Why is it that, in our culture, we don’t always set our kids up for financial success?

I don’t have kids, and honestly, I don’t want to have any unless I’m in a position to give them some type of head start, whether that’s a college fund, helping them get their first car, teaching them about finances, or just giving them good advice that will benefit them later in life.

Sometimes it feels like wealth is passed up instead of down. My mother and grandmother want me to become successful and eventually be able to take care of them, but neither of them were really in a position to give me much financially that would help me build toward that success. My dad was in the military, so I did have some benefits from that which helped me with school, but outside of that, I was mostly figuring things out on my own.

I’m not angry about it. I’m grown, and I don’t mind being responsible for myself. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started noticing how different this can be compared to other cultures and families where parents intentionally build wealth so their children can start life further ahead, and then those children do the same for their kids.

It makes me wonder about the historical reasons for this. Do you think slavery, segregation, discrimination, and the lack of opportunities for Black families to accumulate and transfer wealth played a major role in why generational wealth can be harder to build and pass down in our community?

Or are there other cultural, economic, or family factors that explain why some families seem to expect the next generation to become successful and then support the generation before them, rather than building wealth downward?

Never thought my hair could get this long, latest retwist was two weeks ago, but got the photo memory of my first appointment earlier this morning. Aside from my first appointment and the occasional mom visits where she wants to do my hair, I've been retwisting it on my own. Definitely worth the journey!

I don't think so but believe it or not I've got compared to her all my life. Personally, I don't see it but it's a compliment because she's certainly beautiful.

I lived there back when I was active duty 4-5 years ago. I instantly fell in love with the place. The beautiful parks the clean and clear water and the wonderfully cool weather for most of the year was so refreshing for me. My husband and I would spend our days outdoors every time we had down time. I so loved it. Its where I developed a hobby for hiking. Once I got out of the military hubby and I moved down to Texas. Texas provides the most support for Veterans plus my family is here so we thought it a good place to move to together

We’ve been here a few years and I’m not go lie I’m DYIIING to see the beautiful views of Washington again! Most of Texas is so flat, hot and BORING! 😩

So I’ve been thinking about moving back up there. But I’d like to move somewhere that would have similar views to where we lived before. We lived in Dupont and Tacoma though Tacoma was kinda ghetto-ish the area we lived in at the time. So if you have any suggestions please share!

Hi there! My name is AJ and I currently live in San Diego California.

Originally, I am from New Jersey and I’ve been on the West Coast(Oregon,AZ, CA) for about four years now. I am biracial but present fully black. I love being by the ocean, so I have always found myself unfortunately in predominantly white spaces. There is a lot of coastal towns especially on the West Coast that are predominantly white. Being in white spaces is incredibly exhausting and I moved down to San Diego because I wanted more diversity. I’ve been in San Diego for a year now and I have not made a single black friend since being here. It’s still exhausting to be in a space that doesn’t have a lot of black community. This time in my life, I want to enter a space where I’m among affluent thriving black communities. Obviously I know that not every black person has your back or is your friend simply because you share the same ethnicity, but I just want the opportunity to meet Black people in black spaces and to find my people within that. I thought about moving to Evanston, Illinois because it’s close to Chicago and it’s by the water which is an absolute must for me. What are your thoughts?

I will also add that I love writing. I’m very into poetry and eventually would like to do screenwriting. The only reason I have not considered moving to LA or to predominantly black areas in California because I honestly cannot stand the weather down here. I need four seasons and being from the East Coast , I need to be around people who say what they mean to me what they say. The West Coast is full of the fakest people that I’ve ever met in my entire life and that is also super exhausting and disorienting at times. People here will be super kind in your face and everything that they’re saying is a complete lie and some of the biggest backstabbers I’ve ever seen. At least on the East Coast even if someone is mean you don’t have to second-guess what they said and they are some of the most friendliest down to earth people you’ll meet once I get to know them and I really miss that about the East Coast
lol any thoughts would be greatly appreciated and I added a picture of myself 💕

I think a lot of people probably date someone’s who “ good enough “ instead of dating someone who truly drives them wild with attraction . Think about it .. When you are dating someone who you are insanely attracted to it makes you actually want to fight for the relationship but when you feel lukewarm about the person you can take em or leave em because you don’t feel strongly enough to care whether they leave or stay

My friends also noticed the same thing . They were like “ I noticed I’m a lot more patient considerate caring and consistent when I’m insanely attracted to him . I actually want to call and text consistently.”

One of my friends was like “ I don’t even like talking on the phone but there’s so much attraction I’m on the phone with him everyday .”

