"Vibrations: Interview with Shahrazad Ali" | WFSU-TV (1991)

hello and welcome to this special edition of vibrations I'm Raven Giri today on our program one of the hottest properties making the talk-show circuit Scheherazade Ali an established writer indeed miss Ali is best known as the author of the black man's guide to understanding the black woman a very controversial and if I may say so a very critical view of life of today's black woman she joins us today in our studio and of course we'd like to welcome you today to vibration well thank you raven for inviting me basically it's your premise that the black woman is out of sync with the natural order of things can you explain that well it's a very sensitive subject and certainly I believe that I have tried to approach it from a very sensitive angle what I have actually said is that the black woman's disrespect and rebellion against the leadership and the authority of the black man is a direct cause of the breakdown in the black family structure it's not an attack on us as black women it's just saying that in the breakdown of any relationship both parties have to take responsibility and as black women we have been protected and insulated from any kind of examination about what I share the responsibility is in the breakdown of the black family my book represents the first platform certainly that the black man has ever had to air his grievances about the black woman because no one would ever listen to him they have only listened to us can you tell us a bit about the book itself what brought you to this point of having to sit down and use your pen to write this book well actually it was my first book in 1985 I authored a how not eat pork or like without the pig and at that time I was going around doing what I was calling get off that hog lectures and during my travels I noted that uh I would take the microscope and show people how you can't kill there's a kind of worm in pork by cooking it heat was not destroying the worm and I would show them you know the difference and demonstrate how FDA was now using radiation to try to kill the worms on pork because cooking was not working which is what we had always been told and during that time a lot of black men were in agreement to get off eating pork they wanted to change their eating habits they were happy to find out some information that might possibly save their lives but it was black women who were the most adamant who refused to change meal planning techniques seasoning food cooking techniques and so I said that's interesting I said that we are refusing to provide the black man with the proper physical food when we know that food is what sustains life then what else are we withholding from him possibly there are some other areas emotionally spiritually you know psychologically that are we are affecting his behavior by what we do or what we withhold and refuse to give and that led me to try to find out you know we've always heard that the black man leaves the black family abandons his woman and children won't take care of the children won't work stays out all night turns into a drunk takes drugs you know we've heard a lot of negative things most of them are true but I wanted to find out what happens before he gets to that point what leads up to the breakdown we've never gone back to try to find out what happens in the relationship between the black man and a black woman that makes him go off and do all of these bad things to assume that this is just normal natural behavior for black men would be to assume that he is naturally bad and I do not believe that the man that God gave to us as a mate is a naturally bad person and so I wanted to try to examine what goes on with him what's his side of the story and ask you to write this book oh no no no certainly not uh I think they were just as surprised as black women many of them approached the title of the book with a little apprehension because they have not had a champion we have never had a black woman who actually stood up and said I'm standing up for the black man side of the story we know what our side is and both sides are true we have done some very dreadful things to each other and I don't exonerate black men which is a kind of a misconception that people have I just say that we know his side what about our side and we do have a side we have adopted some wrong standards we are judging our men many time by the wrong value system we are using his children sometimes against him we have been told that the only benefit that a black man provides in a home is money and if he does not give us money to take care of those kinds of financial provisions that he has no value and what my research has proven to me is that a black man any man in any home provides much more than financial support the man provides guidance instruction discipline for the children which we sorely need in our black homes he provides gratification fulfillment protection I mean there's so many other valuables values and these values are the ones that are missing in our children today which is why many black children are in the street out of control themselves disrespectful don't have any regard for anyone and most of us are scared of them and everybody else is because nobody has a way in to them to try to gain any control over them so I maintained that a return to traditional family values certain clearly defined gender responsibilities for black men and black women and running a home and a relationship will help us to produce a better child and if we produce a better child certainly we'll have a better future and a better nation and saying all of this and it's calling yourself a champion and having if I may say the courage to write this book and stand by it you've caused a stir this book is very controversial why are you hearing from public reaction well I don't think that it's an issue among black women about whether or not the book is true or not the issue is that I was not supposed to tell these are inside secrets and things that we have never let our men know about it many times we what is that we say he can't handle me well many times he can't handle us because he doesn't know what it is he's trying to handle he doesn't understand what motivates us we have become very adept many of us as being able to do something right in front of his eyes and then convince him that that's not what he really saw at all and that it didn't happen do you know we've kept in kind of confused excuse me do you realize that there are many bookstores and in particular black bookstores that have refused to carry the black man's guide understanding a black woman I think that that's been overblown right now the book is carried in over 5,000 bookstores here in this country and about 2,000 abroad the book is becoming a best-seller in London and to date we only know of two book stores in the entire country who refuse to carry the may I tell you that there is at least one until it how it may be but and there lost no response we got from that book owner was that your book had nothing absolutely nothing constructive was that a woman who gave you those comments yes Wow how surprising okay let's talk about some of the things that seemed to be upsetting people that you know there certainly have been a lot of things taken out of context so anyone who's ever looked at me or seems you know witnessed some of the talk shows they actually explored a lot of issues they take