because that's never been a reality we could actually live in.

Anyway, because black women often move through the world understanding that our blackness fundamentally shapes our experience of womanhood. But many black men, once wealth enters the picture, begin experiencing manhood in ways that feel increasingly detached from collective black struggle. You know, if you actually believe this, would you really be pursuing these very men that you say are this much of a problem? It sounds to me, based on your own argument, you should actually pursue men that make less than six figures. And maybe you'll find yourself dealing with men who are more grounded. But she won't, 'cause she's fundamentally complaining about not being able to find a rich, uh, black man with status.

She says, "Not always entirely, not always consciously, but enough to shift perspective." And this is also what makes black men so susceptible to manosphere red pill content. Their maleness has become a greater share of their identity than their blackness. Absolute [ __ ] The reason that men are drawn, are being drawn to red pill content is that in the black community, right, our manhood and the discussions around it have been stifled. They've been stifled for years. We're not allowed to talk as men. We, we can only speak as men in very curated spaces, being overseen by women, and whether it be in families, whether it be in classrooms, or both of which dominated by women in the black community, right? What's being drawn here is that the attention to masculinity and manhood in the black community has been highly scrutinized by women and by the system itself, and in many respects has been ignored and downplayed over the years until in the last 20 or 15 odd years, men became toxic across the board. But in the black community, we were told we weren't [ __ ] long before it became popular for men to be considered toxic. So, black males got a double dose of gendered erasure in terms of their manhood. And part of what's drawing them to red pill content is that red pill content acknowledges that history and starts to make, help them make sense of their own experiences as men, isolated and underdeveloped and downplayed even in their own families. So, what's drawing them to these spaces is not that their maleness means more than their blackness. It's that their maleness has always been a non-point, a non-existent quotient in the discussion that they were supposed to ignore. While women hyperfocused on their femininity, men were shamed if they even tried to acknowledge their masculinity. Women were celebrated for doing so. Right? That dynamic is what's been in play. And so this is the response. When you look, when you take something out of a community like a healthy focus on manhood, the men are going to replace it with something else. This is a human feature. This is not any deficiency in men. It doesn't matter what you take. If you remove something out of a community's function, they will replace it with what's available and what they have. And here's the thing. When you start talking about red pill content outside of social media, you know, specific companies like YouTube and X and all of that, there really is no control over.

The discourse. It's not being controlled through an academic setting. It's not being controlled through, you know, there's no the the greatest influence on these spaces are the ru the rules that uh social media companies have, you know. So if they start throttling your YouTube channel, if you use cuss words, what do you see guys do? They stop cussing as much. If they if they if they come at you for how you talking women, then you know they create other ways to have the conversations they want. That's about the most influence you're going to see any company have on Red Pill spaces.

Now, why am I saying this? I'm saying this because Red Pill is an interesting space where you have men across class, across geography, you know, across experience who are able to come together and have realistic conversations about their own experiences. There is no other place that this wide a range of black men have been able to consult with one another. That's what makes these spaces attractive. It's a conversation that black men have not been allowed to have even in our own homes. You know how many brothers listen to my show sitting in the [ __ ] driveway of their car and they're too afraid to go in the house and play it cuz they know they'll catch hell and it's just a lot of stress. That's what I'm talking about.

But these spaces are attractive because they've been so eliminated from day-to-day culture in the black community, both by the wider society and by black women and families and in in very particular environments like the school. So there haven't been any spaces outside of sports and military for men to congregate. And now that they found them, they're able to compare notes and have discussions that they weren't able to have in any other space. And now they're being shamed for it. If anything, the manosphere has been watered down to Andrew Tate and Fresh and Fit. And that somehow is supposed to encapsulate everything that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of of men across the world are starting to realize in these dialogues with one another. The downplaying of it is is dastardly in that respect.

Here we go. And because of this, men not only obsess about their masculinity with little regard to the context of blackness, they also become obsessed with the femininity of their partners with little regard to the context of race within their partners. I mean, how often are we going to beat the conversation about femininity and softness in black women to death? And thus, the divide deepens.

So, while wealth often pushes black women inward toward healing, reflection, self-development, and emotional grounding, which I vehemently disagree with, before I turn the page, let me just quickly address what she said up here as far as beating the conversation on femininity to death. It's mainly because y'all don't listen to it. But it's okay. It's okay because men are reaching a point where they're they're no longer pushing these ongoing arguments with you. More and more men have stopped arguing. Look, I started my show maybe, I don't know, 2019, somewhere in there. I stopped talking to women. Before that, I used to try to have conversations and that just turned into debates because the blowback was so emotionally intense from women. Whenever I would say something, I'd have to respond with a, you know, I'd have to respond and often began to respond with data, you know, and then it just kept escalating from there. And I just realized, you know what? It's not worth it. Let me talk to men who actually want to understand what they're experiencing. And that's why my channel started to grow because men wanted to understand what they were experiencing. That's why. But I stopped talking to women because it just wasn't worth it.

