“I was probably one step away from being out here on the street.”
-Karen Jennings, 65-year old Black spinster

I knew it wouldn’t be long before social media personality and shameless attention whore masquerading as “dating coach” April Mason would be back on the Black social media streets. You might recall that in the wake of a frantic Facebook/YouTube video where she “called out the Good Black Men” to come to the aid her cousin, Cynthia Collier of East Point, GA in the aftermath of what Collier claimed was an abduction attempt on the part of several nefarious unidentified Black men. As it turned out though, Collier herself was arrested by East Point’s finest for lying to the police about the entire incident.

That was two months ago; and, instead of Mason either falling back altogether or issuing a full-throated apology to all the Good Black Men she previously tried to upbraid and admit to going off half-cocked, Mason did what far too many Black women in our time did:

She doubled-down – and on prime time, no less.

A week ago, Mason appeared as the special guest of fellow social media personality, attention whore and self-proclaimed “Girl Who Swirls” Christelyn Karazin’s YouTube channel, to “educate Black men” about how and why it’s important to “protect” Black women – even those who are liars, who are unrepentent in the face of the facts, who berate any Black man who questions her as “Black MALES” and, my personal favorite, declares that Black women should “go where they’re appreciated” – a cheap way of saying “Go get you a White man”.

You just cannot make this stuff up.

But as per usual, while everyone else on Black social media clucks away at Mason’s most recent pathetic social media antics, your correspondent and dating coach for the Non-Select Guy has a much more sobering take on the past week’s events – one that has a direct and hidden bearing on the April Masons of the world.

Of which there are many.

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BLACK AMERICA’S PENCHANT FOR DIVERSIONS
What April Mason and literally millions of Black women like her won’t tell us is that most of them are single and suffer from some kind of pre-existing medical condition, like Mason herself – a divorced grandmother of 45 who has Lupus. What makes matters worse, is that she’s also disclosed that she doesn’t take her perscribed meds, and, that her number one fear is that she will live and die alone.

Black America currently has some 12 million Black women aged 35 and over, nearly half that number having never been married. Put that together with the millions of Black women who are divorced, like Mason, and we’re facing a demographic crisis the likes we haven’t seen since the early 20th century with mass lynchings, bombings and the like of Black America. It is truly an enormous spinster bubble waiting to bust wide open – and no one in Black America seems to care.

This is because Black America, men and women alike, like to live in denial. We as a group of people honestly like to believe that “out of sight, out of mind”; moreover, that if we don’t like a certain piece of information, we can simply disregard it, regardless as to its accuracy. And perhaps what’s most troubling, is that Black Americans seem to delight in finding diversions to the topics and issues at hand – instead of dealing with the rife internal problems that threaten to make large swaths of present-day Black America a permanent underclass, we instead resort to more caterwauling about “racism”, or harping on about “reparations”; instead dealing with an impossible to ignore antisocial and criminal problem in our own midst, we scapegoat the cops; and instead of dealing with the looming tower that is the Black Spinster Crisis that is staring all of us down, we instead go on witch hunts for “Black incels”.

The reasons why so many Black Americans are so reluctant to take these matters by the horns is very easy to understand: Because they are not arid academic talking points being conducted in a sterile university environment. Instead, the problems that beset Black America in general and the particular one that is the topic of today’s column, are very real. Like the Crack Wars of the 80s and 90s, the Spinster Bubble is something every Black American is touched by – either directly, or indirectly. The numbers are just too large for it to be otherwise. We all have at least one and if we’re being honest, as many as a half a dozen or more(!), Black female family members who are either baby mamas – Black women who became mothers of kids without benefit of (in some cases ever!) being married; or Black female family members who neither married nor had kids at all.

Black folk know deep down that all of the social indices in just about every area of human endeavor in the 21st century, sucks for us: Marriage rates; homeownership rates; household incomes, personal and family wealth; you name it. To be brutally frank, it is downright depressing. And yet, there is no sense of urgency on the part of our great thinkers, political and cultural leaders or “influencers”, to deal honestly with all of this. And a big part of that, as the numbers will soon bear out, has to do with a cohort of “strong, independent” Black women who “don’t need no man”, who are now old, alone, living hand to mouth and are literally, surviving on the kindness of strangers.

