E10: Love Language

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

In January of 2020, Bloomberg CityLab published an article about a new study from Pittsburgh researchers naming the best and worst cities for black women. Among cities with at least 100,000 black women, Cleveland came in dead last in terms of livability. In this city with a nearly 50% black population, this news drops like a bomb, and reactions were mixed.

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Do you think Cleveland is really the worst for black women? And what do you say?

Female:

“I say …

Female:

“It depends on the person they ask.”

Female:

“When I dropped it in one of my black girl group chats, the emojis were just eye rolls.”

Female:

“I'm not surprised. Not even a little.”

Female:

“It’s heartbreaking and also embarrassing.”

Female:

“Is it like this everywhere? Is it me? Like …

Female:

“This city will make or break you.”

Female:

“City of black women that are looking around at their outcomes, their future, their past, and saying, this city makes me anxious.”

Female:

“If anybody's out there listening in Cleveland, please get out.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

On Living For We, we talk to Cleveland's black women from all walks of life, from the CEO of one of our major healthcare systems to self-starting entrepreneurs, judges, lawyers, doctors, artists, students, and mothers who've experienced loss. We share stories from these women as change makers and architects of their own futures celebrating their victories, challenges, and personal growth along the way.

So, is it really true what they say? Is Cleveland deserving of the least livable title? And what can we do to make lasting improvements for black women in our city?

I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor, and this is Living For We, a project of Connecting the Dots between Race and Health, from Ideastream Public Media.

Stephen Miles:

What do I like most about Judy? Let me count the ways. Judy is a genuinely good and honest person. She believes strongly in doing good things for all people, as evidenced by what she carries in her purse, which is everything. Hand cleaner, bandages, cough medicine, suntan, lotion, ibuprofen. You want it? Likely Judy has it.

Judy is beautiful. She's fine. She has beautiful brown eyes and a warm smile, soft skin to the touch and a flowing salt and pepper mane giving her an air of royalty. I think she's just ravishing.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Wow. It's not often we get to hear black men wax poetic about their wives, girlfriends and partners, but it's a beautiful sound, isn't it?

We know that when Cleveland received the least livable label, researchers didn't consider the love lives of black women. But we thought, how can we explore what it's like living here without considering love?

On this episode of Living For We, we're painting a portrait of black love and the power it holds to change lives.

That was Stephen Miles you just heard expressing himself so eloquently about his wife, Judy, you may remember my friend Judy, a local attorney from an earlier episode on healthcare. She had a near death experience a few years back, and Stephen was by her side the whole time.

Judy Miles:

I consider myself blessed in that way that everything I've been through, I'm still here and we have faced a lot of issues. But my husband and I we're able to weather everything. And if I didn't have that, what would've happened to me?

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Steve is Judy's rock and boy does he love her.

Stephen Miles:

She is my biblical help meet from Genesis. From Genesis, yes, 2:18. She fills my gaps, which are many, and she completes me. She's my best friend. She'll come in from work, for instance, and I'll make her an Epsom salt bath with candles and everything. Make it nice and comfortable for her. I'll do anything for my wife. There's no other person that I'd rather do things for more than my Judy.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We have another beautiful black love story to share. Our former guest, Ramat Wiley took a while to find her passion. She went through several career changes and her husband, McKinley was there supporting her all the way.

He encouraged her to follow her dream of attending culinary school. And when COVID hit, she decided to start a new business creating unique spices, and he stepped up again.

This is a long way from an idea to a business.

Ramat Wiley:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How'd that happen?

Ramat Wiley:

A lot of internet research and asking the questions to people who have answers. And it was a lot of trial and error, honestly, finding out people who were really willing to help you without wanting something back from you, like a piece of something.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How did you finance it?

Ramat Wiley:

My husband gave me $300.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

$300.

Ramat Wiley:

$300 is what I started doing-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah, $300 and a dream.

Ramat Wiley:

I had three. He's like, “Here, babe, this is all you. Go for it.” But no, I saved up a few dollars and I had the support of his family as well.

McKinley:

What I love most about Ramat is really just her smile. I also love her work ethic and really just her overall intellect. She's super intelligent and I also love her artistic passion for food, horticulture. She has the green thumb and she loves playing in the dirt. I love that about her. Yeah, she's really dope like that.

Her love language is acts of service. So, one of the main ways I try to show that I love her is through being available, showing up for her, checking in on her periodically. I also send random texts to her just saying, hey, or that I love you.

That's really it, just making quality time for her and prioritizing her and her needs, listening, simple stuff.

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Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Every couple is looking for the kind of love that Judy and Steve and Ramat and McKinley having their marriages. But it's not always easy for professional black women to find someone who's not intimidated by their success.

Sisters, you know what I mean. It's hard for a city to be livable for you if you can't find love there when you're smart, black, beautiful, and fierce. Finding the right man in Cleveland can be a challenge.

