The Sweep

I hate to make a sweeping generalization but siiiiiiiiiike.. Pass me my broom so I can address the big over- the-top elephant in the room. First, let me say this.. I love black men *raises fists*. My grandfather was a black man, my dad is a black man and some of the most admirable people I know, just so happen to be black men. Okay, now that i've adorned the beautifully melinated, can I keep it real? When black men go through a mid life crisis, It is the loudest, silent scream you will ever hear and not only that, the formula is always the same. I can spot it from a mile away and this is coming from someone who has a sense of direction worse than Nicole Richie when she drove into oncoming traffic circa 2006. When black men with no real fruit.. I repeat.. with no real fruit step into the latter half of their 30's, they basically nose dive into a weird phase that makes me want to send Iyanla to their door for some life fixin'. First it starts with them growing out their hair. It begins as a mohawk but because they are brown, they disregard the fact that Mohawks are corny and only work on emo caucasian boys who have killed before. After they get bored of the mohawk they start growing it out all over and twisting it until they look like Sonic the hedgehog. They settle on this look for a while because it makes them feel younger and it becomes the fishing rod they cast out to a sea of young and lost women who are just looking for a man with a car. LOL! They start edging this hair-do (yes, I said hair-do) up weekly and basically becoming a barbers worst nightmare!! Next, they pick up a sneaker obsession. This sneaker obsession is weird because chances are, the very reason that they're having this mid life crisis in the first place is because they don't have any disposable income. For some reason it doesn't register that their credit score is a negative two until they turned 35 or so. They can't afford the Jordans or Yeezy's (although they have one pair of each) but the rest of their closet is filled with vans and converses. After they fill their closet with converses and vans they'll start pairing these various sneakers with T-shirts that have sayings on them. Please stop me when I tell a lie... no rebuttals?? Good. Shall I proceed?? Forgive me for speaking light on a topic that is actually quite sensitive because although these men look silly out here the real issue is actually quite deep. The identity/ midlife crisis among black men is saddening. My thought is that some men keep themselves in a childlike state because women are so quick to "help" not knowing that the "help" is a distraction. Men, naturally avoid confrontation even when the real person they need to confront is themselves. So in turn, they put on a different identity, one that is youthful and one that doesn't call for wisdom. Sometimes that identity cheats on their wife (if they have one). Sometimes that Identity tells them they have money that they don't have but the one thing this identity ALWAYS does is keep them in bondage. Seeing anyone struggle is hard for me but it saddens me when I see black men distancing themselves from greatness because they refuse to get rooted and fix inner issues. Don't get me wrong, ANYONE can have a midlife crisis but I definitely see a trend in the black community of men with this particular hair and this particular outfit of choice. Before ya'll start coming at me talkin' bout "I wear vans" and "I got a twist out" ask yourself these two questions: Do you have both trends consecutively? Are you over 35? If so, figure out what's really going on. Something needs to be addressed on the inside. You heard it here first.