Wow. A response and a half.

Congrats to Jelani on all levels.

Many of you are visiting my website in response to my article on African American men and sex tourism in Brazil in the September issue of Essence magazine. This piece has generated quite a bit of hostile response. While I don’t set out to anger people, my job as a writer is to tell people the truth as I understand it – not necessarily what they want to hear. And while I appreciate (most of) the email I’ve received, the volume of it has made responding to each one impossible. Therefore I am posting this response to the most common threads in the correspondence. 

1. Why did you write this article?

The short answer is because I’m a writer and this is a story. The longer answer is because it is an issue that really needed to be discussed and one of my goals as a writer is to start important conversations. There’s an old saying that the only problem that some blacks had with slavery was the fact that we were the slaves. It was profound to me that the hard-fought gains of the past half century have empowered a certain set of black men to travel to South America and behave in ways once associated with white men alone. To me the issue raised a question of what we were and are struggling for. Was it solely to get a foot in the door so that we could replicate the worst behaviors of American society ourselves? Are we so wrapped up in our own issues with America that we are incapable of seeing the severe problems that confront other people of color in other parts of world?

2. Your article has made the problems between black men and women worse.
James Baldwin said that not everything that can be faced can be solved, but nothing can be solved until it is faced. I found this particular critique fascinating — as if a problem would not exist if we didn’t speak about it. I am of the belief that truth is an antiseptic. It stings; it burns, but in the end it makes us better. It was in that hope that I wrote the article.

The brothers I interviewed in Rio expressed a profound disillusionment toward sisters in the states and a deep resentment of the treatment they receive from black American women. If this is in fact the case, doesn’t it mean we need to be talking about this issue? If a brother has to spend $700, fly 1,800 miles and learn basic Portuguese in order to feel appreciated, I think it warrants a community discussion.

3. Where can I go in Brazil to experience the things you wrote about in the article?
Yes, I actually did get this question. My heartfelt honest response: Get real. You have to be kidding me. Please tell me you are not so desperate that you’re sending email to a writer whom you’ve never met asking him where you can go to get some.

4. What can black women in America do to keep their men from going to Brazil/How can we compete with these women in South America?

Yes, I got that question too. And the short answer is nothing. As I stated in the article, this is not entirely about sex. I’m not even convinced it’s mainly about sex. This is about affirmation and deference that men get and choose not to examine for what it is: good customer relations, no more, no less. I’m not a relationship expert, but I don’t think it’s realistic for people in actual relationships to attempt to compete with something that is essentially a made-to-order fantasy. Moreover, do you really want to be with someone who requires you to compete with prostitutes for their attention?

5. You let black men off the hook in terms of challenging the ways that they negatively describe black women.

This was interesting also. Lots of women (my mother included) felt that I should have explicitly condemned the men who were speaking ill of the sisters back home.  Let me go on the record and say that I was generally disturbed by what I saw and heard in Rio. There were dozens of black men explaining that they travel to the city and seek out women there because they are so poorly treated by black women in America.

I had a hard time hearing this because one of my primary concerns in life is the well-being of the black community, however it is that we define that term. I also found it difficult to believe that all these men were having a hard time meeting black women at home and suspected that it was a self-serving justification for their behavior. At the same time I had to balance the fact that I was writing a feature, not an editorial or a column, which is why I take a definite stand but attempted to express it somewhat subtly within the piece. At the very end, I talk explicitly about the ways in which brothers from the states in Rio are being complicit in a system that feeds on the exploitation of women in the third world.

6. You came down too hard on black men considering all they have to deal with in this society.

See answer #1. Also, I find it impossible to believe that after two centuries of struggle our only recourse is to fly ten hours to a foreign country and pay a woman for sex. I know as well as anyone else what we confront in this society. I also know that black people in Brazil are struggling against even greater obstacles than we are here. Our own condition in America does not justify turning a blind eye to that reality.

7. You sold out by letting women in on what was going on/You must be gay.

Um… okay. But is that really where you want to draw your line in terms of allegiance? The last two articles I wrote for Essence dealt with the disproportionate incarceration of black youth for offenses that white youth are frequently given probation for and the murder of two young brothers I knew (age 22 and 25.) I heard almost nothing in response to those pieces. I am willing to bet that you did not send any outraged emails to your local representatives, state senators, congressional representative or the White House regarding this catastrophic situation. Yet a piece that talks about the biggest open secret in black America has you up in arms. It’s been said that in writing my piece I violated the alleged brother’s code. Yet we black men are 19 times more likely than white men to die as a victim of homicide and 95% of the perpetrators look just like we do. It seems to me that if there is any code violation to worry about, it should be that one.

As for the illogical assumption that the article somehow indicates that the writer is gay — are you equating heterosexuality with having to pay for it? That may be the case for you (and if so, you have my condolences) but I don’t have that particular problem.

8. You make it seem as if all Brazilian women are prostitutes and only black American men are guilty of sex tourism there.

The article was about sex tourism in Brazil — not Brazil at large. There are tons of things to discuss about that beautiful and historic country; unfortunately culture and history are not the reasons that so many black men have started going to Rio in the past 3-5 years. If I wrote an article about carjackers in Atlanta one would not assume that it meant that all Atlantans are carjackers. The women i wrote about in the article were part of the sex trade; but nowhere do I argue or imply that they are the majority of the women in the city. Also, I made reference early in the article to the fact that black men are far from the only men involved in this activity. The angle of the article is that there has been an explosion in terms of the numbers of black men and that change is worthy of investigation.

If you still have questions or comments, feel free to email me. I can’t however guarantee that I’ll get the time to reply, but I’ll give it my best shot.