them out of context they want to sensationalize them to build up their ratings to have a good show so I really appreciate this opportunity to just sit down and have a fireside chat about the book I'm glad about all the fireworks and everything you say black women and I quote you as saying nag nag nag and that we are essentially responsible for pushing our men away by doing a lot of times we we take a position because of our own emotional mechanisms we have rest our men too much we nag our men too much and we keep his mind in his head so bundled up and bogged down with all of our personal idiosyncrasies about our day to day personal relationship with him that a lot of times we don't free his mind up to go out and the plan sanely for our future and for the future of our children many of them come to us everyday and they almost have to do a wind test they don't know what's going on they don't know who they're gonna meet because we have a lot of reactions we tend to think as black women that a successful relationship and one where we're happy is one where everything goes our way and the first time it goes another kind of a way then we go into hell turmoil in our brain and we start deciding oh I've got terrible problems with this man he won't do what I want him to do when our men have a side alley okay you say in your book okay listen the black man in America is the only male on earth including every continent who is disrespected by the women in his nation that's truth this situation does not exist anyplace else among the billions of people in happening our planet except here in America that's right the other black men the yellow and the red men the brown men and the white men are all honored and respected by their respective nations all other women recognize and accept that the man is the authority the ruler and the leader only here in the United States and the black nation scattered throughout the United States scuse me rather is the black man neglected that's pretty powerful and it's absolutely true we have been displaced a lot of us don't really understand what slavery actually did to us and how much psychological trauma did to us regarding what our proper roles are with each other what our responsibilities are as man and woman in our various communities and relationships we have never been debriefed from slavery not really we have just you know we know we had that history but we don't know how it affected us we don't know how much of our actual culture we lost how much of our ideas have were taken from us we know that our religion was taken from us we know that our names were taken from us but we don't know how many other standards of day-to-day life have been removed and while we have adopted the American way of doing things they have not worked for us because we have a very special situation we are not the same as everyone else and a lot of the people who want us to pretend that slavery didn't exist to forget about it they've never been a slave so they don't know what we're going through they don't know what this has done to us it has made us as black women insecure why not take up for us to take up for for us and we've always had books about black women how great how strong we are and we are that I'm just saying that we have used our strengths in the wrong direction we have used it against our men instead of standing up for them and if we start to support our men and to speak a good word for him publicly then so many people won't be able to come against him and tear him down and he won't have to feel so frustrated and he won't be outside away from us looking for peace of mind with women of other nationalities because we actually want our own black man we need him back in our homes now we want to have one we just living in a culture where they're trying to convince us that not only do we not need a man that but there's some other options to having one and those options mainly are celibacy or lesbian there's a saying that says charity begins at home and spreads abroad and in your book you say that we are not bringing up our daughters and our sons in a correct manner to respect their fathers we're not unfortunately as I say since money has been used as the measure many times if a black man does not have money to give us we won't even let him see his children we won't let him spend any time with it because he does not give us whatever the child support is and I'm not saying that we don't need money to raise a child but I tried to explain to black women that raising a child consists of much more than feeding clothing and sheltering it that's maintaining one to raise one you need a return of the parental coalition of the father and the mother to put the proper values into the child many of our boys when we raise them alone they grow up with the female emotional mechanism they are are suspicious they are doubtful they're disrespectful of womanhood they're they can't make a decision and many of our girls who grew up in a home where there's no man present they go out into the world and try to meet they don't have any idea how to live with a man day to day how to prepare a proper meal how to be a mother how to just be in love in the home most of what our people and our children especially have learned about how you have a relationship they learned off a television in television doesn't represent our needs and so a lot of the confusion has come you know from outside agencies that we have not recognized how detrimental it has been to us as a people for just well I wish you wouldn't but I know you might say if I am a good wife mm-hmm his home is clean his kids are fed I'm making sure they're well educated I helped him with her homework I'm a good lover in bed I helped him with the finances and I say look at that he still took a walk well that's something else that's been confused about my book I advise black men and black women I certainly tell men that if you're with a woman who you have been with for 5 10 15 20 years 6 months 2 weeks or whatever it is and that woman refuses to cooperate with your ideas does not want to get with your program of right whatever it is then I tell those men get rid of that woman and get another one and I tell black women the same thing if you are with and that you cannot be in agreement with then get rid of him and get with the man that you can't be in agreement with if the man you're with is not treating you the way that you want them to and you feel that you have put in enough time to demonstrate your commitment and your sincerity of efforts to try to make the relationship work I don't tell people to just stay in that relationship I'm trying to teach us that we waste a lot of time being angry with each other and being dissatisfied in relationships get out of it and get with one where you can't be happy you say that the black woman would like to be a clone of the white woman many of us yes that's unfortunate how do you see that well that's something that was almost accidental I'd have to say see the white woman has been the only mentor that we have had of a female we've seen her every day of our life on television every magazine every newspaper every commercial you know it's just been her face her body her image whatever it has been in front of us and so today we have the results of that we have black women who are trying to dye their hair blonde who are wearing blue and green contacts in their eyes you know who wear tons