"Vibrations: Interview with Shahrazad Ali" | WFSU-TV (1991)

Welcome foreigner to this special edition of vibes. I'm Raven Geary today on our show, one of the hottest properties on the talk show circuit. Shahara zad Ali, an established writer, in fact, Ms. Ali is best known as the author of The Black Man's Guide to Understanding The Black Woman is a very controversial and, if I may say so, very critical view of the life of today's black woman. She joins us today in our studio and of course we would like to welcome you to Vibrations today. Thanks Raven for basically inviting me, um. It is your premise that the black woman is out of sync with the natural order of things.

Can you explain that? Well, it's a very sensitive topic and I certainly think I've tried to approach it from a very sensitive angle. What I have actually said is that Black women's disrespect and rebellion against Black men's leadership and authority is a direct cause of the breakdown of the Black family structure. It is not an attack on us as black women, it simply says that in the breakdown of any relationship both parties have to take responsibility and as black women we have been protected and isolated from any type of examination about what our part of the responsibility is and the breakdown of the relationship. black family My book certainly represents the first platform that the black man has had to express his complaints about the black woman because no one would ever listen to him, they only listened to us.

Can you tell us a little about the book itself? What brought you to this point of having to sit down and use your pen to write this book well? in fact, it was my first book in 1985. I wrote How Not to Eat Pork or Life Without Pork and at the time I was giving what I called quit-that-pork lectures and during my travels I noticed that I would take The Microscope and show people that you cannot kill Shekinah worm and pork by cooking them. The heat was not destroying the worm and I would show them that they know the difference and demonstrate how the FDA is now using radiation to try to kill the worms in pork. because cooking didn't work, which is what we had always been told, and during that time many black men agreed to stop eating pork, wanted to change their eating habits, and were happy to discover some information that could possibly save them. their lives, but it was the black women who were the most inflexible, the ones who refuse to change meal planning techniques, season food cooking techniques, so I said, it's interesting, I said, if we refuse to provide the man black the right physical food when I know that food sustains life well, so what else are we hiding from him?

Possibly there are other areas emotionally, spiritually, you know psychologically that we are affecting his behavior by what we do or by what we withhold and refuse to give and that led me to try it. to find out, you know, we've always heard that the black man leaves the black family, abandons his wife, and the kids don't want to take care of the kids, they don't work, he stays out all night, he gets drunk, he takes drugs, you know we've heard a lot of negative things. , most of them are true, but I wanted to know what happens before it gets to that point, what leads to the breakup.

We have never tried to find out what happens in the relationship between the black. man and a black woman who makes him go out and do all these bad things. To assume this is just normal natural behavior for black men would be to assume he is naturally evil and I don't believe the man God gave him. For us, as a partner, he's a naturally bad person, so I wanted to try to examine what's going on with him. What is his version of the story? Man. I ask you to write this book. Oh no, no, no, certainly not.

I think they were just as surprised as black women, a lot of them approached the title of the book with a little bit of apprehension because they haven't had a champion, we've never had a black woman who actually stood up and said, I'm standing up for the side. of the black man in history. We know what our side is and both sides are sincere, we've done very terrible things to each other and I don't exonerate black men, which is kind of a misconception people have. I'm just saying we know his side, what about ours? side and we have a side we have adopted some wrong standards we are judging our men many times by the wrong value system we are using his children sometimes against him we have been told that the only benefit a black man provides in a home is money and if you don't give us money to take care of that type of financial provision that has no value and what my research has shown me is that a black man, any man in any home, provides much more than financial support to the man. he provides guidance, instruction, discipline for the children that we so need in our black homes. he provides gratification, fulfillment, protection.

I mean there are many other valuable values ​​and these values ​​are what are missing in our children today which is why many black children are on the streets out of control themselves disrespectful they have no respect for anyone and most of us have them afraid and everyone else is because no one has a way to get into them to try to gain control over them, so I argued that a return to traditional family values, certain clearly defined gender responsibilities for black men and women and running a home and a relationship will help us produce a better child and if we produce a better child we will certainly have a better future and a better nation and all told, from this and by calling yourself a champion and having, if I may say, The courage to write this book and defend it has caused a stir.

This book is very controversial. What are you hearing from the public reaction? Well, I don't think it's a problem among black women about whether the book is true or not, the problem is that I wasn't supposed to tell them. These are inside secrets and things we have never let our men know and we often say what we say. he can't handle me well many times he can't handle us because he doesn't know what he's trying to handle he doesn't understand what motivates us we have become very adept many of us are able to do something right in front of his eyes and then convince him to that's not what you really saw and that didn't happen and that's why we've kept you a little confused, sorry, do you realize that there are a lot of bookstores and in particular black books? bookstores that have refused to publish The Black Man's Guide to Understanding the Black Woman.

I think that has been exaggerated right now. The book is sold and in more than 5,000 bookstores here in this country and about 2,000 abroad the book is becoming a bestseller in London and to date we only know of two bookstores in the entire country that refuse to sell the book. Can I tell you there is at least one in Tallahassee? There may be buts and they are doing that. The response we received from the owner of the book was. that your book had absolutely nothing constructive was that a woman who gave you those comments was oh how surprising okay let's talk about some of the things that seem to be bothering people that you know certainly a lot of things have been removed from context, so that anyone who's ever seen me or watched, you know, witnessed some of the talk shows, they actually exploit a lot of topics, they take them out of context, they want to sensationalize them to increase their ratings and have a good show, so I really appreciate this opportunity to just sit and have a fireside chat about the book.

