Starved For Romance

This post is not about blaming American society fully for why a group of women have allowed themselves to be starved for Romance. This post is meant to give a solution for a situation that has gone on far too long. This post is about African American women and our inability or failure to have men in our lives.

African American women have made great strides in small numbers in the last 3 decades. One of the wealthiest and most influential women on earth is Oprah Winfrey. When Oprah talks, not everyone, but certainly many listen. When I was in Turkey a couple of months ago, I felt a small surge of pride when I saw an article abouther featured in a major Turkish newspaper. Still Oprah is only one successful African American woman with a supposedly loyal male companion who has supported her for well over 20 years.

The majority of African American women don't have financial security or a man in their life like Oprah They are forgotten and doomed. For about 2 decades now, there has been warfare between African American men and women that is known in the black community and which has been occasionally addressed in black magazines like Ebony, but in the larger society this war is not well known. American society knows that young black males are very prone to being shallowed up by the criminal justice system. Just last week the nation witnessed the tragedy of the murder of NFL player Sean Taylor who at 24 had had his own run in with the law and was finally cut down by 4 young black men who were attempting to burglarize his home. He and his killers became another statistic in the constant bad news emanating from the black community, another story of a group of young black male lives wasted in a when there are no more places left where it can be afforded for more black lives to be destroyed. A generation of black males are lost in America; this must be faced. A generation of black females are lost in America too because they have become mothers at young ages relegating them mainly to the poverty and imprisonment of the ghetto. A new report came out this week that paints another grim statistic for black teenage girls. This year the rate of teenage pregancy rose for the first time in nearly 17 years. The jump was notedly sharp among young black females.

In the war and battles between African American men and women a strange situation has actually cropped up unlike perhaps in any other group on the face of the earth. More and more African American men have actually grown to despise their female counterparts and now date, cohabit with, or marry only white women. The reasons cited for this is that some black men see having a relationship with a white woman as a way as avenging themselves against white men. Black women had always been easy prey for white men during slavery. Up until the late 1960s, it could actually mean death for a black man, especially in the south, to try and have a relationship with a white woman. In 1955 a black teenager named Emmett Till was murdered by a group of white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. After the ban on mixed marriages was lifted, more and more black men turned to white women, not only to tweak the nose of white men, but also to deliberately enrage black women as well since many feel that black women were too harsh, strong, and greedy for money.

While black men turned to white female lovers, black women were left deprived. Occasional black men are often in and out of the lives of black women in the ghettos, leaving them with their offspring, but never them. For the educated black woman it is even more stark with relationships few and far between. The complaint has long been that if a black woman gets an education, meeting a black man on her level will be like finding a needle in haystack. This is very true. Over the years some have even advocated that educated black women take black men far beneath their educational and economic stations in order not to be alone. But if you have a Ph.D. how can you reach common ground with a guy who is just a truck driver? How can something as basic as things to talk about be found? Also black men are often intimidated by women who are far more educated than themselves. How can these obstacles be overcome?

I think all the issues about Romance and relationships for educated African American women and our "aloneness" in America can be overcome by more black women deciding to broaden our horizons and date and marry men who are not African American. This is not about something as infantile as tweaking the noses of black men, but about possible self preservation in the long run.

I have long been attracted to men who are not African American, particularly to men of southern European, African, and Middle Eastern origin. I have never felt pressure from my family to not became interested in someone who was not of my "race." My parents like me, feel that color should not get in the way of people loving one another. My mother has even joked that she would like to have a Jewish son-in-law because in the recent past if a black woman married a white man (ie. Alice Walker or Diana Ross) it tended to be a Jew. During the Civil Rights Movement and up until Jesse Jackson's infamous "Hymie Town" remark, African Americans and Jews had in some quarters enjoyed close relationships because both groups found common ground in the sufferings both had endured over the centuries.

Over the years I have admired the daring of women like Diana Ross, Whoopie Goldberg, and Donna Summer who were criticized mightily by blacks when they repeatedly dated and married white men. These black women lived and worked in a majority white industry where opportunities for meeting compatible black men are often slim. Would it have made sense for they have to deprived themselves and perhaps wait for nothing?

When I read that Halle Berry had started dating a white man I thought, "More power to you girl." Why not try something new? Several years back when my friend Mitzi, who had been an odd egg like me being among the tiny minority of blacks to attend The University of Georgia, married an Asian guy and had a child that looked more Asian than black, I was so happy for her. Mitzi did not sit back and wait for nothing. For me these good feelings were not about getting revenge against black men for their inadequecies, disrespect, and insecurities, it was about black women deciding to take control of their lives and seek happiness no matter what the black community or society at large thought.