and tons of layers of makeup who have changed their voice who have hair weaves so they can have flowing long hair blowing in the wind you know like Brooke Shields or somebody you know and so that's been an accident and as a result of us doing that we have also adopted the women's liberation movement goals of wanting to be liberated from the man and have some kind of pseudo equality when while that may be true of the white woman and her plight with the white man that's not really the black woman's business because we haven't been under complete control at a black man for over 500 years so what do we have to be liberated from him from what standard you're using as being the goal of looking better hmm you know if we think to look better is to put on the title makeup and have blue eyes then there's something wrong with that you know but if we think that to look better is to certainly get a better spirit in our heart and to work every day to become a better wife a better mother better friend better sister then those values and attributes alone will make us more beautiful than we are now how do you feel about the fact that many people accuse you of wanting to see the black woman at a point of submission is that where you want to see a black woman in the 1990s well it depends on how you define submission those words have a tendency to have a negative connotation for us because of how they were used against us during slavery and what we connect them true to but actually the kind of submission that I'm referring to just means cooperation and agreement I don't think that anybody could say that I represent a woman who was subjugated in any kind of way I don't think that anybody could say that my personality sounds like some man has me somewhere crawling around on the ground or walking ten pieces behind ya so I'm not representing that I'm representing strength I'm saying that we have a lot of power we have power to make heaven and hell for our men and I'm saying let's try making heaven let's try to build him up if a man has a woman behind him he will believe he can do anything and all we need to do is to get our man to believe that they can do anything and he'll be able to you know do much better than he's doing now and come out of the pitiful condition he's in as I said I'm not exonerating him I'm just saying that all of that strength that we have let's use it in a more positive way instead of just going for self you know nobody told us that all of that being my own person and I'm independent would lead to separation and loneliness but that's what we had to trade for that in order to have certain kinds of success we had to give up the man because we can't find a man who will compete with us on that level as I say we say he can't handle us or he's intimidated by the fact I make more money than him I think that by judging our men on how much money he makes so we have lost a lot of good men because as black women if we decide that all of us are going to just determine whether or not we don't have a man based on how much money he makes they won't none of us have no man what men don't have no money there are many men out there who don't want a woman that's absolutely true it's not gainfully employed that's just one of the things that I have always explained about that or even is that for my lectures which you know I'd do all over the country so I can give black people some ease and take some hysteria out of our communities that the book seems to have caused I have security guards not because of black women we're gonna do just what we do we go for us and we don't curse and do a little something you know but I have it because of black men because the black lands got to understand the black woman puts the black man on point and it reminds him what he has allowed to happen to his woman and his family many black men become intimidated they don't want to take responsibility for their women they don't want the challenge they don't want to be put on point so they become overwhelmed and it's then that go off that's why I have security because most men know that this book puts the black man on point it just talks about what slavery has done to the black woman but it's really telling him what he is allowed to happen let's go back to the book for just a moment according to you there are three types of black women yeah a little bit defined that just very briefly for us well we have I kind of numbered them I think is one two and three and I would call them lower-class middle level and so color upper-class you know and we certainly have to acknowledge that we have those levels in our society we see them every day that is not a put-down to recognize that we have a lower-class woman who perhaps lives on the street who is an alcoholic a bomb you know who was outdoors who was a subject to abject poverty as a lack of because of a lack of education of proper training and personal hygiene and other kinds of information or she exists and we need to reach her and try to raise her up differently because many of these women have children and we have to be responsible for them we have a the mid class women who are the number twos and they're kind of average they try to do better than the lower level and then of course we have the number three class which is the so-called successful you know black woman who is a trippin about the fact that she generally has a big job on a credit card or something you know absolutely do but if we can't accomplish saving our race then we have not made an accomplishment we are looking at our man become endangered he's already endangered over 60% of us are single we don't separate divorce as of last year and so we're not together and there is one monolith in the black community even if we don't reproduce children then our nation our race is going to die out here and so we sometimes tend to look at black man and say yeah they're in this bad condition and we act like they go down and we gonna live on but that's not the way it's going to go if the black man dies all of us are going to die because he actually is the backbone of our nation we can't produce a baby by ourselves and going into other lation ality still juicy races you know our latian and I'm trying to get us not to do that you have problems with interracial marriage yeah I'm not for that well because of the fact that I think that God made a male and female of every nationality so that they could meet and reproduce and I think in our particular case a lot of us try to run to what I call a race denial by trying to marry into other nationalities to try to get away from our own heritage many black women do that and certainly many black men do that so I'm trying to get them to get back together and stop trying to marry and go into other races and infiltrate them with some of the nonsense that we bring as a result of our sad slavery history but if a woman says to you well I was alone and he came to me at a very vulnerable point in my life whether he's Hispanic or from the Middle East or he's white and she doesn't matter and she just says he came to me in a very vulnerable point in my life she her thought and he's good to me necessary for people to confess to me I tell people all the time I'm not taking a poll this book is about self-examination and personal development and if after reading this book she thinks that she is still in the right place then I don't have any control over that I'm not out here as a