Just ask our former guest, Cleveland Housing Court Judge Moná Scott, when she arrived in Cleveland to attend law school fresh from a much bigger city with a larger pool of educated black men to choose from, she thought dating would continue to be a breeze. But well, let's just let her tell the story.

Moná Scott:

My 20s was active dating, unapologetically dating.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Enjoying in your 20s. That's what your 20s are for.

Moná Scott:

You're right. I don't ever remember going to a club in Atlanta and buying my own drink. I don't think I ever had to, but here it was polar opposite.

I'm like, these guys don't buy drinks and then they want to have a conversation with you. And I'm like, you better ask me what I'm drinking. I don't do this little freak. Listen, this makeup and this look takes a minute to get together.

And the guys I were meeting, they were staying with their mom and they were driving what I call a hooptie.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Oh gosh. Staying with their mom, red flag.

Moná Scott:

Yep, yeah. Everybody I was meeting, I was just like, what's happening with this date scene up here? I just eventually just stopped telling people that I was in law school. They would get really intimidated by it.

And so, I remember when I met my ex, I told him I worked at the Kmart that was down there in Warrensville, and he was like, “I go there all the time. I never see you.”

And I was like, “So, I work in accounting.” He said, “Why are you up here from Atlanta?” And he has a preference for southern women.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Okay. So, he was trying to figure it out, why is this person here from Atlanta to come and work at Kmart? It's not computing.

Moná Scott:

I'm like stressed. And he calls and I said, “Hey, I got to call you back. I got to finish this brief.” And then I kind of caught myself and I was just like, “Let me call you right back.” And he said, “Okay.”

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How did you finally tell him, yeah?

Moná Scott:

I did tell him, yeah. He said, “Well, why wouldn't you say anything?” And I said, “I just didn't want to, I didn't want to go through this whole feel intimidated.” And he was like, “No, that's a very good thing.” So, he was really supportive of it.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, after a while, Moná finally found a guy in Cleveland that didn't run away when he found out she was a future lawyer. No wonder she ended up marrying him.

But many women feel the same pressure to minimize their accomplishments. And that's getting harder to do. According to the American Association of University women of all black students in higher ED, black women get about 64% of bachelor's degrees, some 71% of master's degrees, and nearly 66% of doctoral medical and dental degrees. So, some are slaying in higher ED, but sometimes struggling to find black men to share those accomplishments with.

Maybe the solution is that black women should start to consider dating and marrying other men, maybe even non-black men.

Now you know, we couldn't talk about black women and dating without talking about why some of us hesitate to date outside the black community. Is interracial dating still taboo for us? ChiChi Nkemere, one of our partners from Enlightened Solutions has been there before.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Girl, my friends laughed at me so much because I was on Hinge for about a month and it was horrible. It was horrible. And the only matches I got were with white men. And I was like, “What is wrong with me? What am I putting off into the atmosphere?”

And that's not to say that I hadn't dated white men before. I absolutely had, but I was like, mm, girl, it's not for me for right now.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Now, I know it's baked into history, right?

ChiChi Nkemere:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We feel this obligation that we must support black men.

ChiChi Nkemere:

Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But they don't always feel that same sense of obligation that they must date black women.

Do you remember our former guest, 94-year-old Arnell Hendricks, she's a widow now, but she had a long marriage to her husband, Lindell Sr. She described their marriage as very complicated.

Arnell Hendricks:

We met at church, but he liked a lot of women. I mean, he liked women, that was his problem. He liked women and he had families that encouraged that. So, it encouraged for him to brag about what he'd done and where he’d been and you know. So, it was really hard with me.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

It was tough.

Arnell Hendricks:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But you hung in there?

Arnell Hendricks:

I did.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

How long were you guys married?

Arnell Hendricks:

Like 50 something years.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Miss Arnell and her husband Lindell had two children together as she was reflecting on the study that found Cleveland to be the worst place for black women, she agrees. She says it's hard out here for us looking for love, but she's happy her granddaughter has beaten the odds.

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Arnell Hendricks:

My granddaughter … a white guy for her, they supposed to be getting married. And she was telling me about him and she said, “Know what? He's white.” I said, “Does he have a father that's single? I'll take his father,” because he seems to be a very nice man.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You’re like, let me meet this man. Let me meet the father.

Arnell Hendricks:

I said, “I’ll meet the father. You get … so, that’s okay.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Now shouldn't you have been asking for the grandfather? Wouldn't the father be a little young for you?

Arnell Hendricks:

I don't think I want no 90-year-old man. I don't-

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You don't want to be bothered?

Arnell Hendricks:

Never by a 90-year-old man.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

So, you are okay with your granddaughter having an interracial relationship?

