PDA: Someone Get These Two A Room!

I used to shout out playfully, but half seriously "Black love is so beautiful!" every time I heard about a black person getting married. I was mocking my own up bringing where my parents inundated my sisters and me with pro-black images to inoculate us from the negativity and self-hatred that exists in Blackworld (and Whiteworld). We were regularly told that we were beautiful, that being black was beautiful and black love was beautiful. Although we agreed, it became a bit comical to us, hence the declaration at every site of "black love" and its innate beauty.

But when it comes to Michelle and Barack Obama, they take "black love is so beautiful" and turn it into a smorgasbord of warm, giggly emotion, leaving millions of black people (and brown and white people) blushing. And it send about a million black men and women pining for that special someone. We don't see a lot of black PDA outside of teenagers making out during showings of the latest Nick Cannon vehicle. My mother always joked, half-heartedly, that when she went to the mall there would be tons of white couples holding hands as they strolled around. On the rare occasion Daddy went to the mall with her he always walked about 10 feet behind, malingering. My parents love each other, but both are very reserved in that respect.

So, even for me, I guess it's pretty nice to look at this.

If you can't get enough of Michelle and Barack being "crazy in love," The Huffington Post as the slide show for you, seventeen iconic pictures of black love being soooo beautiful it makes you jump up and shout "I want to get married and have a family too!" (Or develop cavities from the sweetness.) Now some of us already wanted that gushy, mushy, lovey, dovey, commit to me forever stuff. And I'm talking about yours truly and a whole lot of other unmarried black men and women. (And I mean A LOT of black women.) But maybe this will get our people to a serious national discussion on marriage. Not just the usual, "black women are too mean" and "black men are trifling garbage." A discussion on how we need to learn how to love ourselves before we can love someone else and how much more we can accomplish by solidifying these emotional bonds.

I don't believe in marriage for the sake of marriage (no wedding's by the pound, please). I want bonds that last, that help produce upstanding citizens. If that bond is a common law bond, I'll take it. But black people need to devote themselves to someone or some cause or something bigger than themselves because whatever most of us are devoted to now (see, "Cash rules everything around me, CREAM! Get the money. Dollah, dollah bill, ya'll!") -- it's not working.

And that's my public announcement for the day. Black PDA for a better black community! Get some!

Then get the Obamas a room, please!

*Thanks reader, Isonprize, for the tip!