judge as I said I haven't set myself up to say I'm the perfect black woman everyone should be about me I have the same problems that all the rest of y'all got I'm just trying to work with it and this book is so brutally honest we've never had anybody just told just straight talk to us about our personal problems what happens inside the black home after the door is closed and we have had a tendency to that is some kind of secret that nobody recognizes that we don't get along and we tend to think that somebody's gonna pick this book up from some other nationality and think that all black women are like the women that I described in this book that's totally impossible because the things that I described are visible and they're audible you can see them or you can hear them so nobody's going to mistakenly think you do these things if they don't see them I hear them coming out of your mouth or out of your actions you know so there's no danger of people thinking that all of us do this Shahrazad there are a lot of women out there who think you don't like us you don't like black women oh yes I do I love myself and I got five daughters and four sisters so that would you know be ridiculous of anybody to assume that as I said we have just never had anybody challenge us on our behavior we've never had anybody to say well let's look at what we do we know what he does and he's wrong and a lot of what he does but his wrongness his guilt does not ensure our innocence we have a share in the problems that we have in the black community and just because we are dressed up and have a job does not mean that we don't practice some aberrant behaviors that end up infecting our homes and breaking up our relationships with our men and helping to hold him down that's all I'm saying so everyone can look at themselves every man can look at his own woman you know this book has brought a lot of people together this book has reunited a lot of couples who now understand what happened in their relationship it's required reading in 15 historically black colleges and 10 white colleges everyone must study what slavery did to the black woman we have never looked at it as an independent study may I ask you on what do you base your information I'll just research being a black wall of myself living here in the country and I interviewed over 3,000 people I interviewed 379 black men who were married to a dating white women over a hundred black women who were married to or dating white men and a little over 2,000 black men and over a thousand black women and what I found is that we don't have a control group there was no point of me listing all of their names because we don't have one set of Negroes that we could point at and say okay well this particular group is not affected by slavery all of us are affected by it we just have not been able to identify the manifestation of that behavior and be able to trace it back to what the root was and how we got that way a lot of the behavior we practice because it's trendy it's popular in this country and so we think that that's just the thing they do do you thought the black man for anything yes absolutely for lying for lying yes about all kinds of things he won't tell us the truth about his life because he know that we can't handle the truth and so he will lie to us about his activities and his life because it preserves the peace for him he thinks but we know that lies don't build a relationship they create doubt suspicion and fear and then we exhibit those behaviors rates and fear in the female is always translated as hostility and so see it's a locked in a circle that I'm trying to get us to look at how these things are connected and what they produce a lot of the anger and frustration we have at each other is really not even at each other it's about our conditions it's about something that's almost been genetically set down through our womb because our men were not able to protect us they were not able to keep the slave master from snatching our babies out of our womb or to allow us to have food or clothing a lot of different kinds of things that happen to us that just make us tremble they make us frightened and so now it's to a point where everything that the man does we have our total emotional balance our self-esteem our self-respect everything that we stand for as a female we have it tight right now to our men's genitals and it depends on what he does with those about rather let's talk about that for just a moment this is an intense topic yes one thing that I read over and over again in your book wasn't know what that regarding infidelity and let me just make this here you say in your book there is no history of the black men settling down with one woman right and never desiring to have another before slavery during slavery or after slavery the black man has never been recorded to have just one woman right well I think there's some action facts we can look at on that monogamy has failed for the white man in America but this is like saying it's okay it's not me saying it's okay this is how they're living I'm giving you a history of what their life is black men haven't been waiting on me to tell them it's all right there more than one woman neither have white man you know this is just what they do I'm not talking about fornication and adultery I'm not talking about one-night stands and running around rampant with other women that's not the kinds of when I say more than one woman a relationship I mean that before we came to America our men had more than one wife and family and we were satisfied with it because we had not met the monogamy idea we had not met the American white woman who you know insists on certain kinds of aids on her man we had not learned envy and jealousy hmm all right after coming here those kinds of ideas were bred up to us because of society and the Morrie's that the Americans made up here and so then we started to have problems with that but I think that since it is apparent that most of them not all of them it's certainly up to the man do love more than one woman many I got tons of mail a lot of black men write and tell me that they have had two women 4 5 10 15 and 20 years and they can't even get the women to speak to each other sometimes they have two families what I want this out what I want to talk to a woman who's sharing perhaps the bed and then the money and the social life with who I would deem is my man if you want to deal in reality and if you are not insecure and if you don't think that that robs you of something you would want to know them if he loves her you certainly should want to know her there are a lot of black women out there before wait a minute that's not easy and that's a frightening thought to most of it most of us and I don't like that I'm not for that I'm in agreement with everybody else our men ought to just have one woman but that is not the reality I'm trying to get us to deal with some reality for a change stop dealing with fantasy stop dealing with television stop dealing with imagination of how we wish things were let's deal with them how they are what it is present tense it doesn't mean I have to like that or not means that you can live in hell that means you can live in to spend out that means that you can always be checking on your man that means that you can be insecure and be you know tearful and that means you can be disappointed when you find out the real truth you don't want to have