BLACK PRIDE: Wendy Raquel Robinson

Wendy Raquel Robinson is a great source of pride. She is typically cast as a singular character: a black woman, usually educated and professional, who is ghetto as hell, but aching within about the structural things out of balance from her childhood. Her character’s professional standing requires, her dreams require, and her man needs something less confrontational from her, but that is all she has got. Continually Wendy Raquel Robinson, the actress, finds nuances within this type cast. Her portrayals of these women are fascinating and respectful of a segment of the Black community often on the defense about the way they must survive in an unforgiving environment. I have my soul injuries inflicted by the women she portrays. Over time I became unforgiving and bitter towards their compelling paradigms, and developed a difficulty resisting their enormous sensuality. Their sexual appetites, and prowess is legendary, and you cannot count the men unable to pull away long enough to catch their breath and measure what could really happen, or is happening to their lives, and any dreams they must fulfill in life being intimately involved with these women. Incredible lovers with sharp tongues, good looks, fierceness, determination and grit to match an undertow of rage are the stuff of a stereotype worn with measurable pride by these women who are the Black American family’s growth or demise.


Wendy Raquel Robinson does a service to a misrepresented, but significant symbol in the Black American community. The definitions of power these women have designed for their children's survival and their survival are hard for reasons many of us prefer to overlook, and pretend do not exist, or respect. The deepest thing to do as a Black man is to fathom our women. Who speaks for them, or host national campaigns on their behalf? The elite cannot wrap their head around the deadly qualities, or the heart of what matters to these women, and nor do they want to. Black men love and need to talk it out amongst themselves, and with Black women present it often disintegrates into diatribes, and little is accomplished. Because so many of these women and men base relationships, parenting, and marriage upon conflict some people walk out of those roundtable discussions to bed, and little is resolved, and the legacy of dysfunction is passed to their children.

Black men; honest in their fear of these women, love them. How to navigate through the hell these women put them through leads some of them to discover what they truly believe and opens the way to discover why they are attracting these women’s paradigms into their lives. Listening to and hearing their stories without anger, or judgment becomes easier over time if they're not trying to get between their legs. If a man’s eyes are riveted to their women’s eyes they could see their woman’s world. Exploring these women as they explore their worlds is an act of power. It’s a lover’s quest. It requires a depth, and a sponsorship. Without assistance of an elder statesman, or a wise Black woman a Black man will not be able to grasp the tools to mend a broken heart, lessen the need for defending himself against his Black woman.

Loving a Black woman like the women Wendy Raquel Robinson portrays does not lend itself to the critical analysis of a Dr. Phil. It needs the insights of a Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, the depth and wisdom of a Maya Angelo, and the loving hand of a man.”

©Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

Wendy Raquel Robinson posing on red carpet