The whole question of femininity and softness is huge in the black community, but black men are tired of arguing about it. And you're starting to see it slow down. And men are just going elsewhere to find femininity that already exists rather than arguing with women who refuse to be feminine. Because contrary to popular, you know, thought, men have a right to have u uh standards themselves. And femininity is one of those standards. Whether you like it or not, you can not like it all you want. Men want feminine w feminine women, black men. And if you're not going to give it to them, if you're going to argue with them about it and just double down on masculinity, then they're going elsewhere to find it.

Anyway, wealth can push black men outward towards success. I mean, status, access, validation, and proximity to whiteness. And if we're being honest, the patriarchy heavily rewards this journey. [ __ ] Patriarchy doesn't have to reward the journey. Women reward it. The more status, the more access, the more wealth you obtain, women pay you more attention. All right, you tell me. You 400 lb, you make $30,000 a year. H what kind of women are interested in you? How's that work? But if you're in shape, you're making more than six figures, you you've got status and respect in the community, you're advancing in your life goals, is there a difference in how women respond? So, what is actually rewarding men? Hm. Because anything black men achieve in this system, they're highly it's highly under threat. Because there there are whole systems at play that never designed for black men to do well and have actually sought over the years to make sure you didn't.

Anyway, which is why I think so many high achieving black women feel confused in dating. On paper, the match with a successful black man makes sense. Same income, same lifestyle, same educational level. But emotionally, it feels worlds apart because we're often dating for partnership. And many men, consciously or unconsciously, are still dating from a place of validation. And those are two completely different missions. This is [ __ ] You're dating for partnership with wellto-do men. That's the whole focus of your article. You're not dating for partnership with men who you have something in common with and can see as, you know, a boyfriend, a husband, or whatever, a significant relationship. You're specifically looking for wellto-do men and you're only talking about partnership because they have means. And here's the thing, we grew up with y'all. We grew up with women. I don't know why. Well, I do know why. This is part of the solopism and the entitlement that we're talking about. Women are oblivious to the fact that we've grown up with them. We've lived with them. The same households, same communities, same schools, same institutions. We know when we're being used, right? You're looking for partnership. No, you're looking to use somebody for resources because if it really was about partnership, you would be dating men all over the the the class strata, but you don't. You're particularly writing this. Now, you'll have kids with those men until you find the dream man you're looking for, but you won't, you know, you won't identify them as the men you need to be with because you're looking for men with means. And then you're getting mad when those men with means know they're being used and decide. They don't necessarily men don't decide to not be used. In many instances, what they decide is I will allow myself to be used only to these points that I've outlined, maybe in a prenup, but only if I get something out of it that I deem worth my time and energy. And that's where her frustration comes into play. Because if those men don't find what you're offering to be worth what they've built up in themselves for themselves, they're not going to take you as seriously. And that's when your desire for partnership fails with men who decide that what you offer is not worth the sacrifice. And that's what you're mad about.

The last part she says is the way I see it is that yes, money can expand your options, but it cannot replace inner work. And eventually, no matter how much success someone attains, every relationship will expose the parts of themselves they've never developed. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because many women have never had to develop the parts of themselves that men don't like, especially if they were pretty. They used to get attention. And that's one of the reasons that even some of the older women will still argue against femininity and fight men back on men's standards. Because if she's been able to attract men most of her life, even though that's diminishing as she ages, she doesn't understand that that's still something she needs to do. Because why? It worked before, it'll work again. I'll get somebody else. Yeah, you'll get somebody else. That's not the problem.

But one of the differences, men are able to get someone else across different cultures, especially when they're doing well. And more particularly if they're able to live abroad or at least travel abroad. Men can find all kinds of things in all kinds of different groups. Women not so much. And it's not because they can't get attention. Women can have sex with whomever they want for the most part. They can they can they can get sex. And other racial groups of men are happy to have sex with them. But to come home with you, to introduce you to their family, to marry you, to produce families with you, functional families, that's a whole different equation. They will do that. women, women of other cultures will do that for men, but not necessarily the other round. And more to the point, many of these aspiring black women will not necessarily get in any serious way with men from other cultures if those men don't have equal or more means, which is the fundamental the problem they're having in the US. That's part of the issue. If you make $200,000 a year as a woman, are you really going to go to a third world country and get with a man that makes, you know, no, that's part of the issue. But men don't have that reservation. A man may of means will go to another country and if he meets a woman that suits his needs, whether she has money or not, he'll entertain it. That opens his pool. Women shut their pools down.