that in your life none of us do but in order not to have that then we have to deal with some reality and recognize that men are not limited in the way that women are men are able to learn more than one woman I'm not talking about as I said just a round random sexual relationship of fornication and adultery and all of that I mean that there are many black men who have children by more than one woman what is to become of those children they need their father now you say that once these relationships don't work and they start breaking up or things start going bad at home you say she will cry and seek sympathy during this period the black woman will remind the black man of everything she has ever done for you we do that she will try to make him feel guilty and ashamed of his decidedly outrageous behavior she'll let the house go and I quote you to hell that's right she may stop cleaning ironing washing and cooking and the whole sex that's a real tool we use we do that that's what I'm saying we have to get into definition who told us that was cheating where did that idea come from that that's cheating and I'm not saying that a lot of men are not just running around I'm not talking about that but if a woman finds out that her man has been with a woman while she's been with him for three or four or five years that's a serious commitment and relationship and if it hasn't taken anything from me if I'm not going short of anything and if this is what he thinks his responsibility is then what kind of hell are you going to go through to prevent that since we cannot stop him we have not been successful the white woman has not been successful in stopping the white man from having another woman they called them a mistress we pick up a lot of that terminology but a man who has two women that's not necessarily a mistress that's just his other woman now we got two choices we can be the woman or the other woman you not we don't have with those two no no we don't like that I don't like that you know but that's the reality of our life at some point that's up to the man the old man doesn't look to what those barrels in our religion whose religion whose morals not our religion because we're not practicing the religion of black people anymore that was taken from us we don't have our morals anymore that was taken from us so whose idea are you representing when you stand up for those values not ours somebody else's some other nationality and it may work for them but it doesn't work for us it hasn't worked for anybody really but nobody wants to deal with the truth monogamy was only created because of the economics of it the black man's guide to understanding a black woman has been out for what over a year now March the 20th will be the first year anniversary and for that anniversary I'm releasing my new video and the video is called the black man's guide on tour and it is exciting after writing this book just just take a moment before you before you answer okay do you regret anything about what you wrote if you had the chance to do it all over again would you perhaps soften some of the things that you said you know that doesn't require knee and dip thought I've been asked that a lot of course I know I wouldn't because see we always want some kind of instruction and help to come to us that doesn't affect the status quo we want somebody to tell us some information or give us some instruction that doesn't require us to change okay this book requires change and one thing this book has done that I have really been pleased with it has certainly reopened communications and a lot of us as black women because of what here seems like it's just so radical are willing to make a lot of concessions men cooperate a lot of other kind of ways to keep from having to do anything that I've listed so I have letters from black man who just write and say listen thank you my wife is cooking better meals now I have letters from children and say thank you my mother quit her second job she's home with us now at night I have had black man walk up to me on the street in New York and reach out to shake my hand and say thank you and just burst into tears and say thanks hey I thought I'd never not not to jump on your case or anything here but just to say in defense how many of those women are afraid of an open-handed slap in the face you vaque ting violent now see that's a misconception I'm trying to stop violence in the like community now we know raving that domestic violence is at an all-time high in the black community black men curly kicking us black and eyes knocking our teeth out stabbing us shooting us then doing a lot of horrible things to us alright so what I'm trying to do is to put some direction on that one of the problems we have is that we don't know that change happens in degrees and stages so if we just say tell our men don't hit women they're not going to do that anymore than they gonna say no to drugs you know that doesn't work in that way just to give that kind of instruction so let's first put some controls on it let's get our men to recognize that they don't have to go off and brutalize us with their fists and hit us with weapons and and kick us in the stomach and hit us in but it's okay for him man wait a minute I'm saying that if I can stop black men from kicking and shooting and stabbing and stopping black women and get them to just lightly tap us in the mouth I will have saved a lot of lives and deserved a lot of families well they're not going to stop doing it completely now let's deal with the reality of the statistics you know 40 percent of our women are brutal ass so I'm trying to get the men to stop doing that to us the red cross suggests the same motion and nobody's ever jumped on them if a person gets hysterical you slap them in the face bring them back around to reality and I'm not even saying a hard slap let's go over there cuz that's something that's confused all over the country I'm so tell us the national anthem a black women now at first I thought they were really upset but I think it's been kind of a slow screen they're trying to use that to get black men not to read the rest of the book okay this is what it says if the black woman is brutalized repeatedly the relationship will fail and the black man will possibly be arrested and charged with cowardly abusing a woman this is not the goal make no mistake about it no black eyes no punching in the stomach the breasts no stomping and no uppercuts analyzing the options available to the black man when the black woman's mouth verbal abuse has been proven to be just as violent and harmful as physical abuse when her mouth becomes uncontrollably distract disrespectful they told only a few you can walk away from a leave the house get drunk we know men do that he can go to his other woman and complain he can quit the relationship leave the woman he can try to argue back and lose nobody cannot argue okay or he can seek counseling of sympathy from friends now those are the only options any man has when a woman is running off at the mouth to him all he can offer her a sound open-handed slap in the mouth that doesn't go from point A to Z there's a lot of other options in there that are menus I'm just describing what happens ordinarily when he gets to that point six it's not a slap it's a brutal hit with a fist I'm trying to stop him from doing that to us and I'm trying to no violence should be well that's not advocating violence