I originally did not like this song. It seemed mighty smug of the Queen Bey, fresh from her holiday in St Tropez on a custom made schooner, to make such a boastful statement, after managing to get the Crown Prince of hip hop to march her down the aisle, in a wholesome white wedding staged in their luxury Manhattan penthouse (no tacky magazine deals please). Here was the girl who yes, worked hard, but had it all. A hair-raising voice, a “phat” athletic body, dance moves that would rival Glee, cookie cutter All American looks, a successful family business, hit records, a burgeoning film career, and as Kanye attested, the video of the century. Was there anything this chick did not do well? It is easy to not like Lady Beyonce- it seems like when Papa God was sharing gifts, she rushed to the front of the queue with six baskets. Who wouldn’t want to put a ring on it? Hell, I am a woman but if she asked, even I would.
It therefore seemed rich of Bey, to be telling us, stuck in our ordinary lives, where weddings require months and years of saving because of the expense, when there never is a right place and a right time because some of the family are stuck in Canada and the US and Europe and the Caribbean, where sometimes kids come and the money saved for the wedding goes towards little Junior’s nursery fees, where an engagement ring is the cost of two months’ rent on our Flatbush apartment, to hint that we should cast our long time lovers “to the left to the left’ if they weren’t putting a ring on it. “How dare she?” I thought. It’s okay for her to sing about it now she has millionaire Jay snuggled up all cosy in her million dollar bed, in her million dollar penthouse. I even noted, venomously, that even she had to wait 7 years for Hova to wife her up.
I now have second thoughts and now believe that this song is a powerful anthem, sung to address a serious socioeconomic issue that is responsible for the breakdown in family structures in the black community and especially those born of Caribbean heritage.
MSNBC ran a report "Marriage eludes high achieving black women" and from my experience, young Caribbean men do not like putting a ring on it. There is an almost sacred fear of marriage. For all intents and purposes, the outward sign of commitment (even if temporary) is to stamp one’s authority through the ritual, basic, uncluttered private ceremony of “breeding”. A Caribbean man, in the throes of passion, feeling those first few niggles of falling in love, will grunt “Girl ah want to breed yuh!” Rumple-headed young men on the block would call out to the golden apples of their eyes, declaring “If I only get this girl, ah breeding her quick quick”. Sure there are exceptions to the rule (the most noted exceptions being in the fundamentalist religious communities- Seventh Day Adventist and Pentecostal) but most Caribbean men brand their women by breeding them, not by providing a sentimental romantic ring as is done in the West, in the same way that they do not buy flowers or chocolates on Valentine’s Day but would cook their companions a traditional fish “broff” (broth) instead.
When I first moved to the UK, I found the speed with which weddings were arranged surprising. Engagements lasted a mere 6 months to 1 year as opposed to my Caribbean experience of not at all or six to eight years. I went to at least two weddings every year. In my church community in the town of Victoria, for example, we had only two weddings in ten years from regular church goers. Hundreds of children were christened. I often heard my neighbour enquire, when a wedding party floated on its way beeping in celebration, “Who is that man hanging himself?’. Unless it was a marriage to get one’s “papers” (economic citizenship marriages I call them) Caribbean men simply did not choose to get married. Getting married implied loss of liberty and therefore loss of life and symbolic death.
This is odd because the overwhelming majority of Caribbean women desire marriage (this from a study done by UNHCR) and this is also replicated in the Afro communities in the United States. The men seem to be the ones who have this latent fear of forming a permanent commitment. It may be that most of them were born into single parent homes and perhaps the single parent model is the one with which they are most familiar and may wish to subconsciously emulate. Some are perhaps scared of stepping into a role of which they have no knowledge. This does not however, explain why they cohabit very easily and sometimes cohabit over a very long period of time. I suspect that a large majority have what I call the greedy fear- the fear of giving up the millions of other beautiful women in the world, even though the woman at his side is educated, beautiful, sexy, a fantastic mother of his child or children (and his other children from other relationships), interesting, can cook and keeps a pole in the bedroom.
Some men posit that they are scared that they would be financially ruined. These are the same men who have children in four different postcodes. Fear of financial ruin has not stopped them from scattering seed. Some say they are not ready to get married but it is odd that they are ready to “breed”: breeding is an 18 year commitment. Most of them are just prevaricating, plodding along, wondering whether something better might come their way, feeling too young to give up the thrill of the chase, and as long as we let them, they are perfectly happy to graze in our fertile fields, comfortably. It’s easy to move on from one “chile muddah” to the other, not so easy to move on from a wife. In my hometown I have seen men and women living together for decades without that piece of paper. I have seen mean and women engaged in perpetuity. Very few deign to put a ring on it.
This is why I believe Single Ladies is the not the video, but the song of the decade, at least for young, upwardly mobile, single Caribbean and to a greater extent, black females. It has single handedly redefined the feminist movement- telling our men we are not waiting- catch up or else. I am not in any way saying that marriage is the ultimate destination for us all (Oprah is happily unmarried) and ten years ago I would have been one of the ones preaching how patriarchal and unnecessary it is. However, to those of us who want it and see it as a final destination, marriage shouldn’t be a prize handed out as a consolation trophy for our perseverance, for sticking around long enough. Sure, we don’t need a piece of paper to confirm giving, selfless, nurturing love. But a public and open declaration to the world, that it is no longer “me” but “us”, that you want to make me yours, and that I am now taking your name as a sign of our oneness, you promising to honour vows that you have made today unconditionally not knowing what tomorrow may bring is still the most manifest example of commitment.