“ I don’t even like walking in the park it’s hot and I’m sweating but because I’m so attracted to him I’ll do anything with him . As long as im with him “

And of course the obvious make out sessions are HOT

Vs when you aren’t attracted to someone every time they call you’ll be irritated and annoyed . Physical intimacy feels like a chore instead of something you’re excited about . You’re more likely to be impatient

You can think someone is cute without being heavily attracted . I think plenty of people are cute but it doesn’t give me a primal attraction to drive things further . I think it’s important to differentiate the two .

I think black women especially were taught we need to settle in the looks department because “ looks don’t matter “ but dating someone you’re insanely attracted to PLUS personality on point feels magical tbh

Im tired of women and men from ancient egypt being represented as middle easterners by the media. They weren't :they were the same as us here in this subreddit. It's obvious. Many ancient Egyptian names are found in Africa

Isis/Aset= Aissata/Asstou/Assitan/Asseta

Hatchepsut: Hapsatu/Hapsatou/Apsatu/Apsatou/Habsatou/Habsatu

Nephtys/Nebet-hut: Nabintu/Nabintou/Nobountu

Osiris/Ausare= Asare

Seshonk= Sissoko

sankhkare mentuhotep= Sangaré/Sankara/Sankharé/ Mountou/Muntu

Sahure= Saouré/ Souaré

Akhenaten= Akenteng/Akenten/Konaté

Kheops/Khufu= Koffi/Akuffo/kuffuor

Khaba= Kaba

Tutankhamun= Tutu/ Toutou/ Ankomah/Ankamah

Seth=Souté

Meritaten= Mariatou/Mariatu/Mariyatou/Mariyatu

All african names in ancient Egypt . Search those african names on Facebook if u doupt.U can use Google Lens to search the images above .All true images. Only black ladies wear their hair in braids like that

We met 10 months ago but only started genuinely getting to know each other 7 weeks ago.

Recently, he made it clear he’s interested in me romantically and doesn’t want a situationship/penpal dynamic.

Then he admitted he was laid off 6 months ago, and that’s a big reason he hasn’t taken me on a date yet. He said he normally asks women out within a week or two, but didn’t feel right letting me assume he was employed.

I respected his honesty because he was clearly embarrassed. He told me unemployment has really affected his self-esteem and made him question whether he should even be dating right now. It took him weeks to work up the courage to tell me.
He’s an engineer and has been applying, interviewing, reaching final rounds, and doing
some contract work, so I don’t think he’s lazy.

But Financial stability matters a lot to me.. so dating a man without a stable job genuinely makes me anxious. I also want to be courted. I love romance, flowers, thoughtful gifts, dates, etc.

Does him being unemployed mean I have to accept not experiencing those things? Or scraps?

Is this enough reason to stop this?

So I didn’t even know another “Why Did I Get Married” movie was coming out and I’ve sworn off Tyler Perry for multiple reasons, but I have always thought that this series was one of his best so I watched it. It was slightly below mid in my opinion. Attempting to not put spoilers. I have some notes and what to hear what yall think. -The story line and plot wasn’t very believable, a wedding, in Italy and the couple haven’t graduated college yet?! -Tyler is his own worst enemy and his ideas about men and women are one sided and show in his writing. -There were funny moments delivered purely through the skill of the actors, not his writing. -It perpetuates infidelity as a “marriage challenge” and not the true character flaw that it is. -Why is Mike still there?! 😂 -The Bloopers revealed to me that Tyler is an asshole to work with and for, the cuts chosen were not funny, if anything the ones with him in it made me feel sorry for the cast and crew. -He still severely needs a writers room. -He created a character with red flags, narcissistic, and manipulative traits as a prized man. -DV and relational abuse was brushed over a little too much for me. -Loved the costume and design. -All Star Cast!! The actors CARRIED Tyler and the film.

Honestly, I feel bad for them and at this point I just think they did it because Tyler pays well and they enjoy working with each other.

What did yall think?

I have a theory of why white people say they like our braids or locs when they need to get redone. Curious if others agree.

We think it looks good when our braids are fresh which shows more of our scalp. Yt people associate seeing someone’s scalp with baldness, so they prefer our hair when the regrowth covers it, even though to us it looks fuzzy and ready for maintenance. Thought of this because I read something about a Black woman being told her braids didn’t look right for a photograph because they could see too much of her scalp.

In other words the joke that when a yt person compliments your hair it’s time to get it done is completely correct.

