Not long ago, at the Capitol Club a white comedian, Billy Wayne Davis, said this about his white girlfriend: “Last night, my girl told me that she must be gaining weight because black men are looking at her all the time.” Davis’ joke made the audience, mostly white, uncomfortable. But his joke was not empty. Cultural speaking, it had real substance. Black men, at the level of culture and its codes, do prefer women who are heavy, curvy, built like a “brick house.”
But why this preference for curves? What is its root? The black male preference for heavy women certainly has its roots in the rural experience. A society that is dominated by the sleepy rhythms of agriculture, by farming, by the growing of things to eat and sell—the necessary pressures of this kind of experience shapes the desire for women who can carry heavy things, survive the the pains of labor, and outlast the natural calamities that frequently beset crops. This rural taste for curves, however, did not end with the rapid urbanization of black Americans. It persisted (and continues to this day) in a social condition that favors women with less weight and curves. Slimness is the urban ideal.
But we must also recognize that black Americans have only been urbanized for just over half a century. They are relatively new to the city and its ideals. But the longer they stay in the city, the greater will be the decline of the rural code for curves. The same can be said also about homosexuality. It’s well known that a large number of black Americans are opposed to homosexual unions. One reason for the dominance of this feeling in this community is poverty; another is poor education. But also there is the fact that the faith in the truth of the heterosexual union is nothing more than a rural faith. In the light of the urban experience, such a faith begins to crumble. It crumbles because the agricultural pressures that reinforced heterosexual values—the breeding of animals, the breeding of children to help with farm work, and so on and so forth—are gone. In the city, man is liberated from all that rural nonsense and superstitions and can become the man he actually is—gay, straight, whatever. Breeding is not an urban ideal.
The reason why black Americans continue to believe in the value of heterosexual marriages and habits has much to do with the fact that they are still new to the city. The longer they are shaped by the urban, the harder it will be to maintain or justify this and other dead (rural) attitudes.
Charles — I’m going to guess you’ve never actually worked on a farm. “Sleepy rhythms of agriculture” may give you a prose-writing hard-on but being in the field every morning at 4:30am, busting your ass planting and feeding and repairing, and sleepless nights when the rains come too much — or do not come at all — hardly lend a lazy, bucolic aspect to the agricultural life.
Naw, its Jesus.
Charles, why are you suggesting that most Black Americans are living in poverty and suffer from poor education (“poverty; another is poor education”)?
And from what I read Black Americans have a 75% divorce rate, what is the heterosexual value of marriage to them if 75% don’t bother living that value?
I tend to think their hatred is fueled by the Radical Religious Extremists that poison their minds, it worked with White Americans against Black Americans for a few hundred years. If poverty and poor education were the basis of Homo-hatred, I would think a country like South Africa would NEVER have granted Civil Marriage Equality.
Chuck,
“…the faith in the truth of the heterosexual union…”
Really!?!?!
If there is any such faith in the black community please explain the astoundingly high number of bastard babies and the astonishing divorce rate in that community.
Again. Chuck. Please put the crack pipe down.
@4 “union” as in “coupling” or “fucking.”
Sounds nice, but just listen to the radio for the real answer. Misogyny and homophobia so often go hand in hand they MUST be related.
3 and 4 said my point. Weak arguement. And a funny use of “facts” considering that it followed the scathing SLOG diatribe against the UW editor who published something that claimed to be fact, but wasn’t.
seriously, shut the fuck up dude… this post is embarrassing.. you are delusional, and chock full of oversimplifications and stereotypes… fucking disgusting…
I am white.
I like curvy women.
Does that mean I am black!?? Woo-Hoo! Now I can actually dance, run faster, and get gold gangsta teeth just like the coloureds!
Can I start using the n-word too!?? What a sec let me try it on my co-worker…wait he is my BROTHER now…
I’m a typical white suburban man – I like my women with curves too – what does that say about me? Aren’t women supposed to have curves? If I wanted someone who looked like a 12yr old boy – I’d date men.
whoopsie Charles!
