blacksnextdoor

I don’t know about you, but when I find myself suddenly staring at the ceiling in the wee of hours of the morning, I reach for the remote and watch Oprah. I have no idea when exactly she’s on EST time, but there she was beside Tyra Banks Friday morning sometime before dawn using Chris Brown and Rihanna’s troubling relationship as a case study of sorts.

Wow, I never cease to revere how she’s taken a tacky forum like the talk show and transformed it into something between a temple and a town hall that not just Americans but people all over the world – she’s huge in Saudi Arabia – depend on for moral direction and advice on how to live whole, fulfilling lives.

As for Tyra, post modeling, she has bloomed into even more of a femme fatale — as unbelievable as it is that she could have become more of a tigress than she already was but I think there are all these dimensions to her that modeling didn’t let her explore that she’s leveraging.  

I mean she’s basically cleaned up the down and dirty Rickie Lake time slot and audience in a way I didn’t imagine possible, is actually guiding a demographic  of younger women that Oprah doesn’t reach, into a more stylish, informed femininity that does however — positive aspects  aside — seem to be embedded in too many accessories!

Anyway, I know not a single song by Chris Brown, have very little familiarity with what he does. I have observed him once or twice on a TV in my teenage nephew’s bedroom that always seems to be tuned to BET and my impression of him right off the cuff was that it’s unnatural for a young man that age to smile so sweetly, so it comes as no great surprise to me that he has a hellish flipside.

As for Rihanna, I know her music a little better, though I would like to mention as a disclaimer that I feel like an ancient Greek discussing a fight between Zeus and Hera somewhere up on Mount Olympus when I attempt to wrap my head around a celebrity couple’s argument in a Lamborghini en route to the Grammys .

Oprah and Tyra did their best to take Rihanna’s bite marks and bruises and turn them into a ‘teaching moment’ for the young girls nationwide who have seen this whole awful drama unfold and may have needed help processing it, especially in light of the fact that Chris Brown and Rihanna are apparently still dating.

The problem I had with the whole discussion was the way young men were discussed or —  weren’t. They never got past being ‘they’ and ‘them,’ and hovered over the whole discourse in a way that could only be felt as problematic.  At one point when a girl in the audience brought up the possibility that Rihanna may have gotten physical with Chris Brown first and that Rihanna’s reconciliation with him may have been evidence of her complicity in the violent nature of their relationship, the point that a boyfriend can only restrain a violent girlfriend was made without addressing the issue of violent girlfriends.

Something’s missing.

For starters, there’s no male version of Tyra to help young men work through this discussion.

As for the the absence of nurturing role models for young black men on the home front and in our neighborhoods, that’s best illustrated by Tied To Greatness, an idea of Alex Ellis, a black designer, amongst other things, who visits schools in cities like Philadelphia and Chicago to teach young black men how to groom themselves for success.

To date, Mr. Ellis has given out around 2500 ties to young black men who have never undergone such a basic male rite of passage as being taught how to knot a tie.

Hello!

Aren’t our sons one of our community’s greatest resources?