I strongly advocate that African American women stop limiting their lives on all levels educationally, financially, AND Romantically. In the blog Interracial Dating Blog, the sad plight of African American women in the marriage arena is mentioned:

Many people will agree that the gender disparity in education and business among African-Americans has a spill over effect on relationships that African American women have. And like I said above, big mama taught women to move on with their lives even without a husband. According to some, these implications have redefined Black America's family and social structure. The percentage of African American women between 25-54 who have never been married has doubled over the fifty years, from 20% to 40%. This is more than that of white women (16%).

We must ignore the "big mama's" of the world who say that, "You can do bad by yourself, honey" because I believe that loneliness is killing African American women. After black men who have the lowest life expectancy rate in the country, we are next in line for the funeral dirge to be sung over.

Humans are made to be social. Only a chosen few have the gift of celibacy. African American women must stop speaking the language of white supremacists and saying that it is Biblically wrong to marry outside the race. This view is also talked in Should Races Mix? also in Interracial Blog. In the Bible, race is never once mentioned because over the centuries when it was penned, there was no concept of race. Ideas to divide humanity into racial groups is a western European construct. The concept is foreign to the Bible.

In my life time I have had both whites and blacks propose marriage to me. The two men I have loved intensely were an African from Zambia and a Turk. My first real boyfriend was from the African nation of Somalia. I have had my lonely times like most African American women, but I have never turned down a man's attention because he was not of my "race." I have never felt compelled to limit myself.

I wish more African American women would forget the restrictions put on them early on and decide to open themselves to possibilities in Romance no matter if the man is English, Indian, Arab, Chinese, etc. There is a big world out there, and it is time we became a part of it.

Russia's Romantic: Alexander Pushkin

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799-1837) was a figure in the Romantic Movement or Romanticism of the late 18th and early 19th century. Unlike the best known of the Romantics in western Europe like Byron, Keats, and Shelley who all died young, Pushkin lived in Tsarist Russia. He is the literary giant of Russia, and with him Russian literature began.

Pushkin's origins are as Romantic and colorful on his maternal side as his writings. Both of his parents were of the lesser nobility. His father Sergei's family had been boyars, and his mother Nadezhda's grandfather had been an African slave first placed in the court of the Turkish Ottoman sultan and then purchased by Tsar Peter the Great. Peter freed Pushkin's great grandfather Abraham Hannibal and adopted him as his son. Abraham was educated in Europe and became a military engineer. His exact origins in Africa are not clearly unknown, but it is believed that he may have been from what is now either Ethiopia, Chad, or Eritrea.

Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow. Because of his privileged background he attended the Imperial Lyceum near St. Petersburg. At 14 his first poem was published. Throughout his short life Pushkin wrote hundreds of poems both short and epic and even short stories. He wrote a short story about his great grandfather which is entitled The Negro of Peter the Great. His poetry is so rich and the language so diverse, that in translation it is nearly impossible to capture the complete flavor of his writings. Pushkin aided in revolutionizing the Russian language and the art of poetic writing. His poems contained themes of Romance, adventure, fantasy, and satire. The satirical element in his writings caused him to get into trouble several times with the Russian authorities. He was exiled to the Caucasus, the Crimea, and to his family's estates for upsetting the Tsar with his writings.

Pushkin was a favorite of the ladies, and had numerous love affairs with women who ranged from peasants to the upper crust. Eventually after sowing his wild oats for a number of years Pushkin married a very beautiful young woman named Natalya Goncharova. He once again regained favor and was admitted back into the Russian court, but he was highly suspicious of this suddent return to good feelings toward him. He believed that his wife's beauty was the magnet that was drawing him back into semi-favor, particularly when the Tsar showed his true colors and appointed Pushkin to the lowest post at court. By now nearly drowning in debt, and enraged by all the attention his wife was getting from the men including the Tsar. He soon began to believe rumors that his wife was having an affair with a French emigre. He challenged the man to a duel in which both were wounded, but Pushkin was hurt mortally dying two days later. He was only 37, and like the chief Romantics of England (Byron, Shelly, and Keats) he was dead before age 40. Like Byron and other young men of his generation, he was inspired by the Greek struggle for freedom from the Ottoman Turks, keeping a meticulous diary of the uprising. Even though his marriage was turbulent, Pushkin and Natalya had four children together.

Today in Russia, Pushkin's memory lives on in the names of streets, institutions, and monuments. His poems and stories were fertile ground for usage by Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. Pushkin's use of language actually helped enrich the Russian lexicon. His love for the common people helped him to retain appeal even during Communist times in Russia.