the violence is already going on I'm trying to stop it I'm trying to put some controls on it Sherri's and that's something that you are a mother yes I have 12 how would you feel if your daughter called you at 2:00 a.m. in the morning and said mom he hit me that your mother now your mother well I'm not emotional like that I'd have to say what happened put him on the extension don't let me find out what happened there are many women out there who would like to know are you married cross somewhere yeah you know you know I'm with being with a man I'm not ashamed to say I need a man i need a man I don't wanna knows where I am not ashamed of that my first husband died in 1985 unfortunate little heart attack and I have a new husband now and I've given to children to him and we're raising them and he's he's a be a very beautiful man he's not afraid of me he's not intimidated by me and he knows me and he has read the book okay he is an agreement with my campaign and all of my slams are in agreement with this I have seven sons and they are very beautiful and very talented and it's very interesting to see how as a result of me teaching them differently the girls that come back they don't run the same game on them you know like they can't come into our house with the miniskirts off mm-hmm they can't come in with the skin tight clothes on you are Muslim may I add that of course which I'm not teaching our people religion okay they already feel that course I wouldn't dare try to teach black people religion but that does that but does that influence does that influence the way you lose everything that uh go in the black community because that's what we were before we were brought here as slaves so yes it certainly has influenced my life can I can I just have a book on religion and I don't bring it into it like that I want to jump back for just a moment you said there are three kinds where do you fall probably somewhere the categories overlap probably between the two three and how do you criticize yourself well as I said I work every day to be a better wife a better mother and I have not said I'm perfect you know I'm a victim of all of the things just like all the rest of us are and I don't say that all black women do everything in my book none of us have lived long enough to do everything in the book but all of us do some of them and all of every time that we do them then it serves to break up our relationship and run our men away from us well that's not really where we wanted all we really want him to run toward us but sometimes we function in such a way that makes him be outside looking for peace of mind with somebody else because we withhold the peace because we have mad at him about something you know I go around trying to tell black women if one of the things we can do for our man is just smile when we see them coming yeah if you get what these ideas the first thing it'll do is relax the muscles in your face you won't be so uptight all the time it'll make you beautiful what are you teaching your daughters as regarding regarding to this philosophy that to be able to judge things on an unemotional basis to try to go by the actual facts of what is presented to you instead of how you feel about it our people in general have a problem distinguishing between actual fact and opinion and we think we have an option to reject check the truth based on how we feel about it and the truth doesn't change just because we feel a certain way about it it remains the truth so I teach them that is this book semi-autobiographical oh absolutely not absolutely not no but doesn't the average person that write a book there's a little bit of him somewhere in London right I hear you the TV host right do not do that only thing I regret is that I didn't write the black man's got to understand the black woman part too because there's some more there's this is just all I put it in one book but I'm coming out with the black woman's guide I'm saying the black man in 1993 probably well I will tell you right now there would be a a lot of lady no yeah we renewed Chile everyday they trying to buy it already but I don't have it ready the most profound question perhaps that I can ask you right now do you believe in what you're writing or are you a very astute businesswoman making a buck well I believe absolutely what I'm writing I wouldn't come out here and go through what I have to go through around the country every day and I could be in a different city every week every day of the year the demand is just that great I read an article in emerg magazine the other day people have been writing in about my book as a result of an article they wrote a few months ago and the editor put a note in the magazine in the front of their magazine that uh that's the merged magazine now there's supposed to be black people coming out and so forth they put a paragraph in it and said we have been still getting letters on Sharra's Shahrazad Ali's book the black man's got to understand the black woman but we're not going to publish any more of them because we have decided that the book has made enough money I thought that was the most ignorant remark so I tell my secretary get him on the telephone so I totally grew on the phone I said has IBM made a little money has Nike Reebok a TMT why don't you go tell them for you but they made enough money you know that's so silly that our people take an attitude of wanting to stifle someone else's success the part that you mention in regard to me being a successful publisher and black black a female entrepreneur absolutely I have a great deal of insight about the publishing industry I did this by myself and you would think that somebody would want to do a story on that sad since obviously I don't know how to put together a successful project and carry it off until the second year now but they don't want to deal with that and they keep saying I made enough money nobody even knows how much money I have me they don't know what my responsibilities are they do know I had toil children you know but I thought that was such an ignorant remark for a black person to make when all of the people who are making money off of black people in our community the where it's not benefiting us at all it's not helping us to grow our to change or to be better and they never get addressed they never get a attacked but they keep saying to me you know that I I have made enough money the irony and this is that you said you wish you could see more black women taking more interest in in the home you are abysus while you're traveling all the time who's cooking insider tonight I was with me a lot of times you all just don't know who he is but we can't let that out you know he's with me a great deal of the time I have a strong family extended family structure I have sisters and my children are between ages of five and 26 laughs that 23 24 and 25 year old don't know how to take care of the children I'm not there then I have failed but I haven't because they do know how to carry on until I get back you know have you met anyone any one black woman that you do admire Marva Collins I just made a huge donation to the Marva Collins Preparatory School in Cincinnati and memory of my mother I've donated to a lot of organizations around the country you know to help black children mostly that's what I do I don't donate any money that's gonna be used for administrative costs I don't do that but if it's going to go directly