These family members – Black women who have no long term mates – pose all manner of problems and burdens onto the rest of us. And, contrary to what the “woke” press will try to have us believe otherwise, it is the personal series of bad life choices that these ladies have made, that has led them to this point now.

Why should it be our job to bail them out?

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THE RHETORIC & THE REALITY
Just as Black Americans in general are big on diversions, we are just as big on, as the oldheads would say back in the day, “selling wolf tickets”. This is most in evidence with Black women – the Baby Boomers, GenXers and now even some Millennials can be heard bellowing down through the decades about how “strong and independent” they are and how they don’t “need no man”. Tell that to Ms. Karen Jennings, the 65-year old Black spinster and subject of the recent Ozy website article, “Why Black Women Are Aging Alone” (Jan 31, 2020):

“Karen Jennings had hit rock bottom. Four years after the market crash of 2008, her life savings and investments were gone. She’d been forced to sell the house she’d co-owned and lived in with her aunt and mother, who by then had died.

Jennings has always taken pride in holding steady jobs — jobs she has loved — like teaching and working at a parish. But in 2013, the Virginia native declared bankruptcy. As an only child who never married or had children, Jennings — now age 65 — had few relatives to lean on for support. “Friends could only help me … so far,” she says. “What family I had — they tried to help me every way they could, but they couldn’t.”

Jennings is part of a growing number of Black women who are aging alone. By 2060, 1 in 4 Americans will be 65 years or older, according to the Census Bureau. Gaps in the U.S. health care system mean that family members often need to provide medical, emotional and financial support to keep their elders alive. But research published in 2017 by American and Canadian sociologists shows that elder Black U.S. women face a “kin gap” — meaning they are without a partner, children, siblings or parents who still alive — at rates higher than other demographics.”

The article continues with this interesting tidbit:

“That gap’s also widening faster than for other communities — 2.2 percent of Black women and 1.7 percent of Black men were “kinless” (also called “elder orphans”) in 2015, compared to just over 1 percent of White women and less than 1 percent of White men. These figures are projected to hit over 7 percent for Black women and nearly 6 percent for Black men by 2060. That means 1.6 million Black women — the size of Philadelphia‘s population — will be living without kin by then.”

That’s right, dear reader – in just four decades’ time, the sheer number of Black Spinsters will be the size of the ENTIRE CITY POPULATION OF PHILLY. And they will need protection/security, housing and healthcare – WITH NO ONE THERE IN THE WAY OF A SPOUSE OR FAMILY TO PROVIDE IT.

You might recall, last fall, when I cited an article that had to do with my hometown on this very issue:

“Lest one think that my mention of the Knowles/Lawson incident was just the stuff of Hollywood celebrity and “drama tv”, think again. In a recent piece appearing in my hometown’s newspaper of record the Phildelphia Inquirer, the author lamets the dearth of older Black men for older Black women. Titled “Where did all the men go? In Philly, women outnumber them by 90,000 — the widest ‘gender gap’ among major U.S. cities.” and published on the Inquirer’s website on Nov 11, 2019, it reads in part, the following:

“At 74, Rosa Rodriguez keeps outliving her men.

Her husband and two boyfriends died at relatively young ages. Meanwhile, Rodriguez, a former worker in a sewing factory, continues to enjoy cooking, watching TV, and socializing at Norris Square Senior Community Center.

“Men don’t take care of themselves like women do,” said the mother of five, who moved to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico 60 years ago. “Sometimes I’m lonely. But a lot of the time, I’m just fine.”

Rodriguez is part of a surprising state of affairs here: The imbalance between the number of adult women and men is so great that, among the nation’s 10 biggest cities, Philadelphia is the most predominantly female.

Within the city, women outnumber men by about 90,000, according to an Inquirer analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures. That works out to 86.4 men for every 100 women. On the other end of the scale, San Jose, Calif., has 100.2 men for every 100 women, possibly because of the male-dominated tech industry.