Well, I'm glad for all the fireworks and everything, um, you say black women and I quote you saying that you say nag nag nag and that we are essentially responsible for driving our men away by doing so many times we take a position because of our own emotional mechanisms, we harass our men too much, we scold our men too much and we keep his mind and his head so tied up and bogged down with all our personal matters. idiosyncrasies about our day-to-day personal relationship with him that many times we do not free our minds from him to come out healthy in the plan for our future and that of our children, many of them come to us every day. and they almost have to do a winning test they don't know what's going on they don't know who they're going to meet because we have a lot of reactions uh we tend to think as black women that a successful relationship and One where we're happy is the one where everything works out. our way and the first time it goes another way, then we go into a hell of confusion in our brain and start deciding, "Oh, I have terrible problems with this man, he won." I don't do what I want me to do when our men have a side and let me give that side according to Shaherazade Ali, okay you say it in your book, okay listen I'm quoting okay the black man in America is the only man on Earth, including everyone. continent that is disrespected by the women of its nation, that is true throughout this situation, it does not exist anywhere else among the billions of people that inhabit our planet, except here in the United States, that's right, the other black men, yellow men, red men, brown men and white men. all men are honored and respected by their respective nations all other women recognize and accept that man is the authority the ruler and the leader only here in the United States in the Black Nation spread throughout the United States excuse me, rather it is neglect the black man that is quite powerful and it is absolutely true that we have been displaced, many of us do not really understand what slavery really did to us and how much psychological trauma it caused us in regards to what are our proper roles with each other, what are our responsibilities as men. and woman in our various communities and relationships, we have never been informed about slavery, not really, you just know, we know we had that history, but we don't know how it affected us, we don't know how much of our real culture we have. lost how many of our ideas were taken from us we know that our religion was taken from us we know that our names were taken from us but we do not know how many other standards of everyday life have been taken away from us and While we have adopted the American way of doing things, we do not They have worked for us because we have a very special situation, we are not the same as everyone else and many people who want us to pretend that slavery does not exist or that Forget it, they have never been slaves, so they do not know what we are going through, You don't know what this has done to us, it's made us insecure as black women, well that's what came, that's true, why not? take it for us, why not write something else?

We've had everyone to defend us and we've always had books about black women, how great and strong we are and what we are, I'm just saying we've used. We have used our strength in the wrong direction against our men instead of defending them and if we start supporting our men and speaking well of him publicly then many people will not be able to go against him and take him down and he will not have to feel so frustrated and he will not be outside, away from us, seeking peace of mind with women of other nationalities because we actually want our own black man, we need him back in our homes and we want to have one we just live in a culture where they are trying to convince us that not only do we not need a man but there are other options to have one and those options are mainly celibacy or lesbianism, there is an old saying that says um charity begins at home and spreads abroad and in your book you say that we are not educating our daughters and our sons in a correct way to respect their father no, we are not, uh unfortunately, as I say, since money has been It is used as a measure many times, if a black man does not have money to give us, he does not even we're not going to let him see his kids, we're not going to let him spend time with him because he doesn't give us whatever child support is and I'm not saying we don't need money to raise a child, but I tried to explain to two black women that raising to a child consists of much more than feeding him, clothing him and sheltering him, that is, maintaining one to raise him, it takes the return of the Parental Coalition of the father and mother to put the right vase on the child.

Many of our children, when we raise them alone, grow up with the female emotional mechanism. They are suspicious. They are doubtful. They are disrespectful of femininity. Are some. They can't make a decision and many of our girls who grew up in a home where there is no man present, go out into the world and try to meet each other, they have no idea how to live with a man day to day, how to live with a man day to day . preparing a proper meal how to be a mother how to simply be in love at home most of what our people, especially our children, have learned about how to be in a relationship, they learned from television and television does not represent our needs, so Much of the confusion comes from outside agencies who have not recognized how detrimental it has been to us as a people.

Canplay devil's advocate? Well, I wish you wouldn't, but I know you have to get on with whatever you do. If I am a good wife, his house is clean, his children are fed, I make sure they are well educated, I help them with their homework, I am a good lover in bed, I help him with the finances and I tell him, look, he still went for a walk, well, that. It's another thing that's been confused in my book. I advise black men and women. I certainly tell men that if you're with a woman you've been with for 5 10 15 20 years six months two weeks whatever it is and that woman refuses to cooperate with your ideas she doesn't want to continue with your entitlement program. whatever then I tell those men to get rid of that woman and get another one and I say the same to black women if you are with a man you can't agree with then get rid of him and go with the man with that you can agree if the man you are with does not treat you the way you want and you feel that you have spent enough time to demonstrate your commitment and your sincerity in your efforts to try to make the relationship work.

I don't tell people to just stay. in that relationship I am trying to teach us that we waste a lot of time getting angry with each other and being dissatisfied in relationships get out of there and find someone where you can be happy you say that the black woman would like to be a clone of the white woman, many of We do, that's unfortunate, how do you see it? Well, that's something that was almost accidental. I would have to say that the white woman has been the only Mentor we have had from a woman that we have seen.