It looks like your crude stereotype does not work for me! My brother-er-“co-worker” just told me he was going to “take [my] honkey ass out back a pop a cap in [my] skull.”
“But we must also recognize that black Americans have only been urbanized for just over half a century.”
Urbanized? These are people. People that number in the millions. Not farm animals requiring domestication. Not dogs being bred for temperament.
These generalizations reflect a poor knowledge of American history.
Did “Jimmy the Greek” write this? This is some seriously racist crap.
Worst chaz post. Ever
Charles what we all must realize is that you have no clue what you are talking about.
It’s not so much urbanization that is needed for us all – but, to quote Senator Bullworth:
All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody ’til they’re all the same color.
I like how commenters to Charles’s posts get so mad at being befuddled by what they’ve read. It adds a lot of fun to the posts themselves.
Overgeneralization–I’m an afro dude–I like the skinny chicks and the curvy chicks.
And support gay marriage so they can feel as trapped as straight married couples:)
Man, Charles, you’ve got some fucking psychos commenting on your blog.
Nice post. Thoughtful. Thanks. 🙂
Hmm…because there are no gay farmers, right? (suspend your “Jolly Rancher” jokes) I mean, gay rodeo? This has to be an *URBAN* myth, right? There can’t be any gays in a rural setting…
Wait, do I have this right? “The reason why black Americans continue to believe in the value of heterosexual marriages and habits has much to do with the fact that they are still new to the city.” Black Americans are newer to the city than white Americans, then?
Damn. I don’t know what to do when Mudede starts making sense. The fabric of my world starts to crumble. 🙂
1.) The urbanization argument, regardless of its accuracy, isn’t racist, unless by racist you mean that it identifies race as a factor. In which case the exit polls are also racist. The urban/non-urban socio-cultural norms break down that way, in this country at least. And, probably most places. Urbanization rates differ between ethic demographics.
2.) A noted characteristic of the human psyche is that it can hold values with which its actions are in conflict. You can have a bastard crack baby (speaking of racist stereotypes) and still think drugs are bad and mothers should be married.
*ethnic. 😉
I love Charles’ posts and their comments.
Keep it up, Charles!
If wheat fields = booty, then as Oliver from Green Acres sang:
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
I feel that the most redeeming part of this post is the half-naked picture of Gabrielle Union. I will be enjoying that and ignoring the Mudede portion.
Very insightful;
brilliant even.
You just left out
the critical role that
WATERMELONS
play in Black attitudes.
moron.
i want to stress the universality of the rural codes. they are not racial but general. please reread my post and get its meaning right.
Most white Americans weren’t urban 50 or 60 years ago.
hmm… apparently, Sarah Jeglum and John Fey have staged a coup in the offices of The Stranger. I can think of no other explanation for publishing this racist tripe.
There’s an 800 pound gorilla in the room and so I’ll just spit it out.
Gabriele Union is HOT!
…So, is there a way in which this is not racist?
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
So. I’m just going to assume that you’re trying out satire as a literary device in this post. Either that, or you’re looking to get the most comments on an article written today.
Regardless: Keep it up! You’ll get it (whatever ‘it’ is) eventually.
Holy shit.
Black people have been in cities like NY, New Orleans, Charleston, SC or Washington DC for well more than 5o years. Try maybe 100 or 200 or 300 years.
Those African Americans don’t have any differences as to preferences on female hip size compared to rural African Americans. Once again, Charles just makes stuff up. Methinks he doth spoof us all.
But sometime methings he hath spoofed himself overmuch, he actually believeth hiseth baloneyeth.
cm. you got some stones of steel to write this stuff…really? again, another non-afro man here who likes ’em with some shape (your model choice, Ms. Union, will do just fine…). for a friday posting, this is a good way to say hello to this weekend and see more scrawny seattle chicks. ugh.
actually, white men prefer it too.
we just don’t get as much opportunity, however, thanks to the fashion industry mind control of white women.