to the children I do that a lot of black women you know we've done as I said I represent that great strength that we have admire you for what you're doing it takes a lot of courage to bring me in on a television show and let me just talk I wish you success in your career thank you very much Jared do you have an opinion of the white woman just the cheese Bella influence on us and that oh not intentionally she's just living her life she didn't tell us to copy her mm-hmm you know but the way the society said it we have copied a lot of her ideas and a lot of the standard she says for the white man we have tried to set them for the black man except all of the things that are required for a man have to meet those prerequisites our men are kept from getting yes so it's really really a messed up situation and so we make demands on our land that they just can't they can't produce you've been on the talk show circuit for quite some time now Tim do do you find that even journalists and the highest-degree have trouble remaining objective when they talk to you you know most of them in fact what they do is uh on the newspaper interviews they sit there and they they're so nice oh they're so wonderful and then I leave town and then they I get a copy of a story in the mail they roast me alive you write some pretty powerful stuff it must be hard to even go on an airport no sometimes well he certainly has allowed me to be recognized you know people because I wear these crowns you know they they recognize me in a lot of places but most of the time which sister which has never been told there are so many black women who loved me there are so many black women who in fact next week I'll be going to Baltimore and there's a group there called the black woman's consciousness-raising organization or something and it's a black women's group of 250 black women professional women they have invited me into their convention to be the keynote speaker may I say women all over the country were in support of this project in fact what I just gave that lecture in Miami and the man who invited me in was 78 years old he said he thought he'd never lived to see the day that the truth was told about our women in a 78 year old black man who was still in business he invited me in most of the people at the lecture were women most of the people who bought two and three books for their sons were women most of the people that bought books for their daughters who were getting married we're women you know so it's been distorted of who actually is supporting this project we have 30 million people out here about 15 million of them have jobs mm-hmm about 7 million of them can read or have disposable income to buy a book and I haven't reached the market that I I intend to reach in order to actually get this message to penetrate into our communities the book being required reading is certainly going to help us to face some realities our young people want a different life they don't want the failure that many of us have suffered they have seen that this has not worked for many of us and they want something different they want to find out why they can't get along why they're meeting techniques are failing for them and why they're so frustrating why there's so much game and nonsense in it and this book will help them to do that Shahrazad ollie it has been a pleasure just add something for just a moment I have had the opportunity to have lunch with you today yes you are a very personable individual yes we just try to I can't monster I'm telling but can I say that if I didn't know about this book on a first impression of you I never would have thought you've written that well you may not have many of us or have some talents that our larger communities can benefit from you know if I had met you somewhere I might not have realized that you worry you know very popular and dedicated talk-show hosts I wouldn't have known that until you told me what you you know do I believe that the message I'm trying to bring to my people is a message from God I think that the only way our people get any message or information from God is through the people and that this is a very important work I'm doing this is not a game to me it has a great emotional drain on me people come against me with a lot of negative ideas they come hard they bring all the force that they have to bear and I have to stand up under that how do you deal with that now well I don't internalize I don't let it go in I expected us to have the emotional reaction and I know that uh when you have a revolution of social change the first reaction is emotional but those people settle down and so if I have to be the brunt of that in order for them to get to a better life in order for us to have a better child then I just have to take that and of course my own man has to absorb a lot of what I bring to him sometimes everyone so I somebody will get through and they'll say something that'll you know just be so penetrating you know saying WOW it's not that but I just don't internalized it because I know that it's not me they really want to attack mm-hmm you know they really want to just not have to take responsibility for their behavior they don't want anyone to say that's wrong because most of the negative practices we have but we've been doing them so long we think that they are right and so we don't want anybody to come out and say you're doing that wrong and we certainly don't want our man to say that's right you're wrong has this been worse what you've had to go through being accosted in airports and absolutely practically blessed out on television show you anytime I'm accosted in the airport it's because somebody wants an autograph or they want a book I mean I've had an entire basketball team in LA you know or they want an autograph but it has not been negative and certainly as I said we can always dwell on that one issue in the book that people try to bring up this negative about violence as I have explained that's not what I was trying to do and that certainly keeps people from understanding the rest of the book which is calling on us as black women to bring some of that back boning strength that we have some of that monumental dedication to the black family back to making a family a family is more than a woman and children a family is a father and a mother and children you cannot deny however that there are many black women who have decided for whatever reason to go it alone and are successful in raising children who are not on drugs are sending their children to college that's not to run a good home I keep trying to explain that feeding and clothing and raising a child and making sure it's not on drugs and it goes to college that doesn't guarantee that child any emotional success in their relationships in life that just means they may be able to get a job see we have to look at even what the success standard is that we're talking about that's not necessarily success that doesn't guarantee a success if we can raise up an emotionally stable child one who knows how to carry on our black nation who knows how to be a good mother and still perhaps contribute to the outside community if we can raise up father's who take responsibility for their children and who know that their presence in the home is a needed one if we are to survive there are a lot of other things more important than that's just getting a college education and a job that does not guarantee the