Back to the Basics: Rebuilding Black Relationships

In today’s world, relationships are more complicated than ever. Social media has given us instant access to people, opinions, and trends, shaping the way we see each other and ourselves. Seemingly creating an even greater division in relationships amongst Black women and men. While technology has made it easier to connect, it has also distorted what real relationships and community should look like. Many of us are navigating friendships, romantic relationships, and even family dynamics based on unrealistic expectations curated for likes and engagement.

It’s time for us to get back to the basics, back to what our elders “taught” us about love. We need to unlearn the superficial rules of modern relationships and reclaim the core values that have always sustained us.

What are the basics, really? What did our elders teach us? Did we ever truly learn them, or have we been piecing together love and connection through the lens of our oppressors, layered with the weight of generational trauma, segregation, and racism? Have we ever had the space to define relationships for ourselves, or have we just been surviving in them?

Generational trauma runs deep. Many of us inherited survival-based definitions of love where control, silence, and sacrifice were mistaken for strength and loyalty. Our oppressors distorted love into ownership, and community into compliance. Through slavery, segregation, and systemic racism, we were shown that love could be conditional, power-driven, or even dangerous.

And yet, despite it all, there was a time (especially during the post-Civil Rights era and into the early 70s) when Black and Brown families were rebuilding, loving out loud, raising children in villages, and prioritizing community. Black love wasn’t just a phrase; it was a movement. We saw dual-parent households rise, family cookouts every weekend, aunties and uncles who weren’t blood but showed up like they were. Love was loud, layered, and rooted in resilience.

Then came the crack epidemic. A calculated and intentional attack on our progress. With it came mass incarceration, broken homes, and the criminalization of our fathers and sons. Mothers were left to carry the weight. Children raised themselves. And love, once vibrant and communal, was replaced with survival again. The systems that once divided us physically began to divide us emotionally and relationally.

So today, we’re left trying to heal, trying to remember a version of love that felt whole. But maybe it’s not about remembering, maybe it’s about redefining it for us. Because real love & real community isn’t curated for approval. It’s built with intention, truth, and freedom.

Stay tuned for the new podcast series: Back to the Basics: A real conversation on how to get back to connecting...

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