Uh….Charles? “…man is liberated…”?????? I am stunned to read this sort of thing. For some reason I thought you were talking about “black Americans” — yes, there it is, at the top of your second-to-last paragraph. Then suddenly you morphed into “man,” and you use it twice at the end of the paragraph (cf.: “the man he actually is…”). Suddenly you left women out of this whole discussion. Please, please be specific. If you mean “black men,” please say so. Don’t say “black Americans” (I thought that included black women, but I guess it didn’t, because black women aren’t Americans???????) when you mean “black men.” Just sayin’.
Are we gonna hold a protest of Charles. The only people that don’t realize that Slog is a joke is the people who work for it.
the only thing that rang true for me in this post was the observation about black men having a more generous view of female fleshiness, ie: they tolerate and even dig what many white men would contemptuously designate “fat chicks.” and who doesn’t already know this anyway. black men have been the saving grace of many a lonely, meaty white chick. god bless ’em. (i’m skinny, so this isn’t about me, but those i’ve known, btw).
sad how easily the likes of o’reilly and fox can manipulate the gay and black community to fight each other. facts be damn, people, we got enemies!
Charles,
Interesting comment. Curiously, you may be onto something. While living and working in Africa, a good friend of mine who worked there with me also remarked she had no trouble finding suitors. She was a big gal, beautiful and happened to be white. I recall a Kenyan economist noting the “big bottom theory”. Women with larger rear ends were more sexually appealing because being big meant being well fed and one could provide. It was similar in America too. At one time prior to the 20th century, large and older men were sexually appealing for similar reasons. Grover Cleveland, our 22nd (?) and 24th (?) President married in the White House (the only on to do so) a 21 y/o Frances Folsom. He was 49 and a heavy man.
I’m losing track, is Charles offensively racist, offensively sexist, or offensively homophobic?
I know his absolutely adorable Marxism isn’t going to upset anyone these days, but I’m having a bit of problem pinning down the nub of the to-do, so to speak.
or to paraphrase:
“where da fat white wimmin at?”
The progress of culture (assuming that it is grossly a one-way street) is slow like molasses. It is slow because (nearly) every human being spends a significant segment of its early (impressionable) years under the given philosophical model of its parents (guardians, captors, peers). Likewise are the parents (guardians, captors, peers) to some similar extent living, breathing extensions of the philosophical model of those who nurtured them. Even those who go to great lengths to distinguish themselves from the thought calibrating captors of their youths often end up sharing their method, if not their form.
If cultures of molasses are insulated from one another, they are rendered the property of self-replication and coexist alongside each other like immiscible liquids for a surprising amount of time.
That is to say, if at any point two cultures, societies, what have you (no anthropology major here) have at any point in history drawn sharp lines between one another, defining cultural values have very long shelf lives. But as required by the grossly one-way street, we must trip and stumble over our collective historical idiocies until progress is made.
I like where our friend is going here.
The reason why black Americans continue to believe in the value of heterosexual marriages and habits…..
come again? The value of hetrosexual marriage? Black Americans are the least likely of any ethnic group in America to get married.
What a bunch of racist faggots!!! If you think black men are the only males who like curvy women, then you need to stop hanging around racists! It’s your ignorance and failure to reach out to non-whites, that caused Prop 8 to pass. White fags are the bigots, then they cry racism because Mormons and Catholics smeared their marriage plans. You bigots have set the gay rights movement back for decades. Keep writing. Fox News and wingnut blogs love this fight, because you are destroying the progressive alliance. Good job, morons!
Charles, really – how can you honestly say that “black Americans have only been urbanized for just over half a century”? The first large wave of blacks in the urban north came in the 1920’s, largely as scab labor during strikes. But prior to that, blacks were making their presence felt throughout the country as Pullman Porters as early as the 1890’s. Even Seattle had a small black population prior to WWII.