success of a nation that guarantees a personal financial success which is not the only thing that we need to revive our black nation let's talk about the future just briefly what's up next for you well the video the black man's got on tour which is coming out March 20th and hopefully by Christmas we'll have it completed I'm working on a prototype of the Shahrazad da and the Shahrazad doll is gonna be a little dog with a little lady with a little crown on she'll be holding a little black bear scat and when you put your on top of the crown should a positive message but she's going to do that and I'll be I've been asked to come into the elementary elementary schools more now mm-hmm and so I'm starting to uh as I said if I could work every day of the year there's a request for me to come out and talk to our people because they want some relief and they want some explanation and most of our people are intelligent enough to know that just because of the popularity of this book you know our educational class has failed us because all of them together have never been able to bring one agenda to the forefront of our nation where the all of the people are dealing with it like this book has the black lands God has succeeded in doing that our people are dealing with this all across the country and it's becoming a cross over book the white man says starting up here with the white woman you will be going to Africa very soon hopefully Nelson Mandela called me and he invited me to come there to Johannesburg he says that they have a similar problem with the black women in South Africa and that many of them tried to marry into the white race because they think it provides them with better benefits than staying with their men who are suppressed you know under the apartheid system and I have been invited to London of course where the book is becoming a best-seller I've even been invited to Ireland they don't even have no black people there but they say they want me to come over there and talk to the white well you know this is a global project man I just can't go everywhere I don't have the energy all the time and I can't be dragging my children and and my own husband you know he's got some things he's doing it you know I have to work with him on and so but I tried to I who I want to work with actually is the black woman and the black man here in America where I live that's where I'm really doing my major work and if I go anyplace else it'll probably just be live remote television you know to someplace else but I don't know if I'm gonna really have the time to travel to those other places did you know when you wrote this book that it would take off like this I suspect that they would it's new information we've never had it this is brand-new information and no matter what anybody else ever writes about relationships this is going to be the standard by which it will be judged I want to talk just a moment about something that I I saw recently on television everybody everybody has taken the opportunity to make their poke at you did you see by chance the skit that was done on in living color yes well you know the sauce started ringing off to people calling me from all over the country to tell me that easily living Cohen nobody knew how to react you know because they didn't know what my reaction would be and they didn't know if I was gonna go off you know I I can walk around with a load of gun so I thought that was hysterical that was the funniest thing I have ever seen and it was a compliment because they could not have done that been successful if they hadn't assumed that everyone first of all knew who I was was familiar with the book so you know that was excellent penetration I felt of media I had reached some goals and I called him to thank him and told him that I wasn't angry he wasn't sure if I was mad but I just thanked him and I sent him an autographed copy even your family thought so yeah my son said mama it was just like you so we taped it you know we have it's been on a couple of times since there because of demand and we have it at home and it's certainly one that we get out a lot times when company comes if they didn't see it and we play because it was so funny but uh it was just a take off and so many people have been able to earn money you know this book has put the black book store on the map it has allowed a lot of black book stores to open up other branches of their bookstores a lot of people have testified that they have bought cars put their children into the first year of college this one book you know we can't ignore the economic base that this book has put into the black community the first six months it was out I only allowed it to be sold in black bookstores but then as I did more national television shows we didn't have enough stores to carry it they were in the mainstream of cities and so I started allowing be dalton walden and encore and only the other chains to carry it but it has done a great deal for the black community in regard to being an economic base and I would think black people would be happy to have something else to say other than a violent let's just briefly we're just about out of time but I would like you to leave us here in Tallahassee Florida and the surrounding areas the surrounding counties that can watch this program what are some words of advice or wisdom or courting according to Allie just some the only wisdom that I can leave you is the information that's already recorded in most of our holy books and that's that a God made the man and woman to be together in unity and so it is impossible for us as black women to attend church and say that we love and worship God when we disrespect our own man who is in the image of God because God is a man and our men may be the closest representative of that kind of masculinity of guy that we ever meet and that we should stop using our children to punish our men we should stop disrespecting our men in front of our children sometimes we talk badly about it it makes the child get a different idea about the father just because of our personal relationship and then we should start trying to be a little bit more patient tolerant and courteous and those are some attributes that we have kind of gotten away from because we are on this speed thing of trying to make a living and as I said I'm not saying that he's right but if we become better women he's got to become a better man Shahrazad ollie thank you so much has been a very interesting all right thank you so much for joining us a day on vibration thank you for inviting me that's our show for this week thanks for joining us we'll see you again next week bye-bye

Channel: WFSU Public Media

Views: 1,189,391

Rating: 4.8971086 out of 5

Keywords: sharhzad, interview, wfsu, vibrations, 1991

Id: hnez_5bI_GI

Length: 57min 25sec (3445 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/freethinker84]

I can definitely see Ali's influence in Kevin. Amazing.

[u/SvenPrichard]

Interesting body of work, thank you

[u/Aran82]

Whoever shouts loudest that he / she (and it is usually she) is the greatest victim you tend to find many victims in that individuals wake.

[u/VashDaStampead44]

This is powerful she spoke of these thing in the 90s and yet black women (at most) still are going further down hill not knowing the truth until it to late and she in “no mans land” and on the road of dying alone all because of the lies they where told and taught smh