I am speaking to my brothers right now. I am also speaking to men in general. I am speaking to the strong minded, strong willed Alpha males of our communities. The stand up, stand strong, focus minded men of our communities. The fathers, sons, and brothers that are the pillars of their families. My brothers, there is a catastrophe taking place. A near epic crisis. This is not hyperbole. It is the truth. An ugly truth that up until now we have not really spoken about. That crisis involves our sisters. Our wives. Our daughters. Brothers, our women are suffering. Badly. And it's time we said something about it and did something about it.
I've been married a long time. I have a son and two beautiful daughters whom I love deeply. It pains me to see what our women are suffering through. This isn't an attempt to pander to women. This is an attempt to shake us out of our collective, apathetic funk. Our women are going through a ton of shit right now and it's really high time we collectively took notice.
We need to speak to our fellow brothers. Oftentimes females are dismissed as loud, angry, man hating feminists when they speak of the issues that plague them. Such stereotypes seem to make it easy for us to ignore their pleas. That is where we need to step in. We who count ourselves among the strong minded Alphas. We need to get a hold of our brothers and let them know that this is serious. It's on us to start healing the black family and so far we have been deficient.
I know some of my brothers are reading this and are already dismissing my words. I know you are. You've been trained to. We've all been trained to. So I want to hit you with some hard math. Math we have been collectively ignoring. These are just three glaring examples of the struggles our women face:
One in five women have been sexually assaulted in college. One in five.( Source: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/new-obama-group-tackles-sexual-violence-on-campus-102479.html ) If you have daughters or a sister that number should shake you to your foundation. As a father with two girls that will soon be heading off to school it's disturbing.
One in three women have been raped in the military. The MILITARY. One in three. (Source: http://www.care2.com/causes/war-among-comrades-1-in-3-women-raped-in-the-military.html ) A woman in the military is more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than killed in combat.
Two weeks ago 234 girls in Nigeria were abducted and are now being sold to Boko Haram militants. (Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kidnapped-nigeria-school-girls-reportedly-sold-as-brides-to-islamic-boko-haram-militants/). Innocent girls who likely being raped, assaulted, and treated like trash as I write this.
Now look at those three stories and combine them with the everyday stories you read about rape and domestic violence. "Crisis" and "catastrophe" doesn't seem that far fetched now does it?
It goes deeper than that as well. How many young boys are not learning how to be men because we haven't taught them how? How many young girls are suffering with bad men because we didn't teach our daughters what a good man looks like? We need to own this stuff my brothers. That's what a man does. A man owns problems and then solves them. That's what we do. That's one of our many callings. We need to own this crisis and start working on ways to fix it. But we can't fix what we don't acknowledge as broken and collectively we've been too quiet.
I'm also not going to offer the proverbial phrase "there are good men out here". Because I already know we're out here. We've BEEN out here. What our sisters need is for those of us that are out here to make some NOISE. Let you voice be heard. This isn't about pandering or patronizing. This is about your wives. Your ladies. Your mothers. Your sisters. Your daughters. This is about helping them. Keeping them safe. Making sure they have what they need. They are counting on us to do what we do. We need to start delivering and we haven't been doing enough.
So lift your voice up. Get your hands dirty. It's time to confront this crisis. Your wifey is worth it. Your mother is worth it. Your daughter is worth it. Your sisters is worth it. Alphas where you at?
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