In 1999 a stature of Pushkin was erected at George Washington University in Washington, DC. I have been an admirer of Pushkin for a long time because of his dynamic and Romantic life and also for his black heritage. Most Americans have probably never heard of him. How amazed they would be if they knew that Russia's greatest poet and the inaugurator of Russia's golden age of literature was what some people in America would call a black man.

Link: Some poems by Alexander Pushkin

A Romantic Pick From Turkey: Winter 2004-2005

I have traveled to the country of Turkey five times. Thrice I have resided there and worked as an English teacher teaching the language as a second language. When I tell people that I have lived and worked in Turkey as an English teacher, some ask me what language do the citizens of Turkey speak. Most have never heard of the Turkish language.

I had an intense love affair with the country from 2003 until this year. I never thought my love could be so fickle, but it receded into the mists. Now I have just both fond, perplexed, and exasperated feelings for the place.

When I was working in Turkey's largest city Istanbul, during the winter of 2004-2005, the school where I was employed had put me up in a cheap but clean hotel. Often my room's heater did not give out enough heat, so on the two days when I was not working and the weather was too bad to go out I would look at a music video station named KRAL. Kral in Turkish means "king." This video by Cuneyt Tek is called 'Gidersen' which means "If you go..." I would sit in my hotel room or lie in bed and wait for it to come on. The hotel where I stayed for 3 months only carried about eight television stations, all of which were in Turkish. Since at the time I knew almost no Turkish, I would watch KRAL since "music," as someone once said "is the universal language." Later when I bought Tek's CD containing the song, "Gidersen" I played it for my best friend Hanife, and using the liner notes containing the lyrics, we sang the song together one day during my one of my breaks. Hanife told me that "Gidersen" is a love song which I had already gathered from the video. She also told me that she thinks Cuneyt Tek is very cute. He is, and rather remains me of a very young, teenage Burt Reynolds. I also knew that the word, "askim" means "my love," a word that the song contains.

When I watched this video that winter on TV I was really touched by how Romantic it was. The story that the video tells of a boy and a girl falling in love as children and going through life together is what many of us would like even if we have too much pride to admit it. I had one student, Aylin, who married her sweet heart from middle school, but she divorced her husband while I was her teacher in Turkey because he came over to America and abandoned her for another much older woman with kids, so Aylin's love story went awry. I wish it could have ended differently. She recently wrote me that she still is alone. I learned from her experience and from my own there that love and Romance is just as uneasy in Turkey as here and everywhere else. Wouldn't it be nice if it were easy?

Enjoy "Gidersen." :))

A Romantic Piece of Equipment

Last summer I decided to invest in this stereo system that is a piece of nostalgia and Romance. I can almost hear the 'R' in Romance rolling when I think of this prize. This pre-modern stereo console sits in my bedroom with my AM/FM cathedral radio on top of it. Both are reproductions of entertainment equipment from a much earlier time period.

My stereo console is from Seventh Avenue , a company whose catalogue I have been receiving for several years now. Seventh Avenue sells all kinds of items for the home ranging from furniture, accents like grandfather clocks, toys, housewares, electronics, jewelry, collectibles, and even fitness machines. I really love this company for their furniture items that are a throw back to earlier eras. My console has a turn table that plays records of all speeds, a cassette player, an AM/FM radio, and a CD player. It even has a remote control devise.

Shortly after I was born in the early 1960s, my dad bought a stereo console from Philco. It's cabinet was made of pure walnut veneer, and he was extremely proud of it. It was one of the most expensive pieces of furniture that my parent's owned at the time. It had a turn table and an AM/FM radio. We still have it even though neither the radio nor the turntable functions anymore. Throughout my childhood it was a mainstay in our home with my dad playing his jazz records on nearly full blast many evenings, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" Speech became ingrained in my mind because dad would play it over and over. When the Philco stereo was first purchased it came with a shiny, silver colored label sitting regally on its' left speaker. Being curious even then, I quickly peeled it off one day when my parents were not looking. My dad later said he was so hurt when he saw how I had sneaked and defaced his most prized possession at the time.

Now this year I have my own Romantic looking console. It is not made of the sturdy stuff of which my dad's is made, but I think it is far more beautiful. It harkens back to a time before my dad's piece. It looks rather Victorian whereas dad's looks more 1960s-ish, last elaborate and more direct.