Every day of our lives on television, every magazine, every newspaper, every commercial, you know, it's just been her face, her body, her image, whatever has been in front of us, and today we have the results. Of that, we have black women who are trying to dye their hair blonde who wear blue and green contact lenses in their eyes, you know, who wear tons and tons of layers of makeup, who have changed their voice, who have the weave hair so we can have long, loose hair blowing in the wind, you know, like uh uh Brooke Shields or someone you know, that's been an accident and as a result of doing that, we've also adopted the goals of the freedom movement. women of wanting to free ourselves from men and have some kind of pseudo equality, when that can be true. of the white woman in her plight with the white man that is not really the black woman's business because we have not been under the control of the black man for over 500 years, so what do we have to free ourselves from?

There is something wrong with trying to look better or more, it depends on the standards you are using as a goal of looking better hmm, you know, if we think that looking better is putting on a lot of makeup and having blue eyes, then there is something wrong with that, you know, but if we think that looking better is certainly having a better spirit in our heart and working every day to become a better wife, a better mother, a better friend, a better sister, than those values ​​and attributes alone they will make us. more beautiful than we are now, how do you feel about the fact that many people accuse you of wanting to see the black woman at a point of submission?

Where do you want to see a black woman in the 1990s? Well, it depends on how you define submission, those words tend to have a negative connotation for us because of how they were used against the US during slavery and what we connect them to. That's true too, but in reality the type of submission I'm referring to just means cooperation and agreement. I don't think anyone can say that I represent a woman who was subjugated in any way. I don't think anyone can say that my personality sounds like a man has me somewhere crawling on the floor or walking 10 pieces behind him. so I'm not representing that, I'm representing strength.

I'm saying we have a lot of power, we have the power to make Heaven and Hell for our men and I'm saying let's try to make Heaven, let's try to build it if a man has his wife behind him he will believe he can do anything and everything. What we have to do is make our men believe that they can do anything and he will be able to do it much better than he is doing it now and come. Because of the sorry condition he is in, as I said, I am not exonerating him. I'm just saying that all that strength we have, let's use it in a more positive way instead of just going for ourselves.

You know, no one told us that. Being my own person and being independent would lead to separation and loneliness, but that's what we had to change, to have certain types of success we had to give up on the man because we can't find a man who will compete with us on that level, Like I said, we say he can't handle us or he's intimidated by the fact that I make more money than him. I think by judging our men by how much money he makes, we have lost a lot. Good men because, as black women, if we decide that we are all going to determine whether we are going to have a man or not based on how much money he makes, then, well, none of us have any men to put their hands on most women black. black men don't have money there are a lot of men not a lot of money there are a lot of men out there that don't want a woman that is absolutely true it is not gainful employment that just works both ways and one of the things that I have always explained that Raven is for my lectures, which you know I give all over the country, so that I can give black people some peace of mind and eliminate the hysteria in our communities that the book seems to have caused.

I have security guards, not because of black women we are going to do exactly what we do, we are going to complain and not curse and do something, you know, but I have it for black men, because the black man has to understand the woman black. He exposes the black man and reminds him of what he has allowed to happen to his wife and his family. A lot of black men feel intimidated, they don't want to take responsibility for their women, they don't want the challenge they don't want. You have to get them in shape so that they feel overwhelmed and that's when it goes off, that's why I'm confident because most men know that this book puts the black man in point, it just talks about what slavery has done to the black woman, but it's really telling you what is allowed to happen, let's go back to the book for a moment.

According to you, there are three types of black women. Yes, they overlap a little. Can you define that very briefly for us? Well, we have them, uh, I list them. I think it's one, two and three and I would call them lower class, middle level and the so-called upper class, you know, and we certainly have to recognize that we have those levels in our society, we see them every day, that is not insignificant. recognize that we have a lower class woman who perhaps lives on the street who is an alcoholic a homeless person you know who is outdoors who was subject to abject poverty for lack of uh for lack of education and proper training and personal hygiene. and other types of information, but she exists and we need to get to her and try to raise her differently because a lot of these women have children and we have to be responsible for them.

We have the middle class women who are number two and uh, they're kind of average, they try to do better than the bottom tier and then of course we have class number three, which is the so-called successful black woman, you know, who she goes crazy over the fact that she usually has a great job and a credit card or something, you know, we do it, a lot of black women manage, yes, I absolutely do, but if we can't manage to save our race, then We haven't made a breakthrough, we're seeing our man, uh, in danger, he's already there.

Endangered, more than 60 percent of us are widowed single, separated or divorced as of last year, so we are not together and there is a monolith in the black community. Raven, if we do not reproduce children, then our nation, our race, will become extinct. here and that's why sometimes we tend to look at black men and say yeah, they're in bad shape and we act like they're going to go extinct and we're going to live, but that's not the way it's going to be. If the black man dies, we are all going to die because he really is the backbone of our nation.

We can't produce a baby ourselves and going into other nationalities just erases, you know, our nation and I'm trying to get that. We should not do that, you have problems with interracial marriages, yes, I am not in favor of that because of the fact that I believe that God made a man and a woman of each nationality so that they could mate and reproduce, and I believe that in our particular. In this case, a lot of us try to run into what I call racial denial by trying to marry people of other nationalities to try to get away from our own heritage, a lot of black women do that and certainly a lot of black men do that, so I'm trying to achieve it.

Let them get back together and stop trying to get married and go to other races and infiltrate them with some of the nonsense we bring as a result of our sad history of slavery. What if a woman tells you well, she was alone and he came to me? at a very vulnerable point in my life, whether I'm Hispanic or Middle Eastern or white and Caucasian, it doesn't matter and she just says he came to me at a very vulnerable point in my life, she listens and is good to me, it's No It is necessary that people confess to me.