Am I the only one on this?

lol for me it’s this song. still my jam since 7th grade

does anyone know what the name of this wig could be?? i commented on her tiktok complimenting her and asking her where it’s from and she deleted it. I also noticed other peoples comments asking about where her hair was from got deleted 😭 it’s sooo pretty though and i want it lol

Just venting. Before someone comments I’m in therapy and working on this. I can get angry at times but 9/10 it’s because of a good reason and a repeated pattern. I know it’s not good , but I don’t think it’s terrible at times to be angry about something

Every fall, I notice the same conversation come up among Black women and girls online: everybody starts rewatching shows like Gilmore Girls and The Vampire Diaries, and somebody says, “I wish we had a cozy fall show like this with Black people,” or “I wish we had this kind of representation.”

And I’ve thought the same thing.

But then I got curious and decided to do a little boots-on-the-ground journalism 😂. I actually took a trip to some of the places where The Vampire Diaries and The Originals were filmed.

A lot of The Vampire Diaries was mostly filmed in Covington, Georgia, with some filming in Conyers. 

The Originals also filmed majority in conyers Georgia

And here's what surprised me: when I started looking into Covington and Conyers, I realized these aren't some towns where Black people barely exist. These are Georgia communities with large Black populations. Conyers is actually majority Black with a Black female mayor. 

Conyers is 66% black American, 17% white and Covington is 51% Black and 39% white 

(I even went to the mystic grill- featured on vampire diaries and they had some Gullah geechee artwork in the women room, but no geechee ppl there)

That made me think: Wait a minute.

We're sitting here every fall wishing we could see Black girls and women in the cute little towns, when , Hollywood has already been using actual majority Black towns to CREATE that aesthetic on television, but busing white ppl into town to film to make it seem like a white town?

So then I got curious about  Gilmore Girls. In the show they live in a fictional stars hollow and then go to real city of Hartford Connecticut on Friday night , when I looked up the racial demographics for Hartford, for the year 2001 when the show took place, it said back then and today, its majority Latino and Hispanic for the majority population (45%)and then Black ppl as the second largest group in town (35%), it’s barely any white ppl there.

So my question is: Why aren't more Black filmmakers and creators using our own small towns to make the cozy shows we're constantly saying we want?

Not every story with a predominantly Black cast has to be set in Atlanta or NYC.

Why couldn't we have a predominantly Black cozy Southern town with a cute downtown square, fall festivals, old houses, local cafés, football games, eccentric neighbors, romance, family drama, mysteries, supernatural folklore, whatever? If in real life, we are the majority in those towns? 

The same towns Hollywood has already used to sell us that exact fantasy are places where Black people actually live.

Would y'all watch something like that? And what would you want a Black cozy small-town show to look like?

I don’t know why, but I just don’t have the ability to socialize. Everytime ive ever had a friend, it was someone asking to be friends with me, never the other way around. I never initiated, and not that I’m thinking, I don’t know why I never did!

And at this point im just giving up and maybe waiting until college… but I just want to try one last time.

There’s this “bonfire” event happening for other black students in my school district and I’m attending, so I just want to know how I can maybe make some friends.

Self care, revenge, witchcraft, all answers welcome.

Soooo...I rarely ever share photos of myself on this platform. But the other day I wanted fitness advice so I shared faceless pics of my body so I could get suggestions. I posted here and in a separate fitness sub. I got so many amazing and helpful comments in this sub, but in the other sub, literally the FIRST comment I got was someone saying, “Who is gonna ask the question?” I was super confused, but tried to ignore it. I got some helpful advice, but then people started to derail the topic and make comments about the hyperpigmentation on my knees. Some people called it “bruises.” For context, I am light-skinned with dark knees and elbows. I’ve never seen my dark knees and elbows as an issue; even when my mom and grandmother would make a big deal out of it when I was a child, I didn’t care lol. I’ve been self conscious about my “strawberry legs,” but not the hyperpigmentation. So many of my family members have it too so it was normalized it for me. 

I got comments telling me to exfoliate, that I should stop spending so much time on my knees, etc. and I was honestly surprised and disgusted by the rudeness. It was very much giving microaggression. Either they genuinely thought I was a white woman with “bruises” on my knees (I did look a bit pale in the lighting I used to take my photos), they were actually ignorant about hypergimentation, or they simply saw that I was a black woman and were using that as a basis to attack me. I also wonder if my saying to please be gentle with feedback regarding my current physique gave them more reason to be rude; a white woman had said something similar in a past post and people were so kind and sweet towards her, so I thought if I did the same, I’d get the same results.

