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Still Waiting To Exhale

Do-Right Woman, Do-Wrong Man: Bernadine (Angela Bassett) gets dumped by her husband (Michael Beach) in "Waiting to Exhale."

Terry McMillan's filmed novel misses the roots beneath the fractiousness of black male-female relationships

By Nicky Baxter

Two days into the new year, a Metro office worker greeted me and asked how my holidays went. "Oh, it was pretty much the usual," I responded. "I raped a couple of black women, lusted after white women, had homosexual encounters with a couple of guys, consumed massive quantities of illegal substances. Got busted and wound up in San Quentin. Avoided paying alimony to my wife, and generally behaved like a depraved beast. Y'know, nothing special." Wide-eyed with fear, the woman backed away slowly, mumbling something about catching up with her work.

I was joking, of course; there's only so much one can accomplish over the holidays. Besides, according to more than a few women, black and white, this sort of behavior is to be expected from American-born African males. How else to explain women's overwhelmingly ecstatic response to the cinematic rendition of Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale?

The film details the trials and tribulations of four women searching for do-right men. Savannah, played by Whitney Houston, is romantically involved with a skirt-chasing jerk and, later, a married smooth-talking dog in sheep's clothing. Bernadine, played with volcanic fury by Angela Bassett, loses her husband to his white female bookkeeper.

The naive and slightly ditzy Robin (Lela Rochon) is a savvy businesswoman who inexplicably operates in the red when it comes to selecting potential mates. She settles for a low-rent crackhead with a jones for easy sex and white women.

The slightly oversized Gloria (Loretta Devine) is still in love with her ex-husband, only to discover he is gay. The small-voiced conscience of the group, it is she who discovers true love. Perhaps not coincidentally, by the time Gregory Hines' good guy appears more than midway through, it is literally too late, and too little. By playing on the audience's preconceptions, Waiting to Exhale skillfully exploits the real-life fractiousness of black male-female relationships.

After sitting through the movie for a second time, I approached a few black women for their opinions. The Patterson sisters, both single and in their early 30s, were disconcertingly candid. "It was nice to see black women together," one said. "The portrayal of sisters was, to me, very realistic. [Hollywood films] never show black women in a real-life context."

"Black women are giving up on black men," declared the other. How about the characterization of black men? Are they all low-lifes? "Most black men are no good. It's a fact. They're not ready to deal with being a man. They lie, cheat, sleep around, chase white women, and we're just fed up with it!"

Other black women with whom I discussed the film, like San Francisco poet and novelist devorah major, emphasized the film's positive aspects as well, particularly its theme of female solidarity and friendship. "I think the film showed the importance of women being there for one another. It showed how important friendships can be."

Still, she is perplexed at the tremendous response it has generated. "I don't understand why this movie's such a big deal," she says. "I think it's basically a soap opera. Some of the acting was wonderful--I love Angela Bassett--and some of it was OK. It was beautifully photographed; the aesthetics of it was wonderful. ... But I don't find it all that deep."

She concedes, however, that the film has generated much heated discussion in the black community. Does she view Waiting as unfair stereotyping of black men? "Well," major sighs heavily, "if the statistics say that just under 50 percent of marriageable black women are single ... and look at the number of black men that leave their families."

Indeed, it can be argued that black men have brought it all on themselves. All African Peoples' Revolutionary Party organizer Akubundu Amazu gingerly put it: "There's a certain sector of our community that the film relates to. [But] I don't think it shows the entire gamut of our lives," citing the fact that he himself has been happily married for more than a decade. Amazu, co-producer and host of a Thursday night (10-11pm) radio show called "Pan African Perspectives" on KSJS (90.5FM), maintains that he is far from the only black man enjoying a healthy relationship with a black woman.

For many black women, statistics justify some bitterness. Approximately half of this nation's black households are fatherless; an equal number of marriageable African females remain single; one in every four American-born African men between ages 20 and 29 is either in jail, on probation or on parole.

Left undiscussed, however, is precisely how did American-born African men fall so far. Did they "jes grow" like successive generations of sociopathic Topsys? Or can historical forces help explain their willfully regressive behavior? Just weeks prior to his assassination, Malcolm X declared, "It is impossible for you and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going into the past [because] we're looked upon as almost nothing. Now if we don't go into the past and find out how we got this way, we will think we were always this way."

We must remind ourselves that during slavery African men were treated like stud horses; as Malcolm maintained, their job "was to do nothing but breed." Families were split apart both to discourage family bonds and to maximize profits.

In post-bellum America, scapegoating of black men as lascivious brutes with a predilection for raping white women opened the door for de jure apartheid in the South and de facto apartheid in the North. Thomas Dixon's white supremacist novel The Clansmen and its subsequent screen adaptation, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915), were ecstatically received by whites nationwide. Black-male bashing was all too common in North American newspapers and magazines: The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Examiner and Atlantic Monthly, among many others, assailed the public with lurid depictions of African males as "moral degenerates," "brutes" and "savages."

These attacks were reinforced and justified by such "scientific" organizations as the American Psychology Association as well as respected journals like The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and Popular Science. Decades before Shockley and Jensen, and The Bell Curve, white scientists sought to "prove" the inherent inferiority of African people. As a partial result of centuries of psychological and physical assaults, it is little wonder that many black men succumb to aberrant, unhealthy behavior toward black women--and themselves.

Subtly advanced in Waiting to Exhale is the notion of fault-free black women duped by conniving men. The real world is, however, more complex. Glossed over is the fact that three of the four female protagonists are humping somebody else's husband; yet this questionable behavior does not appear to prompt audiences to question the women's humanity. Indeed, the women eventually learn from their mistakes. In stark contrast, the male characters come off as an irredeemably amoral subspecies.

Freelance reporter Paula Shelton speculates that sometimes black women are victimized by their own lack of self-worth. "When you've been mistreated, it can be hard not to distrust even well-intentioned men. So, when someone does try to show us true love, we get suspicious. And because of negative past encounters we feel like we don't deserve it. And so we do things to prevent the positive relationship from developing." Shelton attributes this behavior to a lack of self-love. "We're psychologically impaired" she says flatly.

It just may be that devorah major and Akubundu Amazu are correct; maybe Waiting to Exhale will encourage open and candid discussion and possible solutions. For Paula Shelton, the solution begins at home. "Mothers need to relearn the messages they give to their kids. Black women need to say, 'My mama has been through hell; I've been through hell. But the buck stops here. My little black son is gonna be different."

This would mean that segment of black mothers blaming their sons for their fathers' transgressions would have to cease; this misplaced anger can only add to the rapidly swelling ranks of the Doughboys in the hood. But it takes two to raise a healthy family, and time is running out on those peripatetic Romeos; they must either wake up or face the prospect of becoming permanent pariahs. It's high time these "brothers" put into practice the sentiments expressed in the massive gathering in Washington this past fall. To paraphrase Chuck D, it takes a nation of millions to move forward.

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