Are Most Black Men Insecure With Low Self-Esteem?
High Self Esteem Defined
Self-esteem is defined by The National Association for Self-Esteem as “The experience of being capable of meeting life’s challenges and being worthy of happiness.”
The NASE article breaks self-esteem into two parts, competency and worthiness, and examines the relationship between these two components.
Worthiness, the psychological aspect of self-esteem, was defined as “whether or not a person lives up to certain fundamental human values, such as finding meanings that foster human growth and making commitments to them in a way that leads to a sense of integrity and satisfaction.”
The competency component is the behavioral or sociological component of self-esteem and is defined as “having the conviction that one is generally capable of producing desired results, having confidence in the efficacy of our mind and our ability to think, as well as to make appropriate choices and decisions.”
What is Low Self-Esteem?
Often we’ll run into people that are overly defensive and seem to “take things too personally” or go out of their way to prove themselves. Some may do or say outrageous things with the goal of impressing others with what they have, who they know, what they’ve done, their power or knowledge, etc.
Low self-esteem is closely associated with fear, a lack of trust and belief in themselves and self-doubt. People with low self-esteem tend to be submissive, people pleasers because they fear being rejected or losing love. Men with low self-esteem tend to have deep seated feelings of inferiority and may tend to be loners.
When one lacks confidence in oneself, a typical behavior pattern is to either attempt to control those around us with judgments, arrogance, snide remarks and contempt. These men will either put you down directly, or overinflate their value, talents or skills in a vain attempt to put themselves in a superior position. Their goal is to put you down to boost his ego and make himself feel better. However, other man may just retire into a corner and fill their heads with self-deprecating comments.
Generally, women with low self esteem adopt the latter behavior pattern, and males the former.
How Men Exhibit Low Self Esteem
The NASE website reports that “a close relationship has been documented between low self-esteem and such problems as violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, eating disorders, school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and low academic achievement.”
When men lack confidence in themselves and doubt their value and acceptability to women, they fear rejection, ridicule and failure. These fears will manifest themselves in a failure to approach the woman they are interested in, or men will talk themselves out of relationships that could be really wonderful by sending negative messages of failure and pain. “I’m not good at [fill in the blank]!” is often heard as an excuse for not trying to do better from the lips of Black men.
Once in a relationship, men with low self esteem often become very jealous and controlling of their woman. Amazed that someone loves them, they feel vulnerable and worried that if she leaves, he will be alone. His words often become harsh and abusive as he tries to control his feelings of need for her. Some men actually resort to physical violence as well. He may blame her for “making” him hit or cuss her out.
Actually, men with low self esteem can frequently be heard blaming other people (typically women), for their failures and shortcomings, refusing to take responsibility for their negative behaviors or lack of action. These Black men blame the demise of the Black family on Black women instead of themselves for leaving their children behind.
This is also why Black men blame pregnancies on Black women instead of themselves for not maintaining strict control over their sperm. This is why uneducated Black men are angry at educated Black women for having standards and expectations in a man that excludes them, as they don’t measure up.
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Deborrah
Veteran social researcher, relationship advice columnist, author and radio host. Author of hundreds of articles on American and black culture, gender issues, singles, dating and relationships. Author of "Sucka Free Love!" , "The 24 Types of Suckas to Avoid," "The Black Church - Where Women Pray and Men Pray," and "Why Vegan is the New Black" all available on Amazon.Com. Her unique voice and insightful commentary have delighted fans and riled haters for 20 years. Read her stuff on SurvivingDating.Com and AskHeartBeat.Com.
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Category: Men's Issues
@SEVEN Oh God! Here we go with the white thing again. Black people you are your own worst enemy first. Yes, the white man is an enemy indirectly because their interests are to look out for their own race. But, public enemy number one is black people against each other. The white man is just a small factor in the issues of day to day living of black people. I’m pretty sure statistics will show you that black on black violence is more prevalent than the occasional white man shooting a black person. Get it together black people. What do you want? Do you want to try and solve your problems for yourself or have someone else solve those problems for you? The white man can try and solve your problems but he cannot. It has nothing to do with his skin color and more to do with his culture. He didn’t grow up in a black culture so he doesn’t necessarily understand the dynamics behind the black culture. So even if he tried to solve your problems he can’t. Chances are if you let the white man solve your problems it would mean all of your black children would have to be integrated and reformed into the white culture. The black culture wouldn’t even exist. All the same things that white kids like your black kids would like too. Which may not be a bad thing, but the black culture is pretty insistent upon being separate and run their own damn show and so far that has proven to be a big joke. It’s ok to be separate but remember separate also creates an us vs. them mentality.
alanah_williams_purple Is this by chance going to be the white man’s fault?
