Dr. Boyce Watkins: Precious Little Stereotypes

by Dr. Boyce Watkins

I went to see the film "Precious" with a tremendous amount of anxiety. I'd heard the film received rave reviews from reviewers, award panelists and others in the media who love to see a good movie about dysfunctional black people. I knew the film was being analyzed by the same individuals more likely to notice Denzel Washington playing a sick, crooked cop in "Training Day" than to see him play a strong, intelligent black man in the film about the life of Malcolm X.

While reviewers might consider "Akeelah and the Bee" to be unrealistic, "Precious," or "Hustle and Flow" seem to be stunningly accurate reflections of their perception of life in Black America. Yes, we certainly have our share of pimps, prostitutes, and child molesters in the black community. But would hardly expect that we're any more problematically programmed than other ethnic groups.

I thought the performances in the film "Precious" were very good. I admit, however, that I found the film depressing. Not that the movie was entirely unrealistic. Rather, it seemed to feed itself off of one emotionally-draining scene after another. The star of the film was illiterate, poor, morbidly obese, physically abused, sexually abused, HIV positive, inclined to steal and suffering from low self-esteem. It was almost as if the directors said, "What else can we do to make people feel sorry for her? Oh yea! Let's let her mother be a welfare queen who beats her child and molests her when her sexually abusive father isn't home!" Yes, there are kids like this in the black community, but this film is not a representation of the prevailing experience for most black youth in America.

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Are you Kidding Me? Mother Cuts Her Child’s own Throat

From ABCNews.com:

Police were called to the home on East 38th Street around 5 a.m. Sunday. There, they found a 5-month-old boy with a slash wound to his neck.

The boy’s 29-year-old mother, Tineka Johnson, was arrested and charged with second-degree attempted murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon.

The boy was rushed to Kings County Hospital, where he is listed in serious condition. Johnson was also taken to the hospital, where she was treated for a self-inflicted stab wound to the leg.

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Your Black News: 15 – 20% of Couples Have Sexless Marriages

Jennifer (name changed) didn't have sex with her ex-husband on their wedding night. "I chalked it up to fatigue," she says. But should it have been a red flag? Well, maybe.

It's not that it didn't happen that one night that was the problem; it's that it was the first of many sexless married nights. As an engaged couple, Jennifer and her fiancé were doing it about three times a week, but once they said their vows, it quickly dwindled to about once a month — sometimes less.

Some experts call marriages that average 10 rolls in the hay per year or less "sexless," but other experts take the word more literally, like Susan Yager-Berkowitz, who coauthored (with her husband) "Why Men Stop Having Sex: The Phenomenon of Sexless Relationships and What You Can Do About It."

 

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Sex Can Be Healthy

 

If you thought that making love was just a gesture of love or for pleasure, think again. Sex has much more to it than most of us think and know. Did you know that sex is a form of physical exercise? Sex three times a week burns lots of calories, and if maintained throughout the year, is equivalent to jogging 75 miles. To make it simpler, a vigorous bout burns around 200 calories, about the same as running 15 minutes on a treadmill.

 

Regular sex is regular exercise and has similar benefits, including improved cholesterol levels and increased circulation Apart from giving you a good work out, sex once or twice a week improves the immune system as well.
Research has shown that an active sex life helps us live longer. Organs and systems in the body perform better and remain healthy because sex increases the supply of oxygen to the cells and stimulates the activity of various organs and systems within the body. People with complaints of cholesterol, take heart! You have a good medicine, which you would not refuse. Where sex balances out the good cholesterol to bad cholesterol ratio, it also simultaneously reduces the overall cholesterol count in the body. So there you go, you can now control your bad cholesterol with pleasure. By having sex three or more times a week, men reduce their risk of heart attack or stroke by half.

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Is the Media Out to Get Black Men?

Click the image to watch the video.  In this clip, Dr. Boyce Watkins appears on CNN to say that “Chris Brown is not a monster”. 

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Black Women & Weight Loss: Book Says Dieting Should Be Different For Black Women

Black women are constantly fighting obesity in the United States. With so many different fad diets and pills out there, it is frustrating to come up with no results.


Weight Loss book "The Black Diet Doctor's Solution for Black Women", written by the late Dr. Robert Beale and his daughter Lisa Beale, brings an alternative to weight loss for black women.

Instead of listening to all of those diet ads and pills, the book explores eating and exercising strategies directed specifically towards Black women.

Lisa Beale said in the August 2004 issue of Ebony Magazine, "Our book offers all Black women who suffer with obesity and who struggle to reach a healthy weight a realistic solution for permanent weight-loss success."

"Weight is like hair - you are born with a certain type," says coauthor Lisa Beale. "However the type of hair you have determines the salon that you go in. Many Black women have been going in the wrong 'salon' and listening to the wrong 'stylist' for their weight."


You can check out the book and it's authors here, as well as get information on purchasing it.