I tell people all the time that I'm not going to do a survey. This book is about self-examination and personal development and if after reading this book she thinks she is still in the right place, then don't. I have no control over that. I'm not here as a judge, as I said. I have not prepared myself to say that I am the perfect black woman. Everyone should deal with me. I have the same problems as the rest. Y'all understand, I'm just trying to work through that and this book is so brutally honest that we've never had anyone just talk directly to us about our personal problems, what happens inside the black house after the doors are closed and We had a tendency to think that it's some kind of secret that no one recognizes, that we don't get along and we tend to think that someone is going to pick up this book of some other nationality and think that all black women lack the women that What I describe in this book is totally impossible because the things I describe are visible and audible, you can see them or hear them, so no one will mistakenly think that you do these things if they do not see or hear them.

What comes out of your mouth or your actions, you know, so there's no danger of people thinking we all do this here, it's just that there are a lot of women who think you don't like us, you don't like black. women, oh yes, I love black women, I'm black myself and I have five daughters and four sisters, so it would be ridiculous for anyone to assume that like I said, no one has ever questioned our behavior. I have never had anyone say well, let's look at what we do, we know what they do and they make mistakes and much of what they do, but their mistake, their guilt does not guarantee our innocence, we have a participation in the problems we have. the black community and just because we are clothed and have a job doesn't mean we don't practice summer behaviors that end up infecting our homes and breaking our relationships with our men and helping to hold him down, that's all I am. said so that everyone can look at themselves every man can look at his own woman you know this book has brought many people together this book has brought together many couples who now understand what happened in their relationship it is a must read and 15 universities historically black and 10 white universities, all must study what slavery did to black women.

We have never considered it as an independent study. May I ask what you base your information on? I only do research as a black woman who lives here in the country and me. I

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ed over 3,000 people, I

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ed 379 black men who were married to white women, over 100 black women who were married to or dating white men, and a little over 2,000 black men and over a thousand black women. and what I found is that we don't have a control group, it didn't make sense for me to list all their names because we don't have a group of black people that we can point to and say, well, this particular group is not affected by slavery, all of us we are. affected by it, we simply have not been able to identify the manifestation of that behavior and be able to trace it back to what the root was and how we got to that state, many of the behaviors that we practice because they are fashionable, they are popular in this country and so we believe that that it's the right thing to do, you fought with the black man over anything, yes absolutely please call him out for lying for the sake of lying, yes about all kinds of things he won't tell us the truth about his life because he knows we can.

He does not handle the truth and that is why he will lie to us about his activities and his life because that preserves his peace, he thinks, but we know that lies do not build a relationship, they create doubts, suspicions and fear, and then we exhibit that behavior . Traits and fear in women always translate as hostility and, as you see, it is a closed circle that I amtrying to get us to see how these things are connected and what produces a lot of the anger and frustration that we have. They don't really even look at each other, it's about our conditions, it's about something that has almost been sent genetically through our womb because our men couldn't protect us, they couldn't stop the master of slaves will take our babies from us. uterus to allow us to have food or clothes, many different types of things happen to us that just make us shake, scare us and now we have reached a point where everything that man does we have our total emotional balance. -estimate our respect for ourselves, everything we represent as a woman we have tied right now to our man's genitals and it depends on what he does with them whether we talk about it or not for a moment, this is an intense topic.

Let's never get a chance to explain something I read over and over again in your book regarding infidelity and let me do this here: You say in your book that there is no story of a black man settling down with a woman and never lusting. have another before slavery, during slavery or after slavery, it has never been recorded that the black man has only one woman, well, I think there are some action facts that we can observe that monogamy has failed for the man white in the United States, but this is like saying it's okay, I'm not the one saying it's okay, that's how they live.

I'm telling you the story of his life. Black men haven't been waiting for me to tell them that it's okay to have more than one woman and neither have white men. You know, this is exactly what they do I'm not talking about fornication and adultery I'm not talking about one night stands and running wild with other women that's not the kind of relationship I mean relationship of more than one woman I mean that before you come to America our Men had more than one wife and family and we were satisfied with that because we had not known the idea of ​​monogamy, we had not known the white American woman who, as you know, insists on certain types of days and her man , we had not learned envy and jealousy.

Right after we came here, those kinds of ideas came to us because of the society and the Murrays that the Americans created here and then we started to have problems with that, but I think that since it is evident that most of them, not all of them certainly It is up to the man to love more than one woman. Many received tons of mail. A lot of black men write to me and tell me they've had two women for 5, 10, 15, 20 years and they can't even get the women close. talk to each other sometimes they have two families what I wanted I want to talk to a woman who shares maybe the bed and then the money and the social life with whom I would consider my man if I really want to deal and if you are not insecure and if you don't think that That robs you of something, you'll want to meet them.

