Black Women Need To Help Each Other Now!!!!!

If black women don't start SERIOUSLY and AGGRESSIVELY standing up for other black women, we are all going to be in extremely dangerous and troubling territory. I am truly becoming sick and tired of reading stories about the deaths of black women and children that could have in many cases been avoided. A black president is not going to change many of the issues black women and children face everyday, we must want to make the necessary changes ourselves.

This is a really serious crisis for black people. We can't afford the losses of human life. We need to get involved with each others lives even if the attention is unwelcome or unwanted. We as black women need to start challenging one another to make better decisions for ourselves and our children. Poor choices and mistakes happen in every one's life. Everyone feels overwhelmed and overburdened at some point and time in their life. Everyone feels lost and alone at times in life. That's why it's called LIFE. Stuff happens.

I read about these tragic cases involving black women and children and I feel so sad. And then I feel frustrated and angry. In many of these cases I see tremendously difficult situations and circumstances often of a sister's own making and it is beyond hard to try to point out a possible lesson to be learned when a sister has been murdered, either alone or with her children. I was very upset when people tried to blame the victims in the Hovey Street murder case. We should never blame the victims of violent crime, but I also am beginning to realize that if we don't start looking at the circumstances of these tragic cases, then they will continue to happen.

Case in point, the recent murder of Sheriff's Deputy Joy Deleston, 39, and her two daughters, Micaiah, 11, and Jelani, 4 in Georgia. Deleston and her daughters were murdered by her own 17 year old son. This is a devastating tragedy, but part of me was wondering how a woman ends up a single parent with three children so many years apart? What happened to family planning? What happened to two-parent homes? Raising children is extremely difficult, particularly a single black woman trying to raise a teenage boy and put food on the table. Did Deputy Deleston have the time and the patience to deal with her clearly troubled son?

Adding insult to injury was the media coverage of the case. No mention of the older children's father(s). No mention of Deputy Deleston's immediate family. Who got the attention? The rapper Juvenile. It was revealed that rapper Juvenile had fathered Deleston's youngest daughter. Almost all the stories suddenly became about Juvenile. His pain, his shock, his loss. I found this focus on Juvenile to be outrageous. He added nothing to the story or to the tragedy. This was the man that had to be forced in court to admit fathering this little girl. His press release failed to mention the last time he may have spent ANYTIME with his daughter, but only that he had been paying his regular child support payments. He clearly was not there to help this sister other than giving money, who was there for that family which was clearly in crisis?

And how about the tragic case of Leatrice Brewer, who now stands accused of drowning her three young children in her own home. The fathers of Brewer's children also seem to have been missing in action as well. This is may well be another case about a sister with mental illness killing her children, but I was sitting there again going how in the hell did this woman end up with three children and no husband at the age of 27? This case eerily reflected the case of Banita Jacks, who was arrested for murdering her four children.

These are truly tragedies, but somebody has to carry the weight. Is it the fault of the system? Jacks and Brewer were both involved with social service agencies, not to mention the criminal justice system and Deleston was a sheriff. Is it the fault of the fathers? None of these cases seems to have a regular father figure on the scene. Is it the fault of the mothers? Unplanned children without the income or support systems to raise them in can be devastating to the mothers as well as the children. I don't really know and I don't really want to be pointing fingers at anyone, but we cannot allow such cases to persist.

Clearly sisters with children, single, divorced, or married, need more help. Our help. I am greatly disturbed by these cases and others like them, I don't believe that their deadly outcomes were predictable, in fact I believe they were preventable. We must stop waiting on others to come to our assistance or rescue. How can we help our sisters with children? All ideas and suggestions are welcome.