As many of people in the Negro world are well aware of at this point, Gilbert Arenas doesn’t care for dark skinned black women. In fact, he made it quite clear that he doesn’t find any of them attractive in any capacity. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, he went so far as to call the queen, the standard bearer for all dark skinned black women everywhere, Lupita Nyong’o ugly.

I disagree with his opinion. I find Lupita Nyong’o beautiful. I find dark skinned sisters to be beautiful. Those are my opinions. Just as I am entitled to mine, he’s entitled to his. Hell, as a combat veteran I fought everyone to have an opinion. That includes those whose opinions I may disagree with.

There’s a few underlying issues at the heart of this latest battle in the war between black men and women. The first of which is that Gilbert Arenas was brazen enough to have an opinion and say it out loud.  Black men aren’t supposed to have an opinion. No, we’re supposed to check with our squadron leaders, aka black women, before doing so.  If, you are lucky enough to express your opinion, it better damn well be something that’s pleasing to the ear of the black female overlords, lest you incur their wrath.

The truth of the matter is this is only an issue because the targets of his negative opinion, dark skinned black women, enjoy a protected status. In fact, that protected status is shared by fat women and members of the LBTGQ community. See it’s perfectly fine for black women to have opinions, or as some them have tried to spin it as pertains to this topic, preferences. We black men are bombarded with their preferences and critiques of us all the time. We’ve all heard them ad nauseam. Hell, we can recite them just like we could our favorite song lyrics, movie lines, and for the religious among us, scripture. But just for the hell of it, I’ll name some. Black women don’t want a short man. Black women don’t want a man with less education than them. Black men don’t want blue collar men. Black women don’t want broke men. Ebony, less than month ago (21 March to be exact) published an article: Dear Broke Men: Don’t Punish a Woman for Not Wanting to Date You, just to remind us just in case we had forgotten. Could you imagine if a black man were to publish an article titled, Dear Fat Women, Dear Dark Skinned Woman, Dear Angry Black Woman With the Bad Attitude, Dear Black Girl With the Weave, or some other such inflammatory title. As my friend and Brother Mumia Ali would say, “there would be clutching of pearls and falling all over the fainting couch.”

What this boils down to is that by and large, here in the states at least, the opinions of black women and LGBTQ community are held in much higher regard than black men. For example, take the recent situation in North Carolina. The state of North Carolina decided, aka it was their opinion, that transgendered people should have to use the bathroom on the gender assigned to them on their birth certificate. What did they get for it? The NBA moved the all-star game to New Orleans, costing the city of Charlotte an estimated 100 million dollars. (www.charloteobserver.com) Want another example? The NCAA, specifically the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) moved its football conference championship, cost the city an estimated  32.4 million dollars.(www.charlotteobserver.com) So, all told an estimated 132.4 million dollars have been lost by the city of Charlotte because they dared to have an opinion against the one of the unofficial holy trinity.( dark skinned black women, fat women, LBTGQ) Could you imagine the NFL or NCAA taking similar action because black men were aggrieved, perceived or otherwise? Look at the consortium of black female Youtubers and other content creators trying to shutdown various contributors to this very site. What is their crime? They’re guilty of voicing their opinions and criticisms of black women.

On the opposite side of that spectrum, black women are allowed to bash black men with reckless abandon. They’re allowed to promote ideas such as aborting black male babies on the same platforms that they are trying to have their black male counterparts shut out of. Where is the outrage? You won’t see it because it is and always been open season on black men. It is perfectly acceptable to make disparaging remarks or have negative opinions about black men because no one is coming to our rescue. It is ok to say that black men ain’t shit, so I have to swirl.  A black man saying he prefers a non-black woman is an issue. The only acceptable resolution to said issue is to remove his voice because to them opinions are for me and for thee.