If he loves her, you should certainly want to meet her. There are a lot of black women who say, "Oh, I know that." I'm angry at that idea, wait a minute, that's not easy and it's a scary thought for most of us and I don't like that. I'm not in favor of that. I agree with everyone else. I mean, I should have. a woman, but that is not reality. I'm trying to get us to deal with some reality for a change, stop dealing with fantasy, stop dealing with television, stop dealing with the imagination of how we wish things were, deal with them, how they are, what they are. it's in the present tense doesn't mean I have to like it or not that means you can live in hell that means you can live in doubt that means you can always be controlling your man that means you can be insecure and I know you are tearful and that means you can be disappointed when you find out the real truth and you don't want to have that in your life, none of us do, but to not have that then we have to deal with some reality and recognize that men are not limited in the way in that women are men are capable of loving more than one woman, I'm not talking, as I said, only about a random sexual relationship of fornication and adultery and all that, I mean that there are many black men who have children from more than one woman, what will it be? of those children need their father now you say that once these relationships don't work out and start to break down or things start to go wrong at home you say she will cry and look for sympathy during this period the black woman will remind the black man of everything what you have done, yes we do, will try to make you feel guilty and ashamed for your decidedly scandalous behavior.

Absolutely, she will let the house go and I quote. Hell, it's true, she can stop cleaning, ironing, washing and cooking and they withhold sex, that's the real tool we use, we do, but if you cheat on me or keep walking, see, that's what I'm saying, we have We have to go into the definition of who said. We who were deceiving us, where did that idea come from? that's cheating and I'm not saying that a lot of men aren't just running around I'm not talking about that but if a woman finds out that her man has been with a woman while she has been with him for three, four or five years, that is a serious commitment in the relationship and if he has not taken anything from me, if I am not missing anything and if this is what he believes is his responsibility, then what kind?

What hell are you going to go through to prevent it, since we can't stop it, we haven't been successful, the white woman hasn't been successful in stopping the white man from having another woman, they call them lovers, we pick up a lot of that terminology. but a man who has two women is not necessarily a lover, it's just his other woman now we have two options we can be the woman or the other woman you don't, we don't have those two now I know we don't like that I don't like that you know , but that is the reality of our life, at some point now it depends on the man, but what a man does not want to worry about those girls in his religion whose religion is moral, not our religion because we are no longer practicing the religion of black people that they took away from us, we no longer have our morals that they took away from us, so whose idea do you represent when you defend those values, not ours, those of another nationality, and it may work? for them, but it doesn't work for us, it hasn't really worked for anyone, but no one wants to deal with the truth.

Monogamy was only created because of its economics. The Black Man's Guide to Understanding the Black Woman has been out for over a year now, March 20th will be the first anniversary and for that anniversary I will be releasing my new video and the video is called The Black Man's Guide On Tour and it's exciting. I would assume it's pretty high, it's hot after typing. this book just take a moment before answering, okay, do you regret anything you wrote? If you had the chance to do it all over again, maybe you would tone down some of the things you said that you know weren't required?

Any deep thoughts I've been asked a lot, of course, I know I wouldn't because we always want some kind of instruction and help to come to us that doesn't affect the status quo, we want someone to tell us. some information or give us some instruction that doesn't require us to change, okay, this book requires change and one thing that this book has done that has really pleased me is that it has certainly reopened Communications and many of us as black women because of what uh it seems like it's so radical that they're willing to make a lot of concessions man cooperates with a lot of other ways to avoid having to do any of these things that I'm hearing here so I have letters from black men that just write and say listen thank you my wife is cooking better meals now I have letters from kids to say thank you my mom quit her second job now she's home with us at night A black man approached me on the street in New York and I reached out to shake my hand and say thank you and I just burst into tears and say thank you.

Hey, I never thought that today I would imagine not jumping on your case or anything, but just saying in defense how many of those women there are. fear of a slap in the face I don't see terrible things that you have been accused of defending violence, it is a wrong idea. I'm trying to stop violence in the black community, we now know, Raven, that domestic violence is at an all-time high. the black community, black men are currently kicking us, giving us black eyes, knocking out our teeth, stabbing us, shooting us, they are doing a lot of horrible things to us.

I'm right, so what I'm trying to do is give some direction to that one. The problem we have is that we don't know that change happens in degrees and stages, so if we just tell our man not to hit the ones Women, they will not do it, nor will they say no to drugs. You know that doesn't work that way just to give that kind of instruction, so let's put some controls in place first, let's get our men to recognize that they don't have to go out and brutalize us with their fists and beat us with weapons and kick us in the stomach and kick us in the stomach.

He hits, but it's okay for him to hit me with his hand, wait a minute. What I'm saying is that if I can stop the black man from kicking, shooting, stabbing and stomping on black women and make him only lightly touch us in the mouth I will have saved many lives and preserved many families yes, biological is like that, well, they don't go to stop doing it completely now let's face the reality of the statistics, you know, 40 of our Women are brutalized, so I'm trying to get the man to stop doing that to us. The Red Cross suggests the same movement and no one has jumped on them.

If a person gets hysterical, you slap them and bring them back to reality. I'm not even saying a big slap in the face and let's go over that because that's something that's confusing across the country. I'm really so tired. That's the national anthem for black women. At first I thought they were very upset, but I think. It's been kind of a smokescreen that they're trying to use to get black men not to read the rest of the book. Well, here's what it says, if the black woman is repeatedly brutalized, the relationship will fail and the black man will possibly be murdered. arrested and accused of cowardly abusing a woman this is not the goal make no mistake about it no black eyes no punches to the stomach breasts no stomping or hooks discuss the options available to the black man when the woman's mouth black woman has been verbal abuse has proven to be as violent and harmful as physical abuse when her mouth becomes uncontrollably disrespectful, only a few have been told that he can get away from her, leave the house, get drunk, we know men do it, that He can go to his other woman and complain that he can quit smoking. the relationship leaves the woman, he can try to argue and lose, no one can't argue with us, that's fine, or he can seek advice or sympathy from friends, now those are the only options any man has when a woman slips away from him. the mouth or he can. offer him an open head signal, a slap in the mouth that doesn't go from point A to Z.

