A guy I recently connected with (pictured with his friends) told me 4 hours into speaking that he’d recently been made redundant and is currently looking for a job.
He’s in his late30s and was working in finance. But since telling me, I’ve been flat out ignoring him. My reasons:

I’m doing this for my image and the image of other Black Women.
I wonder if he would still be expecting me to respond to his messages if I wasn’t Black. He’s an Italian man and he’s probably dated BW before. I look like a polished BW. And if I was white, I don’t think he would.

One thing about boujie white women is that they don’t care about offending men. Men don’t even try nonsense with them because they already know what’s coming. Whereas, the weight of trying nonsense with a Black Women is just not the same. And I don’t want to perpetuate this too.

I have this trait where I always want to show that I’m a “nice person” by still being respectful and courteous towards others because they’re still human beings. But then I think about whether men treat women they don’t find attractive like human beings… And the answer is no.

Men don’t even bother cultivating a friendship with a woman they find ugly so why the hell would I do the same for a man I would never date. If he asked me out right now, I would say no ... so what do I gain from engaging in small talk to prove that I’m “nice”?

He’s absolutely not a bum. He had a very senior position and will probably get a new job soon. He lives in an expensive part of the city and likely has decent savings.
But if I continue engaging with him, I’ll subconsciously be representing to him what he can get at his lowest.

A man should not be dating while unemployed in my opinion. Even if he got a new incredible job next month, it does not live up to my vetting standards to entertain a man in his interim period. The baseline criteria of my vetting process is judging his ability to provide.

I was worried that if he messaged me today to say he got a new job, and then I started replying again, it would look like I’d only value him for money.. and then I thought so tf what? Even though I value money AND other things, I think BW need to embrace the golddigger archetype.

If only a handful of Black Women were represented as golddiggers to other races of men, I guarantee this would impact how Black Women are received in a good way. We’d at least be thought of as inaccessible to poor men. Right now, we have the total opposite image.

So if I have to be the golddigger in this guy’s life to teach him to get his shit together before approaching Black Women, you’re damn right I will.
I could be the first Black Woman he’s engaged with and what I do now and inform his perception of us in general.

I also think that if being unemployed gets him ignored and treated poorly, it will probably motivate him to get a new job so that he can finally get the women that were unaccessible to him before. If the unaccessible women were Black then WE’d be the prize when he’s accomplished.

My experience with this one guy is essentially a microcosm of how BW should be behaving as a collective.
Unfortunately we dont have the luxury of thinking individual actions don’t affect the collective. So that’s why MY behavior in THIS instance is important and has consequences.

Last thing - I love expensive dates. I don't go on cheap dates.
I have a feeling that he told me he'd been made redundant as precursor for me to expect less.
It's similar to when men tell women that women have used them in the past. They're warming you up to lower your standards.

If he invited me on something dumb like a coffee date, he'd likely make me feel unreasonable for rejecting it and only wanting high quality experiences.

Once you deal with enough men, you can see the bullshit coming from afar because they laid the foundation for it very early.