Black Women Deserve More Than Struggle Love

It’s okay to set the bar high.

Photo Credit | The author Allison Gaines created and owns this photo | made via Canva

“Struggle love was an engaging storyline about loving against all the odds. It’s a storyline that made Black women heroes in relationships. “(Eskridge, 2018)

Black women have always been the glue holding the Black community together. Historically, they stood on the right-hand side of Black men as they endured many atrocities — including enslavement, lynchings, segregation, and mass incarceration. And because all Black people suffer indignities because of racism, Black women try their best to hold it down no matter what.

But it’s essential to acknowledge that the ride-or-die mantra encourages Black women to accept struggle love. Glorifying struggle love only normalizes unhealthy relationships in the Black community.

In America, romantic partners consider Black women least desirable, especially those with Afrocentric features. Whenever Black women talk about the discrimination they experience in the dating realm, many people insist Black women are their own worst enemy.

They fall over backwards, giving Black women unwarranted advice — upgrade your closet, lose some weight, or go back to school. And with every bit of advice comes an insistence that Black women are inherently less healthy, less beautiful, or moral. No one should have to tie themselves into knots to find someone who can love and respect them.

Men altogether, but Black men, in particular, should stop trying to convince Black women that they are unworthy and instead admit that many hold deeply ingrained biased against Black women. In this society, dominated by Eurocentric beauty standards, many Black men prefer to marry women of other races. Their dating choices remain a lasting testament to a country dominated by white supremacist ideology.

“Black men are twice as likely as black women to have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity (24% vs. 12%). This gender gap has been a long-standing one — in 1980, 8% of recently married black men and 3% of their female counterparts were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. (Livingston & Brown, 2020)

Even though Black women are the most educated Americans, they are underpaid compared with their white female…