There are many other options there that our men use. I'm just describing what normally happens when you get to point six, it's not a slap it's a brutal blow with a fist I'm trying to stop him from doing that to us that should be obvious well that's not advocating violence violence is already happening I'm trying To stop it I'm trying to put some controls. I'm sure that's what it is and that's something that people don't understand. You are a mother, yes, I am 12. How would you feel if your daughter called you at 2 in the morning and said mom, now she hit me, now you are a mother?

Your mother, well, I'm not that emotional. I would have to say what happened. Put it on extension and let me find out what happened. There are many women out there who would like to know if you are married. Of course, somewhere. Yes, you know you. I know I'm with Dan with a man I'm not ashamed to say I need a man no I need a man I'm one of those women I have to have a man I'm not ashamed of that uh my first husband uh died in 1985 in Primera and they had a liberal heart attack and now I have a new husband and I have given him the children and we are raising them and uh, he is a very beautiful man, he is not afraid of me, he is not intimidated by me and uh, he knows me and he has read the book, agrees with my campaign and uh, all my children agree with this.

I have seven children and they are very beautiful and very talented and it is very interesting to see how as a result of me teaching them differently, the girls who come there don't play the same game with them, you know, they can't come into our house with the miniskirts on, they cannot enter with clothes that are tight to you. They are Muslims, I can add that of course I am not teaching religion to our people, it's okay, they already failed that course. I wouldn't dare try to teach religion to black people, but that does that, but does that influence?

The way the influence is all that uh continues in the black community because that's what we were before we were brought here as slaves so yeah it's certainly influenced my life. Can I just wrap a book about religion and not include it like that? To back up for a moment, you said there are three types of black women, where do you fall?Probably somewhere the category overlaps probably between the two three and how do you critique yourself well? Like I said, I work every day to be better. wife, best mother, and I haven't said I'm perfect, you know, I'm a victim of all the other things, just like the rest of us, and I'm not saying all black women do everything that in my book none of us have made.

We live long enough to do everything described in the book, but we all do some of them and every time we do them, it serves to break up our relationship and drive our men away from us when that's not really what we want. We really want him to run to us, but sometimes we function in such a way that we make him be outside looking for peace of mind with another person because we deny him peace because we are mad at him for something, you know, I go around trying to tell black women If one of the things we can do for our man is simply smile when we see him coming.

You know, if you follow these ideas, the first thing it will do is relax the muscles in your face. You want to be so tense. It will make you beautiful all the time, what are you teaching your daughters regarding this philosophy, but being able to judge things without emotions to try to go by the actual facts of what is presented to you rather than how? what you feel about it our people in general have trouble distinguishing between real facts and opinions and we believe that we have a choice to reject reject the truth based on how we feel about it the truth does not change it is because we feel a certain way That's next being the truth, so I teach you that this book is semi-autobiographical, oh, not at all, do not excuse me, not at all, but the average person who writes a book, there is a little bit of it somewhere in the writer, here is presenter of television. andWriters don't do that, you can write about whatever you want and, uh, the only thing I regret is that I didn't write The Black Man's Guide to Understanding the Black Woman, Part Two, because there's something else.

This is all I put. in one book, but I'm going to publish the black woman's guide. I understand the black man in 1993, probably well. I will tell you right now that there will be many women. Oh yes, we have been teaching every day and they will try to buy it. Now, but I don't have it ready, perhaps the deepest question I can ask you right now: Do you believe in what you are writing or are you a very astute business woman who makes money? Well, I absolutely believe in what I'm writing. I wouldn't come here and go through what I have to go through all over the country every day and I could be in a different city in every way, every day of the year, the demand is that big.

I read an article in emerge magazine. The other day people were writing about my book as a result of an article they wrote a few months ago and the editor put a note in the magazine on the cover of their magazine saying that uh, that's the magazine emerging now that's supposed to be for black people. On the way out and so on, they put in a paragraph that said we've still been getting letters about Ali's book, The Black Man's Guide to Understanding the Black Woman, but we're not going to publish any more because we've decided that the book.

He has earned enough money. I thought that was the most ignorant comment, so I told my secretary to call him on the phone. Then I got that liquor on the phone. I said: Has IBM made enough money? Nike Reebok? Why don't you tell people that they made enough money, you know, that's so silly that our people adopt an attitude of wanting to stifle someone else's success, the part that you mentioned about me being a successful publisher and a black black a businesswoman, I absolutely have a wealth of knowledge about the publishing industry. I did it myself and you'd think someone would want to do a story on that side since I obviously know how to put together a successful project and see it through year two, but they don't.

I want to deal with it and they keep saying I made enough money, no one even knows how much money I've made, they don't know what my responsibilities are, they don't have 12 kids you know, but I thought that was a very ignorant comment for a black person to make. when all the people who are making money off of black people in our community, where it doesn't benefit us at all, doesn't help us grow or change or be better and they are never addressed, they are never attacked. but they keep telling me you know I've made enough money and they don't even know the irony of this is that you said you wish you could see more black women taking more interest in the house you travel in. the moment she is cooking for her husband, he travels with me many times, they just don't know who he is because we can't let him out.

