Black Woman I Been Trying to Tell You But You Aint Listening
I am an old-head wise Black man now.
Gray in my beard, history aches in my body,
war and stress inside my chest.
I've lived long enough
to watch presidents change,
songs change, Ebonics change,
technology change, and
still see the same white hand of
racial oppression resting heavy on
the necks of Blacks in America.
I've watched little Black boys
grow into tired Black men
before they even turned thirty.
Watched dreams dry up
like rivers in Mississippi heat.
Watched prison buses
ride through our neighborhoods
like school buses used to.
And all these years
I kept trying to explain something
to my sisters. Not because I resent them.
Lord knows I loved them.
Loved Black women enough
to survive some of the coldness
that came from them.
But many times
when I tried to speak about racism,
about what this country does
to the Black male spirit,
I was met with suspicion
instead of understanding.
As if I was the enemy.
As if the Black man
invented the hardships we face
instead of being born inside it too.
I tried to explain
that a Black man denied power
is a man denied part of his manhood.
Not because masculinity means domination,
no - but because every man needs the
ability to provide, to protect,
and to progress; to stand
upright in dignity
without white systems
constantly placing boots on his back.
America studied the Black man
like white hunters’ study deer.
to break his confidence.
Destroy his image.
Turn his pain into pathology.
Turn survival into criminality.
Turn frustration into “toxicity.”
Turn unemployment into laziness.
Turn trauma into personal failure.
Then they whisper in the Black woman’s ear:
“Your man is the problem.” And too many believed
it not all Black women. Never all.
But enough to wound generations.
I watched educated sisters
quote white institutions
more than they listened
to the cries of Black men
living under racial siege.
I watched Black boys
called “dangerous” at six years old,
then grow into men
who carried invisible funerals
inside themselves. Funerals for
opportunity. Funerals for tenderness.
Funerals for innocence.
Because racism ain’t just economic.
It gets inside the nervous system.
Inside the bloodstream.
Inside the mirror. It makes a Black
man question his worth
every single day
in a society that profits
from his humiliation.
And when a man hurts long enough,
he changes. Sometimes he gets angry.
Sometimes distant.
Sometimes numb.
Sometimes self-destructive.
Not because he was born broken,
but because oppression
is psychological warfare. White
supremacy don’t just attack the body.
It attacks identity. And I spent years
trying to explain this
without sounding bitter.
But how do you speak softly
about centuries of spiritual assault?
How do you calmly explain
that many Black men walk around
with invisible emotional shrapnel
lodged in the soul? I wanted Black women
to understand that many Black men were never
taught healthy emotional language
because survival became our first language.
Our fathers carried stress
like wet cement on their backs.
Many of them never hugged us
because nobody hugged them.
Many worked themselves into graves
trying to prove they were men
in a country determined
to call them boys forever.
And somewhere along the line
too many conversations between us
became accusation instead of healing.
The Black woman saying:
“You need to do better.” The Black man saying:
“You don’t understand what I carry.”
And white supremacy sat
quietly in the corner smiling
while we argued over the symptoms
instead of the disease, that’s the part
that broke my heart most. Watching us fight each
other while the system kept feeding
off both of us.
Because Black women suffer too.
Lord knows they do. I seen my mother clean
white people’s homes with swollen feet
and tired eyes. Seen Black women carry families
through impossible conditions.
Seen them survive abandonment,
poverty, violence, disrespect,
and the loneliness
of always being “strong.”
But somewhere in this American nightmare,
many Black men and Black women
stopped seeing each other
as fellow survivors as
started seeing each other
as opposing political camps. And that ain’t natural.
That’s engineered. A divided people
are easier to control. A Black man disconnected
from his woman is easier to destroy.
A Black woman taught to distrust her man
is easier to be emotionally manipulated.
A divided people cannot build nations.
I wish some sisters understood
how racism humiliates Black men publicly
while demanding we privately remain unshaken.
That’s a hard burden.
To be feared by police,
mocked and attacked by the media,
discriminated against at work,
over-policed in neighborhoods,
under-protected in society,
then come home
and be told your pain
doesn’t matter.
Some brothers broke under that weight.
Some became angry.
Some became absent.
Some chased material things
trying to rebuild stolen dignity.
Some hid in addictions.
Some became emotionally unreachable.
And yes, some hurt
Black women deeply. I won’t lie about that.
Truth got to stand whole. But I also know
many Black men died emotionally
long before anybody noticed
they were bleeding internally.
I know brothers
who never heard the words
“I appreciate you.”
Brothers who only received
attention when they failed.
Brothers who spent their whole
lives trying to prove
they were worthy of love
in a society that trained everybody
to suspect them first.
And now in my older years,
I no longer want war
between Black men and Black women.
I want understanding, I want us to finally admit
that racism damaged all of us differently. That the
Black woman’s wounds are real.
That the Black man’s wounds are real too.
That neither healing nor
self-determination can
happen through blame-game.
I want Black women
to look at Black men
with deeper historical compassion.
And I want Black men
to stop drowning silently
behind pride and emotional fear.
Because we are all tired, tired of funerals.
Tired of prisons, tired of broken homes.
Tired of survival without peace.
Tired of carrying America’s racism
inside Black relationships.
I am an elder Black man now. And after all
these years, I still believe Black men and
Black women belong beside each other
not beneath each other.
I still believe
our love can survive
if truth finally enters the room.
But truth requires courage. The courage to admit
that white supremacy
did not merely chain Black bodies—
it strained Black intimacy,
distorted Black identity,
and turned wounded people
against one another.
And until we confront that honestly,
we will keep inheriting pain
that was never ours to begin with.
So listen to me now
while I still got breath in my lungs.
The Black man is not the root
of all Black suffering.
The Black woman is not the enemy.
The real enemy
has always been the system
that profits when we forget
we're supposed to struggle and
heal together.
- Kenray Sunyaru
