I spent a significant amount of time this past week participating in several Tic Tok Live discussions centered on a variety of issues vying for supremacy in the clash between conservative thinking and progressive thinking. My next few posts will focus on unpacking the opposing viewpoints and what I believe makes sense and what doesn’t. One Live that captured my attention (and my input) was a discussion on how some frustrated black men (termed “Passport Bros”) are leaving the country in search of submissive wives.
Before that Tic Tok Live, I had never heard of the Passport Bros. Apparently, there are black men with the means to travel who leave or are threatening to leave the country in search of submissive women to marry because black women in the U.S. aren’t submissive enough. The men on the panel were of two mindsets. There were the outright misogynists who expect women to obey them without a word and to service their needs and ambitions. The other men, saw themselves as compassionate men who wanted to take care of “their woman”. They, too, believed that the role of women was indeed to be submissive and supportive, but they saw value in legitimate questions and respectful challenges, so long as their decisions were followed. Both men acknowledged that finding black women who wanted to be submissive on their terms was nearly impossible in the U.S. and so they needed to go abroad.
I found it interesting that the women were also of two minds. The first group of women were willing to be submissive with the right man in charge and the other viewed marriage as a partnership between two thinking adults with differing skill sets. I was part of the latter group.
The major criticism of the Passport Bros was a perception that they were insecure men seeking to enslave, control, and dominate vulnerable women who were poor, passive, and uneducated. They bashed black women and saw themselves as sticking it to black women by going abroad, but the women on the panel and in the chat were like, “Good riddance; please go” because no adult female with a healthy self-esteem and an education would willingly submit to blind obedience and exploitation. These men seemed desperate to fulfil a need to exploit women for sex and ego. It seemed that they either had a distorted view of women or that they cared nothing about the humanity of women, making them capable of treating women like children, sex toys, and slaves that they would “treat well”. Even the “reasonable” men had expectations that any self-respecting educated woman with ambitions and a voice of their own would find unacceptable. Later, a female law enforcement officer on the panel acknowledged that men who viewed women in this fashion were the most prone to use violence against their wives and girlfriends.
The men on the panel weren’t interested in partnership nor collaboration while the women were either seeking an unattainable level of competence, confidence, and strength in a male to submit to or like me, a partnership. But the reality in the U.S. today is that black females have college degree attainment at twice the level of their black male counterparts. They are less likely to have prison records and less likely to be unemployed. A combination of poverty, mass incarceration, violence, and single parent households as experienced in the U.S. have led black women to depend on themselves. Black females have gained a reputation for being educated, strong-willed, independent, hardworking, competent, ambition and very vocal. I guess it should be expected that many black males (along with others) find black women intimidating and emasculating. Many black women neither need nor want to be lead, however, they do want to be nurturing and loved and some are willing to be submissive under ideal circumstances. To the lament of many black women, it’s become common to find educated black males with white women.
On the flip side, black women are turning to men of other races for partnership much more frequently. All three of my biological children have married outside their race and I don’t find anything wrong with it. They have found someone who is a loving partner to them and that makes me happy. They have all elevated their social-economic status in partnership with the person they married. Contrary to the myth, they haven’t encountered a whole lot of drama from their ethnic differences. Rather, their life experiences and opportunities for growth have been expanded. At the same time, their spouses have become greater advocates for black lives. While I never married outside my race, I would not have been opposed to it. I just happened to meet partners who were black.
I’m thankful that twice in my lifetime, I married black men who were seeking a partner, not someone to dominate. We recognized each other’s knowledge, skills, and expertise and deferred to each other accordingly. The first marriage ended because he finally admitted that he didn’t believe in monogamy. I was confident enough in myself to file for divorce, but many women are not. Because we had been partners, we negotiated the terms of our divorce without drama and remained as collaborative co-parents. In both of my marriages, major decisions have been made through discussion until we reached consensus. The idea that one person makes all the decisions and the other mindlessly follows only works when the follower is incapable of rational thought. I pity the many women I saw in church who were passively submissive wives and later found themselves thrust into poverty and hardship when the man they trusted moved on.
I know there are religious women who believe in total submission because they accept the teaching that man is the rightful head of the household. That system works for women who are willing to place their trust, their talents, and their personal feelings in service to the ego, whims, and ambitions of a man because they trust God. If the man is generous, kind, really smart, has integrity, and values his wife’s feelings and gifts, then it might work. The problem is that very few men can meet the high standard required to command absolute submission. So, in my humble opinion, I’ll take partnership and collaboration in marriage over absolute submission any day.
I doubt the Passport Bros will change their mindset and so I feel sad for the women who may become their victims. A few may be happily submissive and do well in these marriages. But moving forward, I hope we as mothers and grandmothers do a much better job of raising our sons to respect and value the full humanity and dignity of women.