Love And Black Tax

I recently started dating this amazing guy. He ticks all my boxes and made me create new boxes that he could tick. He’s well educated, focused and starting to think about where to pitch his hypothetical tent for the rest of his life — like me. One evening, I asked him the dreaded question; “where do you see us going?” To my shock, he actually could not answer or at least did not give the “all the way, babe” answer I was expecting. I started feeling like my life was, once again, spiraling out of control. I asked him a thousand follow-up questions that I was hoping would give him the chance to recant and reconsider his answer but the man did not budge from his hesitation about our future.

I battled with this for the whole night after he left and for the entire of the following day. Later that evening when we got to my place, like always, I told him he was not allowed to come in. I told him that it was unfair for him to come for dinner at my place every night after work, leave at odd hours of the morning and spend every weekend with me since our first date only for him to not have any vision for our future.

That’s when he let me have it. He explained to me that he had no regrets on the current trajectory of our relationship and that he would not take any of it back. But, what he feared was that I would try to change him or try to manipulate him into getting more out of him than he could give. This was all confusing because I do not want the man to change, as I said, he’s amazing. So, I asked more questions and poked at the right heart strings and he made me understand that he has a lot of responsibilities at home and that he does not want him saying that he loves me to be a binding agreement to anymore commitments he feels he cannot make.

And then, it hit me. As young black people starting off our careers, we suffer from this thing called black tax. Some people will agree with me that it exists and others will say it is our due diligence to our parents for their sacrifices. But, what I hope we can all agree on is that whether we owe or should feel responsible for our parents once they think we have “made it”, it should not psychologically hold us back from experiencing love and fully exploring the possibility of a life with another person.

My boyfriend may or not want me to write this but, I must because I am scared for him and the many others out there like him. This issue is deeper than love. When he spoke and when he does speak of his responsibilities at home, it’s not with a sense of pride or fulfillment of repaying his parents for their sacrifices for making him the man that he is. It is with slight frustration at his parents for not making better financial choices that would have allowed them to save for retirement (they both hold graduate degrees) and fear that his career and lifestyle goals may never actualize.

Regardless of your skin color, that would make any normal person go insane and at the least have slight psychological problems and commitment issues. But, in the black community, we say our sons have lost their ways. Or, that the one girl who left because she couldn’t handle the psychological issues he was too ashamed to seek professional help for bewitched him, that is why he cannot find another woman to settle down with. In addition, when these same young men are not faithful to their wives or drink their worries away and turn into alcoholics we blame the wives; it is the man’s family that will be the first to say that she did not create a supportive enough home base for him to feel happy in. When we know that this is not true.

The issue starts at home. Parents need to accept the mistakes they made and be grown enough not to hold their children accountable for their actions. They need to accept that their children will help when, where and if they can because they deserve to save and invest in their futures so that they do not repeat the same mistakes. Unfortunately, they don’t. So, I will probably fall into this cycle and love a man who will forever fight his demons internally and alone because black boys are not allowed to feel emotion, and his family will probably always be the reason for his unhappiness. But, like the good wife I hope to for him one day, I will support him and stand by him every day because that is what black women do for these black men we, as a black society, have raised.

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