No, he's with me most of the time. I have a strong and extended family structure. I have sisters and my children are between 5 and 26 years old. Now if that 23, 24 and 25 year old doesn't know how to take care of children, I'm not here, then I've failed but I haven't done it because they know how to continue until I come back, you know? Have you met anyone? Any black women you admire? What do you think she has done an excellent job? Black women all the time. Marva Collins. I just made a large donation to Marvin Collins High School in Cincinnati in memory of my mother.

I've donated to a lot of organizations around the country, you know, to help black kids primarily, that's what I do. I do not donate any money that will be used for administrative costs. I don't do that, but if it's going to go directly to the kids, I do that with a lot of black women, you know, we've done what I said. I represent that great strength that we have. I admire you for what you are. Doing so takes a lot of courage to put me on a TV show and let me speak. A lot of people wouldn't do that.

Thank God. I wish you success in your career. Thank you very much after I leave. I have an opinion on the white woman uh just cheese has been an influence on us and that's not intentionally she's just living her life she didn't tell us to copy her you know but the way society has said that the We have copied a lot. From her ideas and many of the standards she sets for the white man, we have tried to set them for the black man, except for all the things that are required for a man to meet the prerequisites that our men cannot understand.

So it's a really complicated situation and that's why we make demands on our men that they just can't, can't produce. You've been on the talk show circuit for quite some time now, Tim, do you find that even journalists and At the highest degree have trouble remaining objective when talking to you, yes, most of them, in fact, do. What they do is uh, in the newspaper interviews, they sit there and they're so nice, oh, they're so wonderful, and then I leave town and then I get a copy of the story in the mail oh God, they roasted me alive you write Pretty powerful things it must be difficult to even go to an airport well, at times, it certainly has allowed me to be recognized, you know people because I wear these crowns, you know, they recognize me in a lot of places, but most of the time, uh, that It's Stir, which has never been said, there are so many black women who love me, there are so many black women that, in fact, next week I will be.

I go to Baltimore and there's a group there called Black Women's Awareness Raising Organization or something like that and it's a black women's group of 250 professional black women. They have invited me to their convention to be the keynote speaker. Can I say black women from all over the country? who support this project, in fact, I just gave that conference in Miami and the man who invited me was 78 years old and said that he thought he had never lived to see the day when the truth would be told about our women. You know, a 78-year-old black man who was still in the business, invited me in.

Most of the people at the conference were women. Most of the people who bought two and three books for their children were women. Most people who bought books for their daughters. those who were getting married were women, you know, so it has been distorted who really supports this project. We have 30 million people here, about 15 million of them have jobs. Approximately seven million of them know how to read or have disposable income to buy a book. and I have not reached the market I intend to reach so that this message penetrates our communities. Required reading of the book will certainly help us face some realities: our young people want a different life than the one they don't want.

They don't want the failure that many of us have suffered. They have seen that this has not worked for many of us and they want something different. They want to find out why they can't get along while learning their techniques or fail. and why they are so frustrated because there is so much game and nonsense in it and this book will help them achieve that. It has been a pleasure to have you on our program today. Can I add something for a moment? I had the chance. having lunch with you today yes, you are a very nice person, you certainly are, but I can tell you that if I had not known about this book from the first impression I had of you, I would never have thought that you would have written so well.

We don't have, many of us have some talents that our larger communities can benefit from. You know, if I had met you somewhere, maybe I wouldn't have realized that you were a very popular and dedicated talk show host. I wouldn't have known. until you told me what you know how to do, uh, I think the message I'm trying to bring to my people is a message from God. I think the only way our people receive any message or information from God is through the people and that. This is very important work that I am doing. This is not a game for me.

It has a great emotional charge for me. People come against me with many negative ideas. They make themselves difficult and bring all the strength they have. bear and I have to endure that, how do you deal with that? You know it well. I don't internalize it, I don't let it in. I expected us to have an emotional reaction and I know that when you have a revolution of social change, the first reaction is emotional, but those people calm down, so if I have to be the most affected so that they have a better life and we can have a child better, then I just have to accept that and Of course, my own man has to absorb a lot of what I bring him.

Sometimes, every once in a while, someone will reach out and say something that you'll know, it'll be so piercing, you know, saying, wow, listen to that, but I. just don't internalize it because I know it's not me they really want to attack, you know they really want to just not have to take responsibility for their behavior, they don't want anyone to say that's wrong because most of the negative practices that do We've been doing them for so long that we think they're right and so we don't want anyone to come out and say you're doing it wrong and we certainly don't want our man to say okay, you're wrong?

This has been worse, but you've had to go through being harassed in airports and practically blessed on TV shows. Every time I meet him at the airport it's because someone wants an autograph or wants a book. I mean, I've had a whole basketball team in Los Angeles, you know they don't want to go or they want an autograph, but it hasn't been negative and certainly, like I said, we can always harp on that thing in the book that people tried to bring up. negative about violence, as I've explained, that's not what I was trying to do and that certainly prevents people from understanding the rest of the book, which calls on us as black women to bring some of that fundamental strength that we have.

Monumental dedication to the black family to make a family again a family is more than a woman and children a family is a father and a mother and children cannot be denied, however, there are many black women who have decided, for Whatever the reason, do it alone. and they are successful in raising children who are not, no, they are not drugs, yes, let me make my point clear now, who send their children to college, who run a good home. I keep trying to explain what to feed, clothe, raise a child and do. I'm sure it's not doing drugs or going to college, which doesn't guarantee that child any emotional success in their relationships in life, that just means who can get a job.

