True Fellowship, Part 3: An Extended Reader's Money Quote From Evia

The Reader's Money Quote is a statement that is of such insight and importance that it merits frequent and loud repetition. These Reader's Money Quotes are from Evia, blog host of Black Female Interracial Marriage Ezine http://www.blackfemaleinterracialmarriage.com/. Evia and I had the following exchange during a recent post (my comments are in blue):

Evia said:

However, on the topic of REAL "friends," well I think volumes could be written about that because there are virtually no rules anymore. Therefore, lots of people are very UN-likeminded until the meaning of friendship. To one person, it means something totally different than it may mean to another person, yet both people are using the same word. This causes lots of confusion and disappointment.

For ex. when I was in college I had what I considered a close girlfriend. Everything was fine until she went into the hospital to have some surgery. She was there for a couple of days. She NEVER told me she was going into the hospital!! I only found out later when she came out. I was devastated! We talked about it afterwards and she said she didn't understand why that even bothered me. OMG!!

My take on this is that when you go into the hospital for surgery, you should WANT those people who are close to you to know about it and BE there for you. So when she didn't tell me about her surgery, IMO based on my background, that was an indication that she didn't consider me a close friend. That also told me that if I went into the hospital, she wouldn't consider it important to be there for me either. These are MAJOR values differences, and I knew at that point that we would most likely never be really "close".

However, both she and her mother had been born and raised in NYC (Harlem) and had taken on the whole array of NYC "individualistic" values whereas, I grew up on a rural farm down South and had "communal" values from that background, so our backgrounds were VERY different. It wasn't her fault and it wasn't mine. That was the first experience that made me realize the importance of VALUES and likemindedness and how they determine whether people will get along with each other satisfactorily and have a mutually satisfying relationship. I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying it's a lot more difficult.

And this has nothing to do with ethnicity or race because I've met continental African women and white women with whom I've bonded almost instantly, whereas I've met AA women who I know I could never bond with.

This is a very clear example of why people from very different thought systems and value systems cannot jell, in many cases. There are so many unspoken expectations and assumptions that will usually trip them up.

So I have **sisterfriends**, **friends**, and then I have a variety of acquaintances. A sisterfriend is a friend of the 1st degree. A sisterfriend is the type of friend who could live with me indefinitely. I would go all out for her and her children to the extent that I could, without harming myself. She is, in a sense, my "sister" with the full meaning of the word. I would expect her to do all of the same for me.

At this point in my life, I put energy into cultivating sisterfriends, and I've had a moderate degree of success. I'm finding women who also relish this type of REAL relationship. It requires HONEST talk though about your needs. You cannot make assumptions. You have to tell a potential sisterfriend the biggies that you expect and she does the same and then you both have to decide whether you're willing to come through for each other.

I think AA women need friends, but due to the massive breakdown of the fledgling AA culture which eats away at even supposedly close-knit family relationships, I think that every AA woman REALLY needs at least 2 sisterfriends and 3 or 4 would of course be a lot better. That would make a typical AA woman feel a lot less vulnerable, alone. A sisterfriend is a type of insurance.

You know there's a 95% that she'll be there for you when your "friends" and acquaintances call to give you excuses as to why they can't be there for you in whatever way. Also, you're her sisterfriend too. So the sisterfriend relationship requires obligations and responsibilities.

Human beings are not islands. We have been wired to need a variety of others.

Evia, I'm happy you talked at length about friendship. The topic is the very FIRST thing that I'm going to get back to in detail in August. It's the FIRST order of business for August.

. . . You're being very gracious. I grew up in Chicago (as did my parents), and that person's behavior sounds CRAZY to me (for somebody who calls themself a friend). The harsh reality is that there are a LOT of improperly socialized, SAVAGE AAs out there. You described one of them.

And I think it's a very good thing that you mentioned the reciprocity implications involved in this sort of crazy behavior. A so-called "friend" who does not expect you to be there for them does NOT expect to be there for you!

. . . [T]oo many AA women try to rely on their husbands and boyfriends to supply ALL of their emotional needs. Not only is that unhealthy (one person simply can't supply ALL of another person's emotional needs). But it also sets women up to be extremely needy and vulnerable in their relationships with men.

It also sets them up to be utterly destroyed by divorce/break-up. I've seen this happen over and over to women who felt that they didn't need friends or sisterfriends because they "had a man." It's NOT a pretty picture. In fact, I've been observing a BW coworker like this who's in the middle of a mini-breakdown right now because she threw away what few friendships she had as soon as she "got a man." Meanwhile, her ex-boyfriend held on to his friendships with "his boys" throughout their relationship. Now that he's broken up with her, she's almost catatonic.