Arnell Hendricks:

Oh yeah, uh-huh. Yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

We knew we had to consult our girl and podcast therapists, Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett on this one about the complicated feelings some black women have about dating non-black men.

Angela Neal-Barnett:

Well, it is hard because we think about what we truly want and we want to raise up healthy black families and be with black men and uplift the race.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And uplift black men.

Angela Neal-Barnett:

And uplift the black men.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Because we've been taught that.

Angela Neal-Barnett:

Yes.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

I think we've internalized that, that in some ways we are being traitors by dating men who are not black. We're traitors to black men. They need us. How could black women of all people abandon them?

Angela Neal-Barnett:

When I was a young psychologist, I lived in Chicago, many of the black women's attitude was this, “I can do bad all by myself.”

So, you've got this, they need us, uplift the race. All those kinds of things. We need to help them. So, you get a variety of thinking around this. But for those of us who do internalize it, then it becomes more difficult.

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Marlene Harris-Taylor:

For some successful black women, even when they think they found Mr. right, things can go terribly wrong.

For example, our very accomplished former guest, Ariane Kirkpatrick, CEO of a thriving construction company, and a medical marijuana business is a luminous confident, successful black woman with an ever-growing list of accolades. But she hasn't always felt so confident. In the past, she dimmed her own light and put her ambitions on hold for the sake of a toxic marriage.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Well, there was a blur in my life at one time where I was married in a bad marriage for short and had children. I'll just say that was about a good three, four years that Ariane wasn't Ariane. And so, it was just a lot of restructuring, a lot of building back who I was building my confidence back up. Terrible, terrible, terrible marriage.

So, I've grown from that. That was the time where I wasn't confident and was accepting the abuse and making it seem like it was my fault.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And I appreciate you sharing that because for so many women to think about a person like you with all this talent, with all this confidence starting businesses, then to be in a relationship like that and to your point, accepting of it for a while, for us to see that anybody can get caught up in that. Because if somebody like you can get caught up in that.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Most definitely.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

What about a woman who doesn't have as much confidence, and doesn't have as much resources or help behind her? It's really tough. So, it's something that we all can share and have empathy about.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

I literally had to start over. Yeah. I mean, I left everything.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Gosh, I'm just hearing so many lessons in your life for so many of us women.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Oh yeah.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You can start over. You can start over.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

You can start over. I had nothing. People know when you going through abuse, I remember we went to the dog pound to go adopt a dog. And I really remember the lady looking and I had a black eye and she said, “Oh, we can't give you the dog.”

And she said … and you fill out the form, “Are you in an abusive …

And I said, “Oh no, I just bumped into a walk.” And I said it so naturally. And so, it was just like, wow okay.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Like you said, just making excuses and covering it up.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

For him.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Yep.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Became just a natural part of it, because you were valuing that relationship.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

That's the crazy part about it. Not really. I don't know. I …

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Well, what do you think it was then? I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but did you not want to admit failure? I mean, what do you think it was?

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

I think that's what it was. Didn't want to admit failure, wanted to portray this marriage with these 2.5. And I guess what, I had a white picket fence.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

You got the white picket fence, you finally had it.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

But it was an illusion.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

And it was an illusion. And we had a dog. It wasn't a dog from the pound, it was just a junkyard dog. So, it was an illusion.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Yeah. You had the husband, the two kids, a dog and the white picket fence.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Yep.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

And you didn't want the world to know that wasn't what it looked like.

Ariane Kirkpatrick:

Right.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Dr. Angela says, some women in abusive relationships blame themselves. You talk about a variety of opinions around whether you can just do bad all by yourself or whether you should stay and stick it out no matter how hard it's getting.

And we heard from our guest, Ariane Kirkpatrick. She went through what, as you say, she described as a really dark period.

Angela Neal-Barnett:

She went through this very dark period where there was some kind of abuse. It dimmed her spark. And so, one of the things that I think is so important for black women, whether it be emotional or physical or sexual abuse, is understanding it is not your fault.

And what becomes important is making sure you are safe. Women who are abused stay longer. Many of them leave and come back, leave and come back. It can take six or more times before one says, I'm gone for good and takes the action to be gone for good.

So, if anybody's listening, do not blame yourself. It is not your fault. And the idea is not to try to figure out why this person is abusive to you. The idea is for you to be safe, and if you have children, for your children to be safe as well.

Marlene Harris-Taylor:

Dr. Angela says that if you or a loved one aren't feeling safe at home, there is help out there. Check out the websites and phone numbers in the episode description.

Love can be our safe place. And in its purest form, it helps us to become the best version of ourselves. It helps us see the world as a brighter place, and it inspires us to appreciate another person in a near divine way.

ChiChi, our researcher, has found love and is getting married. Congrats ChiChi. And don't we all love a wedding? Her fiancé, Tommy is very proud that she's an accomplished black woman.