“Philadelphia is a city of women,” said Thelma Kennerly, who runs a food kitchen at Devereux United Methodist Church in Tioga. “Our men are dead or in jail. But women are still out here. Women are the stronger ones.””

Yes, Ms. Kennerly, YOUR Black men are “dead or in jail”. Meanwhile, lifelong Philadelphians like yours truly is doing just fine, thank you very much, as I noted in a previous column, “Lessons Learned From The Summer 2019 North Philly Shootout”, Aug 19, 2018. As you can see, we’re talking about one of the most crime, drugs and poverty-stricken areas of the city. So this is at least in some sense, a class issue.

While the Inquirer article would have us believe that it is all the Black men to blame for why there are so many lonely Black spinsters, what is curiously left out is the Tina Knowles-type behaviors that just might have driven so many of those Black men into an early grave in the first place. We know from academic study that your partner can and will have a marked impact on your life for better or for worse – but here again the information is imparted in a gendered way. What no one wants to openly say is that being with a bitch – especially an older one – WILL have a deleterious effect on your life.

Which just might explain, at least in part, why there are so many dead Black men in Philly.” (“What Do Older Black Women Have To Offer In The Black American Dating Marketplace?“, Nov 18, 2019)

For those of you out there reading this and thinking, “Well, Obsidian’s just talking about old biddies”, read the above Oxy website passage again; it says, “by the year 2060”. Meaning, that Black women today, at the age of about 25, WILL BE SIXTY-FIVE BY THEN. And, the projections are clear: They will be ALONE.

And the reasons as for how and why they wound up in that state ain’t quite what we’ve been led to believe.

SHAMELESS PLUG AD BREAK: Like what you’re reading now? Wait till you see my very first book, “The Book of Obsidian: A Manual for the 21st Century Black American Gentleman”, which comes out Summer 2020! Here’s YOUR chance to help me bring the dream to life, by supporting “The Book of Obsidian Fundraising Campaign”! All the details are over at GoGetFunding.com. Now, back to the article!

THE BILL ALWAYS COMES DUE
As I’ve said in numerous pieces in this column, Black women are more often than not and contrary to popular belief, victims of their own actions and continuous string of bad choices. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the realm of dating and mating. By now it is clear that Black women, taken as a group (remember, we have the US Census data on our side here!), simply put more importance of priorities in Black men that are purely superficial – his height, dick size, his body – rather than on his honesty, willingness to provide and overall competence. And these choices, these priorities, DO come at a heavy price for most Black women, as Karen Jennings is just now finding out. Like so many Black women, she had the chance to settle down with a Good Black Man of her own – but she choose to “Get her Master’s” at the age of 50, no less(!) and in a field that doesn’t pay any money that a single, elderly woman would need to survive comfortably (Theology). It may be harsh to say, but Jennings is the poster child of the Black Woman Today: hardheaded, shortsighted and probably too much of a (now old) bitch for anyone who would want to be around her long enough to truly care.

And, despite her comparatively younger age and truly good looks, April Mason is in the same boat. In just 15 years, she too will be 65, assuming that she lives that long. If she’s hysterical about “not being protected” now, how do you think she will be then?

The simple truth is that entire waves of Black women have written checks that their behinds couldn’t cash – and worse, they’re belligerent and recalcitrant about it. They honestly think that someone (read: Non-Select Guys) OWES them a bailout. I don’t think so.

These Black women have made their beds and cast their lots with the Select Fuckboys of Black America; they’ve often turned their noses up at the good brothers among us and given us their behinds to kiss; and they’ve made one bad choice after another, in the name of “living their best life”.

Well, even the best of lives ends, ladies.

Do you have a hospice care plan?

I truly hope so, because you’re gonna need it.

Just ask Ms. Karen Jennings.

Now adjourn your asses…

MOA

Mumia Obsidian Ali is a citizen journalist, podcaster, talk radio show host, newly minted dating coach and soon to be book author. You can catch his daily live shows on Mixlr, and his podcasts on YouTube and Black Avenger TV, as well as his weekly dating coach column at the Negromanosphere website. He’s also a semi-professional pest.