I still have some LPs (Long Playing records) of my own that I bought when I was a university student, all of Culture Club, a couple of Gino Vannelli albums, Dionne Warwick, Mario Lanza, Chopin. What's left of my dad's old jazz collection is still here too, Thelonius Monk, Ahmed Jamal, Miles Davis, Dakota Staton, Nina Simone, some Leonard Bernstein, even the "I Have Dream" speech is still around. This is what I cut my cultural teeth on. What and whom I listened to over the years has been a subliminal influence on why I am a very unique and Romantic individual.

Like my dad was, I am very proud to own the above piece.

Native American Romance

Lee Bogle is an American artist who lives in the Pacific Northwest. He was formerly a teacher, but when his artwork gained great demand, he left the profession to go into painting and drawing full-time.

The subject matter of a lot of his work deals with nature. My favorites are his Native American pieces.

When I fill out an application that asks for race, I list myself as black or African-American which is a limited picture of my heritage. I am actually of mixed heritage being of African, European, and Native American descent. I have Native American blood on both sides of my family.

Subject matter on Native Americans holds a certain fascination for me. When I first discovered Lee Bogle's work I was immediately drawn to its' beauty and Romance. His Native American lovers have a quiet Romance and innocence, even a degree of eroticism about them.

Bogle says of his work, " I try to convey a spirituality in my art that the viewer must interpret for himself. I want my paintings to show a peaceful comtemplation and express a depth of serenity that comes only with quiet inner peace."

One of the Ultimate Romantic Gestures: The Kiss! No. 1

I will admit it...I like to kiss. For someone who likes to kiss, I should allow myself to be kissed more. However, I am very picky about who gets the privilege though, perhaps too picky. I liked being kissed on the lips like most people, but I also love being kissed on the hand equally. To be kissed on my hand I actually had to travel to Botswana and Turkey before I met men who had enough class to realize that the act should not be permitted to die out even though it is a European courtly gesture from centuries previous to this one.

Today my friend Metin who has his blog Talk Turkey wrote an entry about male and female attitudes about kissing. Since he and I seem to be on the same wave length occasionally strangely I happened to be thinking about writing a post here a few days ago about kissing.

About a year or so ago while looking for romantic Victorian e-cards, I ran across a site that listed 365 ways to kiss. I have been looking for it this evening while writing this, but I cannot find it. I am really disappointed that I haven't been able to locate it because the techiques were not only erotic but were also Romantic. Of course, aspects of Romance does include eroticism. So I have decided in the midst of this to list a different way of kissing each week.

This one is a rather aggressive kiss which probably comes from or is inspired by the Kama Sutra.

---While kissing your partner, gently bite down on the lower lip (women love it ) and then start sucking on the bottom lip to give them a great sensation.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Cardinal: A Bird of Romance

The northern cardinal or redbird is in my opinion one of the Romantics of wildlife. Here is why. Cardinals like a number of other birds mate for life, but watching them is to notice how Romantic their nature truly is.

If you live in the eastern half of the US, you will probably see cardinals in your backyard, if you have a backyard. Put out some sunflower seeds or cracked corn in the winter. They will come to it. Once the cardinals come you may notice sometimes that they will come in pairs. One will be bright red and the other may be a sort of tan color with some red on the crown of it's head and plumage. The bright red is the male, and its' faded counterpart is the female. Sometimes the male gather seeds in his mouth and feeds them to the female. I have actually seen a male feed two females at a time. Sometimes during the feeding a pair will touch beaks briefly as if they are kissing. This is all a part of the courtship ritual which I when I first saw it seemed like a highly Romantic gesture.

The cardinal is thought to have been given its' name because the male's feathers are a brilliant red like the robes and caps of the cardinals of the Catholic church. During the 1800s a popular trade in cardinals as cage birds began. The cardinals were prized for the their beautiful color and song, so they were trapped and sold in the northern US and in Europe. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 halted in the trade in these loveable birds. Today the cardinal is the most popular choice for state birds than any other bird.

During courtship the male and female cardinal will sing a duet. Cardinals build their nests which are round and bowl shaped in thick foliage. The female usually lays from 3 to 5 eggs, and since male cardinals are fiercely territorial they will chase alway any birds who who come near the nest. Male cardinals are so suspicious of other males that if one sees his own reflection, he will try to fight it off for hours! Mated cardinals often travel together. Once baby cardinals are hatched, the father does all the hunting for food while the mother stays with the babies.

At Christmas time in the US, cardinals are often the subject of Christmas artwork. They are seen on greeting cards, plates, and in ornaments like wreaths.

In this era when it is difficult for so many human couples to bond peacefully and joyfully, it is so nice to know there are species of animals like the dainty little cardinal who remain devoted unselfishly to one another for life. Cardinals, a Romantic little creature.