Look, we have to look at even what standard of success we have. We're talking about it's not necessarily a guarantee of success if we can raise an emotionally stable child, one who knows how to carry on our black nation, one who knows how to be a good mother and still maybe contribute to the community. abroad. If we can raise parents who take responsibility for their children and who know that their presence in the home is necessary if we are to survive, there are many other things more important than simply obtaining a college education and a job that does not guarantee the success of a nation that guarantees personal financial success which is not the only thing we need to revive our black nation let's briefly talk about the future what's next for you uh the video the black man's guide on tour coming out March 20th and hopefully by Christmas we'll have it finished.

I'm working on a shower eye doll prototype that will be a little doll with a little lady with a littlecrown and she will be holding the guide of a little black man and when you hit her on the top of the crown she will give you a positive message. I love that when I thought about that I said straight into bed, but she's going to do that and uh, I. Now they've asked me to come to the elementary schools more and that's why I'm starting to, like I said, if I could work every day of the year, they ask me to go out and talk to our people because they want some relief and they want some explanation and most of our people are smart enough to know that just by the popularity of this book you know that our educational class has failed us because all of them together have never been able to bring an agenda to the forefront.

At the forefront of our nation, where all the people are dealing with this like this book has the Black Man's Guide, it has gotten our people dealing with this all over the country and it's becoming a crossover book that the man White says he is starting to Help him with the white woman. So are they going to have problems? It's not just us anymore. You will be leaving for Africa very soon. Hopefully. Nelson Mandela called me and invited me to go there, to Johannesburg. He says they have something similar. problem with black women in South Africa and that many of them tried to marry white people because they believe that it gives them better benefits than staying with their men who are repressed, you know, under the apartheid system and they have invited me to London.

Of course, where the book is becoming a bestseller, they even invited me to Ireland, they don't even have black people there, but they say they want me to go there and talk to the white woman, you know? I mean, yes. This is a global project, man, I just can't go everywhere, I don't have the energy all the time and I can't keep dragging my kids and, uh, my own husband, you know he has some things that he's doing. I know I have to work with him and so on, but I tried. I actually want to work with the black woman and the black man here in America, where I live, that's where I'm really doing my main work and if I go somewhere else, it will probably just be live remote television, you know, in somewhere else, but I don't know if I'll really have time to travel to those other places.

Did you know when you wrote this book that this would happen? I suspected it. Is this new information that we have never had before? This is brand new information and no matter what anyone else writes about relationships, this will be the standard by which you will be judged. I want to talk just for a moment about something I saw. recently on TV, everyone has taken the opportunity to attack you, oh yeah, did you see Chance's sketch that was done on In Living Color? Yeah, what did you think about that? Well, you know, the phone started ringing and people called me. from all over the country to tell me that they're cheesy from Living Color and no one knew how to react, you know, because they didn't know what my reaction would be and they didn't know if I was going to explode, you know, uh, I can.

Sometimes he walked around with a bunch of guns so they didn't know if he was going to be there, so I thought it was hysterical, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life and it was a compliment because they couldn't have done it. that and it would have been successful if they hadn't assumed that everyone first of all knew who I was I was familiar with the book so you know it was a great insight I felt to the media that I had achieved some goals and I called him to thank him and uh I told him I told him that I wasn't mad, I wasn't sure if I wasn't, but I just thanked him and sent him an autographed copy of the book, but I thought they had me under control.

I have to say that even your family thought, so yeah. my son said mom, he was just like you, so we recorded it, you know, and we've been on a couple of times since it aired because of the demand and we have it at home and it's certainly one that we put out a lot of times, when it comes the company, they didn't see it and we played it because it was a lot of fun, but it was just a takeoff and a lot of people have been able to make money. You know, this book is in the black bookstore. on the map, uh, there are many black bookstores that open other branches of their bookstores.

Many people have testified that they bought cars, put their children through their first year of college with just one book. You know we can. Don't ignore the economic foundation this book has laid in the black community. The first six months of its publication I only allowed it to be sold in black bookstores, but then when I did more national television shows, we didn't have enough bookstores to sell it. they were in the mainstream of the cities so I started allowing B Dalton, Walden, Encore and all the other chains to carry it, but it has done a lot for the black community as far as being an economic base and I think Black people would be happy to have something else to sell other than Avon since those aren't our products, you know, briefly, we're running out of time, but I'd like them to leave us here in Tallahassee, Florida and the surrounding areas. surrounding counties that can watch this show what are some words of advice or wisdom or courtship depending on a question just a few the only wisdom I can leave you with is the information that is already recorded in most of our holy books and that is that God made man and women are together in unity and that is why it is impossible for us as black women to attend church to say that we love and worship God when we disrespect our own man who is in the image of God because God is a man and our men may be the closest representative of that kind of God-like masculinity that we've ever known and uh, that we should stop using our sons to punish our men, we should stop disrespecting our men in front of our sons, sometimes we talk badly about them, that makes the child We have a different idea about the father just because of our personal relationship and that we should start trying to be a little more patient, tolerant and courteous and those are some attributes that we have moved away from because we're in the speed of trying to make a living and like I said, I'm not saying he's right, but if we become better women, he has to become a better man.

Thank you very much, this has been a very interesting look at this. I know your people are going to love it. In this one no one can hear me talk that much. Very good, thank you very much for joining us today in vibration. Thanks for inviting me. That's our program this week. Thanks for joining us. See you again next week. Bye bye.