But more, you know, let's let's let's look at how, you know, some women actually approach this issue and see it differently. Check this out. >> The women are actually a huge part of the problem. And it is so subtle, yet it's insidious. women. The contempt, the subtle arrogance and entitlement around your needs and self-righteously expecting your needs to get met while withholding respect and just common decency and niceness and warmth is profound. Like, oh, and I am guilty of it as well. This is women. This is this is the mess that we're making. I have seen too many men whose dignity has been snuffed out when his wife could hold the position of building up that dignity. What an honor that could be. What healing is available. But no, we want to be right and we want our needs met. So many men trying so hard in their own way to not be received. not good enough. Not exactly what I needed. You're not safe. Women don't realize that our words and our energy cut deeply to a man and then we wonder why he's not showing up. >> Yeah, absolutely. This has become part of the issue. But I'll tell you, one of the things that I think the author of the slideshow, the Substack, is oblivious to is, you know, the ways in which men experience black women, even black women that claim to be emotionally balanced and mature. This is what black men experience from those women. >> I don't I don't need them. >> You talk to him LIKE THIS. >> THAT'S WHY IT'S IMPORTANT FOR THEM. DO YOU TALK TO HIM LIKE THIS FOR ME? Do you talk to him like this? >> Like what? >> Like how you talking to us right now? Do you talk to him like that? >> You overt talking. >> Yeah. A lot of women. >> Yeah. Tell me you talk to him like that. I'm going tell you something. >> And you expect him to be a wilder guy for you. >> Can I say this? I ain't going to sit here. I'm sitting here listening. >> There's no way in the [ __ ] cuz I done dealt with this. >> No way in the [ __ ] I'm going to sit here and take you serious when you doing this [ __ ] to me. I got a mama or had I don't need another mama. I need a partner. My partner in business or anything ain't going to talk to me [ __ ] up and make me feel this big. >> Yeah. First of all, I want to touch on something you said earlier. I'm glad you went in like that. I want to touch on something you just said a few minutes ago. We're getting here. >> Yeah, >> we're getting here. I DON'T WANT Y'ALL TO THINK THAT I'M TALKING BECAUSE I KNOW THAT'S HOW A [ __ ] WOULD DO. A [ __ ] WILL TAKE THE SAME LITTLE THING YOU SAY AND TRY TO MAKE LIKE I'M TRYING TO BE LITTLE MY MAN IN FRONT OF HERE. NO, WE'RE DOING WHAT I telling you how I am doing though IS MAKING SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN A WOMAN HAS A VISION AND A plan for where she WANT TO GO IN HER LIFE, SHE DON'T NEED A MAN TELLING HER, "OH, NO. You don't need to go." >> She can do it in an inside voice. >> She don't need to go. >> She can talk in an inside voice. >> What's wrong with a regular voice? >> She can talk in a regular voice. >> WHAT? WHEN A MAN TALK LOUD, HE'S CONFIDENT. >> NO. talking no. >> SHE'S SHE'S UH WHEN A WOMAN TALK LOUD. >> YEAH. Cuz you know why? Cuz women ain't supposed to talk like that. YOU KNOW Y'ALL [ __ ] BOTH OF y'all if y'all think that I'M UP HERE BEING SOME TYPE OF WAY BECAUSE I DON'T NEED NEITHER ONE OF Y'ALL FOR [ __ ] AND YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SIT UP HERE CONDESCENDING to me EITHER BECAUSE I AM A STRONG WOMAN. I DON'T [ __ ] OFF NO [ __ ] I DON'T GIVE A [ __ ] IF HE MY DADDY, MY BROTHER, MY MAN. >> WHY DID YOU GET MAD AT US ON STAGE? >> [ __ ] >> LISTEN, this is a question that you said. Why you mad at us for that? >> Yeah, there you go. And contrary to popular opinion, these are often the same women that claim to be emotionally balanced and and and healed and all. This is what men experience from women across class in the black community and across these ideas about being pure and please. It's ridiculous. And this is far too common. This is just not something that men are imagining. You know what? Give me another example. Check this out. >> Want to deal with that? Then deal with that. But hey, stop. >> Hey, you got to deal with that then. >> No. This is the issue. This is the issue. Listen to what I'm saying. DON'T CUT ME OFF. >> That's exactly what you're saying though. >> I understand men. And what I'm saying is men will protect. >> Men just they just do this and they just do that. No. If you sit there, hey, hell no. I'm not GOING TO DO THAT. >> WHY YOU CAN'T GET A [ __ ] TO COMMIT to you OR TAKE CARE OF YOU? >> YES. CUZ I WANT I WANT A MAN TO SIT THERE AND CHEAT on me. I would rather be alone. You over talk and you don't SHUT THE [ __ ] UP. THIS IS THE PROBLEM HERE. IF YOU SHUT the [ __ ] UP, maybe you want to be a man of you. You're not going. Don't shut the [ __ ] UP. LIKE, I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WON'T SHUT THE [ __ ] UP. LIKE, YOU WANT TO BE A MAN so bad. Like, you want to be picked so bad. So it anyways, like I said before, I cut your ass off and I will [ __ ] block you because you don't listen. If you want a man to take care of you, obviously you do. YOU WILL NEVER have a man to take care of you. You will never have a man to provide for you. And a MAN WILL NEVER EVER BE FAITHFUL TO YOU BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO SHUT THE [ __ ] UP. THAT'S YOUR ISSUE. YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO SHUT THE [ __ ] UP. SHUT YOUR ASS UP AND LISTEN IF THAT'S WHAT YOU LOOKING FOR. IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT, YOU NOT GOING TO GET IT CUZ YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO SHUT THE [ __ ] UP AND LISTEN WHEN A REAL [ __ ] IS TALKING. WHEN A REAL [ __ ] TALKING. Let's be real. LIKE, YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO GET [ __ ] CHEATED ON. YOU ALWAYS GOING TO GET DOGWALKED. YOU'RE ALWAYS GOING TO GET HANDLED AND MISHANDLED BECAUSE YOU DON'T SHUT THE [ __ ] UP. >> I'm just going to take a shower. I got my water running from sitting here. >> All right. Right.