I don't feel particularly sympathetic to her. She got what she created for herself.

Khadija, re my college chum and your comments above, this was a very eye-opening experience for me--having Freda as a "friend." She had been raised not to trust black people because her mother, a hard-working black woman had had a hard life. The mother was a very bitter bw. She had been preyed on by a good-looking, sweet-talking, womanizing bm. He impregnated her mother and abandoned her. To her mother's credit, she had pinched pennies to send my friend to a private girl's school in NYC and then Freda went on to college, which is where I met her.

Freda came from a very different background than me. She grew up around lots of predators, and with barely any protection from them. Her mother worked 2 jobs all of her life and provided a clean,comfortable home, but there was no time for Freda. Freda had been molested a couple of times while she was a teenager.

My childhood wasn't perfect, but I grew up in a safe environment surrounded by various adults in my extended family watching over me, protecting me. At the time, I thought they were TOO protective, but now I know better. I also always got enough attention from adults. It certainly sounds like you also had a bunch of people who protected you and were there for you.

Even today, I don't think Freda has ever gotten over some of those childhood experiences and the LACK that was in her life during critical periods.

So after my initial hurt, I just accepted her as she was and knew that we could never be "close."

Evia, Thanks for explaining the history behind your college chum. I knew there had to be something SERIOUSLY wrong with that person. It's NOT normal to act like that regarding somebody you call a real "friend."

Yes, I was also BLESSED to grow up being protected and loved by many, many adults around me. Unfortunately, that sort of emotional and physical security are becoming unknown among AA children.

There are a LOT of sociopaths among our people. These bizarre attitudes toward friendship (like what you described about your college acquaintance), and the inability to form close friendships are a part of that syndrome.

That's why I was horrified by some of the statements made during the True Fellowship discussions (which I'm going to revisit in August). I was shocked and appalled to see people say out loud, in public, statements like "I don't want any friends." That's mentally SICK. For real. And it's the kind of statement that I hear from sociopathic clients. IIRC, the inability to make or keep friends is one of the DSM-IV-listed symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder!

Peace, blessings and solidarity.

We already know what the problems are. We know that the social fabric among our people has been destroyed. We know what extreme isolation and non-reciprocity can lead to for African-American women and other Black women. http://longbench.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/esmin-green-died-alone/

I don't want to keep talking about the problems. We already know what's wrong. I'm tired of seeing the conversation pattern that exists at many African-American blogs: People go round and round over the problems. If somebody offers concrete, actionable suggestions, these suggestions are ignored in favor of engaging in yet another round of (often insincere) hand-wringing.

For example, I recently watched a heckler-troll at another blog (who is apparently angry with the idea of African-American women divesting from dangerous and non-reciprocating scenarios) completely ignore the list of concrete actions that I suggested she could take in support of an 8 year old Liberian girl who was recently gang-raped by four boys.

She had used this girl's suffering to try to score a debate point against divestment; and I responded by giving her a list of actions that she could take in support of this girl, since she claimed to be concerned about this particular child. Actions that nobody is stopping her from doing, such as: (1) reaching out to the local prosecutor’s office, and local victim advocacy groups to find out what specific needs this little girl might have right now, and (2) coordinating donations for this little girl.

Instead of taking up the mantle of ACTION, this woman repeated her already-answered question by asking the blog host, "The Arizona authorities are taking care of the child, what do you suggest should be done next?" As if it's a reasonable assumption that ALL of the child's needs (including long-term needs) are being met by "the Arizona authorities." Right. Sure.

How quickly people wriggle out of assuming any responsibility whatsoever for taking action! This is the same type of bad-faith nonsense that "Internet Ike Turners" like to engage in (falsely professed concern about issues that they have NO intention of doing anything about).

Let's STOP playing these sorts of games with the life and death matters that are facing us. It's time to revisit some solutions. It's time for people who are sincere and serious to take concrete actions in support of their values. Part 2 of the True Fellowship series mentioned several concrete actions we can take to create true fellowships in our lives. http://muslimbushido.blogspot.com/2008/10/true-fellowship-part-2-breaking-bread.html

Over the months, I've been delighted to hear periodic updates from a reader and fellow blogger named ForeverLoyal (her blog is at http://foreverloyal.wordpress.com/) about the concrete steps that she's taken to enhance her relationship with a close friend.

It's really up to each one of us.