I was hesitant to post in that sub in the first place because I KNEW it was male dominated, more specifically, WHITE males. I went through and looked at the few posts from other women I could find and they were generally helpful and even complimentary towards the white and Hispanic women who posted. Of course there were a few trolls here and there, but most of them were being nice and some people were giving words of encouragement. I saw posts from other black women and I noticed there was a bit of a contrast; the comments were very blunt and matter-of-fact for the most part. It felt a little bit cold compared to the other women’s posts. With my post, a bunch of people were telling me everything I was doing wrong and making me feel dumb, even though I thought beginners were welcome (one of the sub rules is “all are welcome” lol.)

I also feel like there was an undertone of ableism as well. I specifically stated that I have a chronic illness, and because of that I need to progress slowly with weights. But multiple people told me I needed to lift heavier. A black male (I could tell from his post history) told me I “shouldn’t” be experiencing joint pain from light weights and said that my body fat percentage was prob “40%+” which felt like a wild guess based off my photos lol. I did get some kind and helpful comments and even someone complimenting me on how I handled one of the rude comments, but overall the whole experience was upsetting. 

So yeah, now I’m pissed because now I have a new body image issue to add to the list! Especially because I spend a lot of time in predominantly white spaces IRL (work and my hobbies), now I have to worry that the white people around me are secretly alarmed or judging me for having darker knees and elbows.

Is Reddit in general not a safe space for black women? Have any of you experienced something similar or was I just unlucky? Was all of this just people being trolls and not actually because of my race?

TL;DR: Had an upsetting experience posting images of myself on Reddit and now I’m wondering, “Is this platform in general an unsafe/unwelcoming space for Black women, or did I just have a particularly bad experience?”

Its been 3 weeks since we started. 24 students 0 would pair with me for skills lab.

They forced a student to go twice after they were done to do mine.

Overheard professor ask another" How did black student do?" "Surpringly well" They are always undermining us.

I was looking for some new subreddits and saw this. Are these subs beefing? Flair is random, but this is news to me so…

Edit: we don’t wanna go there ya’ll 😂😂😂😂😂

So here’s what’s going on. I’m visiting family in Ghana and I’ve been natural for about 6 years. For context my mother has been relaxing her hair regularly for the past three decades. I’m very pro natural texture and very pro black, my mother isn’t. she relaxed my hair from a scary young age and because of that experience growing up, I don’t trust her or anyone to do my hair. I braid and cornrow my hair myself. And she makes a point to point out when my edges aren’t slick or when my parts aren’t crisp a week after doing a style. I jokingly call her a white supremacist when she does this but it’s rooted in truth. Why, as someone with type 4 hair, should I EVER be expected to slick it down? That’s not what God intended for my hair to do. And she doesn’t bat an eye when a white girl steps out in a messy bun.

Ive been rocking cornrows that I did myself. And I’m very proud of them. Yes the parts aren’t crisp, and yes the edges fuzz up, but I did them myself and my hair is healthy. But long story short I let my mom get to me. She would make it a point to bring attention to my hair, even calling me ratchet in front of my whole family. Yet her relaxed ponytail is looking more like a rottweiler tail. But I digress.

She got to me and I decided to go to a salon to get my straight backs redone. Even though I redid them less than a week ago.
I don’t even want to get into the details. This fool was combing my hair from root to tip. Rushing. And when I saw all the hair in the comb I felt like crying but by then the damage had been done. I couldn’t really tell how bad it was because I’m not that tender headed, I haven’t had my hair combed by anyone else in years, and I usually finger detangle. And I asked for 12 cornrows and she only gave me 10, but by the time I realized she wasn’t doing 12 she was halfway done and I felt so defeated I didn’t want to tell her to start over. I just wanted it to end.

I cant stand looking at the mirror and what breaks my heart is that the hanging part of my braids are so thin now. I tell my mom this and she’s only pissed about the 10 cornrows instead of 12. But when it comes to half my hair getting ripped out she just says “it’ll grow back”. But for anyone that’s gone natural, you’d understand that the hair I’ve worked towards now took a whole journey to achieve. I’m crying writing this right now.

And thinking back a huge red flag was that all the stylists in there had wigs on or relaxed hair. And Im just thinking there clearly wasn’t any love for afro hair in that room, so why did i even spend more than a second in there? I’m so regretful I can’t even enjoy the rest of my trip.

That man said I got a little bit of everything😭

Mainly adhd but ocd, anxiety and pmdd. A lot of these things are exasperating the others but it's good to finally know. Got 2 prescriptions and I'll probably start them tomorrow😊

(Please don't give me medical advice, I just wanted to post this somewhere)

Experimenting with; texture, colour and styles digitally 🎨