Raz zy 29xlt That’s not what she is saying. Yes, one needs to go back and look at their mistakes now and then in order to do better. What she is saying is some people begin to unnecessarily beat themselves up and the self-focus that is needed for self-improvement often becomes destructive and just adds to their already low self-esteem. It is a cycle and I’m not talking bi-polar cycle either. Some people are just more prone into negative thinking patterns. It has been suggested there may be a biological component to some of these things.
@Marcus Marcus you are tripping. I am a 50 year old college educated female. I have degree in CIS and MS CIS and works as a business analyst. I an married to a 52 year old high school drop out. We will celebrate 30 years of marriage in 2015. He was a rough when I first met him. Drug addict, abusive and such. But you know what? He did not blame me for his problems. He took personal responsibility and took action to make a change in his personal life. Number one he gave his life to the Lord – he went to counseling and He made a conscious decision to be faithful to me in our marriage, He worked hard to help me raise my kids. He makes way less money than I, but when I we had our children and not out of wedlock. I stayed home and lived off basically nothing to be at home mom. He treats me like a queen. I still make more money than him. We work together. He has a lawn care business on the side. He saves money, he is affectionate and very passionate. We hold hands we walk in the mall together.
I knew I had issues when I married him and I knew he had issues. He tries every day to let me know how much he loves me. I try every day to do the same. Black men and women can have loving, tender relationships. If we take responsibility for our own actions and make a concerted effort change the things in our lives to make it better. He knows he has issues and he prays and ask for the Lords help to make him a better husband and father each day. I do the same. I not looking for another man to take his place. I am truly blessed and fortunate to have someone like him in my life. That is why in 2015 we are getting remarried. He is just as excited as I am. I can hardly wait to renew our love in front of family and friends again.
Both of my sisters are educated, financially successful women who married men who are successfully in their blue collar jobs and most successful in knowing how to love their wives. My baby sister stop dating and started taking an inventory of self and loving her self. Wasn’t even thinking about dating and met her husband at the gas station. They have been married for 10 years.
What we saw in our husbands are some of the wonderful characteristics we saw in our father. He was a hardworking and a great provider. He and my mom were married 36 years before he passed away. There are great men out there looking for great women. But as I stated earlier. There are some issues that we as a people have to work out within ourselves so that we are able to love others as we love ourselves.
katt7369 You sound like you’re insecure as well to keep dating a trifling dude on and off for 3 years. Nobody can help you but yourself. And since you keep giving access to this fool, you must like it, otherwise you would have kicked this knucklehead to the curb when he first started showing his trifling behavior. Low self esteem people tend to gravitate to other low self esteem folks and feed off one another. This is what I see happening here.
29xlt Furthermore we need to start looking at the positive thing in each other instead of the negative and go from there.”
How are you going to improve when you only look at one side of an issue? Do you think athletes up their game by never looking at their errors? You learn from your mistakes and grow. But you just want to overlook them and pretend they don’t exist which is counterproductive.
29zlt
Raz you seem like the perfect example of the angry black women. Mad because your hair is kinky, your lips are big, and you don’t measure up to regular standards of beauty, without having to put on a wig, or get some artificial hair glued to your real hair, then still not measuring up. I bet as you typed those vicious assaults against black men into your computer you were foaming, or frothing at the mouth, you come off as being a rabid dog in heat!
29xlt
I don’t mean to bust your bubble but not only black women outnumber their male counter parts in higher education, and obtaining degrees, so do most other races of women. not just black women. So apparently BLACK WOMEN aren’t doing anything special as far as women go either!
Lets face it black men and women have issues that they need counseling for, until we realize this and start trying to fix ourselves, noting is going to change. Furthermore, we need to start looking at the positive thing in each other instead of the negative and go from there. We all have to be willing to change and better ourselves from the inside out.