So fundamentally what I'm saying with this is that you know black women's entitlement and their solicism has influenced their behavior to such an extreme that they've become oblivious to their own contributions to a failed relationship dynamic in the black community. It's gotten to such a point that it's just it it's somewhere along the lines of pure arrogance and and and borderline narcissism. It's just ridiculously so. Right. Some believe that because they make more money, this somehow leads to some kind of insecurity in men and some emotional evolution in women, but remain oblivious to how they actually repel men with their own behavior and then denigrate the men that they've repelled, you know, for not wanting them but refusing to look at how they've actually behaved in the dynamic, right? They tell men that we they have poor emotional management. um you know but are oblivious to their own arrogance, right? And this is a problem. It's reached such a point that you know it's actually threatening black coupling and family formation in the black community. It's gotten to that point. It it's to the point where men have become so disgusted because this has moved past just an occasional behavior and it's become a cultural feature in black women's culture in the black community. They high-five each other with this and men have are growing so so dissatisfied with it that they're entertaining monkhood and searching out women from other cultures, races, and geographic locations to to avoid this.

But I tell you what, in 2026, if you don't believe how far this has gotten, you know, check this out. This is was released on May 15th, a couple days ago, right? And this is the film is God is. I'll be going to see it tomorrow, right? We're going to have a show on it Wednesday with the Justice League. We're we're going to come out and discuss it, you know, as we've done with other such projects like The Woman King, The Color Purple, both the original and the remake and a score of other black feministled, you know, productions that are dead set on denigrating the black male image because apparently Alicia Harris, the woman who wrote uh and directed this film, she said one of her major motivations for doing so was her frustration at uh um Briana Taylor's death and the extent to which you know she got less attention than men, but instead of attacking the media industry, which black men don't control, she's attacking black men, or at the very least the black male image. And you can read the subtitle in the poster. Make your daddy dead. Real dead. Right? This is what we're seeing. Make your daddy dead. When did you see black men make movies like this? >> You know, where they're trying to kill a woman that, say, I don't know, uh, roasted her kids alive in an oven or chopped up their body parts and put them in suitcases and dug them into the ground in the backyard or chopped them up and tried to put them in freezers and and not get caught. And by the way, all three of those incidents I just named were real life events. What fictional movies have you seen where they're going out to to to kill a woman that have done this? Black men don't even celebrate the deaths of feminists that have denigrated them for decades. Black men didn't throw parties when Bell Hooks died. And she's a she's, you know, regarded around the world for her publications. This required reading and many a graduate school and undergrad institution. I had to read her and many other black feminists as required reading in classes that weren't considered gender courses. Yeah. And yet none of us celebrated when she died or any others. But in this instance, you know, not only they celebrating and planning the death of a black man on screen for doing the most, you know, horrendous [ __ ] they celebrated the deaths of real live men like Kevin Samuels. They threw parties when Kevin died. You know, this has gotten to that point. It's that ridiculous. And I truly hope that uh black men decide to continue, I should say, to start walking away from all of this and require better treatment no matter where they go because this [ __ ] this is ridiculous. But I want to know your thoughts. Let me know your experiences. Let me know what you have uh to say about any of this and what you've experienced that may align with some of the things we talked about today. And I'll holler at y'all soon. Peace.