I probably should mention…
I have decided that my vitriol against black men must stop. What happened? My youngest nephew turned 14 on the 22nd May. I basically had a humanising moment, I didn’t want anyone treating him the way I have treated others. So my precious baby nephew from across the Atlantic made me a better person. I decided my hatred was misdirected. Its not all black men…
My problem is the enabling culture perpetuated by women. My mother would treat me different married to a black man than a white man. I would have different expectations of how I should behave. People don’t treat black men as adults, instead as sexually unrestrained children.
He hit you? He can’t control his anger.
He rapes you? He needs sex.
He steals the family money? He has to be able to feel like a man.
I can’t stand that there is no floor.
When I was growing up I had an uncle Nat, he used to beat the devil out of his first wife. That’s how we knew them, my aunt would call us to get him to stop beating her as it was more effective than calling the police. Dad would hightail it to Streatham (from Bermondsey) and convince him to stop beating her, and then talk to them both, pray with them and then go home. He then divorced his wife (he married her for a British passport, he then impregnated her and then wanted to leave once he got citizenship, his wife however saw marriage as forever and resisted divorce for which he’d beat her mercilessly until she eventually relented for her safety. He then claimed to love his daughter who was named after him deeply, so deeply he paid 3 whole child support cheques. This daughter applied to her MP to have her name changed to her step fathers name as a minor because her biological dad treated her so badly after the divorce) My mum swore she didn’t know that he beat his wife. Yet she too would be either woken in the night or would go with dad to go and break up the fights. How did she not know? This came from a conversation on Sierra Leonean men and domestic violence. I have 5 male relatives on dad’s side. 3 cousins and 2 brothers. Only one of them hasn’t beaten his wife. The one who didn’t beat his wife is a polygamist, he literally has 2 wives currently and he ghosted his first wife for 2 years then filed for divorce once he too got British citizenship. (He basically did the same as uncle Nat, participated in an incredibly elaborate false marriage, it was real to the ex wife (a white woman called Auntie Tracy who was a good woman who was rich as sin and genuinely loved him, which was a shame) just not real to him. Dad yelled for a bit Eddie still did it. Both my brothers beat their girlfriends/wife. Clarence got arrested for it, Alaji also got arrested for it, My cousins fathered kids who didn’t look after those kids, my dad yelled for a bit, but they did it anyway, dad still paid for their lives even though they didn’t pay for their children’s lives.
I lived with a rapist as a 16 year old who raped his girlfriend at knifepoint and would have gotten away with it, other than the fact that he confessed in the most horrific detail. But not before his mother who was an influential member of the ex-pat community called her a whore and a Jezebel who was jealous that her dusty son didn’t marry her. The guy who bankrupted his wife to go do politics in Sierra Leone… which he failed at… but she still had to provide for his two daughters he gave her plus the 3 kids from his first marriage, because hell, he wasn’t going to do it. My uncle fathered a child out of wedlock whilst married. That child lived the most horrendous life, being shuttled between Sierra Leone, Ghana, and the USA because no one wanted her because her mum had an affair with a married man, wanted to get married and a new husband didn’t want someone else’s kid in the marriage. So this kid got monumentally screwed. My other uncles used to beat their wives or steal from their wives. My uncle Olu Williams, not to be confused with my aunt’s husband of the same name who drank his children’s childhood fund away, costing my family £30k. This particular Olu Williams married a Bridget Williams, he had 2 kids from a previous marriage, didn’t work in a single day of a 16 year marriage, fathered 2 further kids who he didn’t look after, had his wife “provide” for his first set of kids until these kids were in their 30s then the second set who he then abandoned when he couldn’t be bothered to even pretend to care for. Literally run off the face of the planet. My cousin’s husband pretended to be a good person for years, groomed the hell out of her and raped her on a regular basis, when she got tired of being raped she filed for divorce, he would stalk her. This isn’t “back in the day” this is 2023.
What is our excuse for these men? Absolutely none, but why did these mad things happen? Because they were allowed to, fraud, deprivation of their children, rape, adultery. Why do these things happen? Because both men and women allow it. There is no floor to the behaviour of what is acceptable. Other than 2 these marriages are still functional. My aunt Beatrice Williams, to be distinguished from Bridget Williams, suffered years of hardship, humiliation because her husband was a drunk, she is a principal of a school, and he’d show up drunk to her school to demand money for alcohol. My dad bankrupted my mother regularly over his family and then showed us off as a perfect family the whole time we lived in a hostage situation, anytime dad’s family needed or wanted something dad the threat of dad emotionally shooting the place up was always there. Or if he didn’t get his way he’d humiliate us. My dad owes a former student around $10,000 for doing things for my elder brother Clarence, one time dad’s distant relative wanted £400, he didn’t have it, my mum didn’t have it yet, I refused to give it to him because the person treated me like crap, so my dad went to my elder brother…who also didn’t have it… So my dad nearly gave himself a stroke (he didn’t know it but he had cancer at the time and that probably hastened his death) trying to get it from the same former student in America who he owes about $10,000. (she co-signed my brother’s car… he didn’t pay, she had to, plus she bought him furniture when he made himself homeless for the second time round, the first time my parents bought him a house until he illegally sublet one and tried to defraud my parents out of the other, then his ex girlfriend had to pay his rent whilst he was courting a new woman to live off) neither did my dad pay this woman back despite it was him that pressured her into giving money to his failed child despite them being agemates and this woman having 2 kids to feed. My mum’s younger sister’s husband has affairs left right and centre but “doesn’t humiliate” his wife. My mum’s oldest brother does humiliate his wife with his affairs. Uncle Elijah drank so much that hops (beer) sugar cane (rum) and grain (Whiskey) became endangered species in the 90’s. My brothers helped being fair. Clarence literally drank himself into a coma, both of them have been stabbed for their antics, Arnold fatally, Arnold stole from the Liberian government, took bribes from government ministers in Sierra Leone, abandoned his kids when his youngest was 1, stole from every family member possible including defrauding dad with the same nastiness that nearly killed him when his sister did it. Patrick did nothing but woman beat for 20 years until his mother stole enough money to send him to the USA.
There is no floors, but even though there are good men out there you wouldn’t be stupid enough to trust them because the second they act out your own mother is an enabler in their abuse, the only protections you have are the ones carved out by you and the culture expects you to suffer and “bear” it out.
None of these stories are false, but my mum thinks black men are a good idea. I don’t hate them, I’m a realist, I can’t claim any great love but I can say these were the actions of messed up men who are a disgrace, but don’t define the male race or even Sierra Leoneans.
I used to get worked up with pieces like this. Now I feel nothing, these are the men of my country, my family, my family friends. I’ve checked out.
Anyway, I still want my precious baby boy to be thought of as a human, an individual, not the son of his abusive father.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.