Black Women - White Men

I thought of many black women I've known whose picture I could use to illustrate this blog posting. I thought of Della Reese who took my hand one morning almost twenty years ago, looked right in my eyes and said, "Bert, always remember this; don't take anything for granted. Just as soon as you hit the top they'll run a Whitney Houston in on you." Then she laughed and it was so contageous she instantly had everyone in the room laughing though she and I were the only ones who knew what she was laughing at.



And I thought of Lillie Hoskins who has run a day care center in Batesville, Mississippi for almost forty years and goes through life trailed by clouds of love and doesn't even know it.



And I thought of Louise (there is no one left in my family who remembers her last name) who took care of me every afternoon from the second grade through the fifth grade who will never know how much she meant to me and how much I love her and she laughed when I told her that I could always see a halo around her head.



That list goes on and on. I didn't use Della's picture, or Lillie's, or Louse's - I chose instead Norma Jean Anderson. When I think of black women and unconditional love she is the one that comes instantly into my mind. Norma Jean left an amazing list of accomplishments - too many to even begin to note in this posting (click on her name and read her memorium). As far as I'm concerned one of the most memorable of them occured the night in her home, when I blurted out, "Norma Jean, would you be my mother?" She didn't laugh or pretend that she hadn't heard. She looked into my eyes and my heart and my soul and then she smiled and said, "Bert, it would be an honor." My adopted mother passed away almost two years ago but she will be with me forever, as will Della, Louise, Lillie and a growing host of others.



I am a white man, not something I had anything to do with, and certainly not something I'm proud of, but still, if power means anything to you, white men are the most powerful group on the planet. From a conventional viewpoint, that is true, but I'll be the first to own up to the fact that power isn't worth a thing in and of itself. In fact that's the point of this posting. I've done a lot of things in this life and to be honest, everything being the same, I'd do them all over again. Do I have any regrets? Well, sort of - but it's not about anything I've done or failed to do. My regret, if you can call it one, is that I didn't spend this life as a black woman rather than a white man.


Why? It's simple. Black women are the masters of unconditional love. It's in their eyes, their hearts, their every breath. No matter what you've done or who you've done it to, they'll still love you. When a black woman looks in your eyes and says, "Honey, it's going to be all right." You know that it is.



I'm stuck with being a white man for the rest of this trip but I do have a consolation - I have the friendship and love of a long list of black women and that list grows longer every week. There just isn't any comparison between that and power.