Should Six-Figure Women Date Bus Drivers?
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Iyanla Vanzant and Eboni K. Williams are two women in the entertainment world who I admire. Vanzant is an inspirational speaker, author, lawyer, life coach and television personality. I remember seeing her book Acts of Faith on the coffee table at home. I also remember seeing her on the Oprah Winfrey show growing up. Recently, I was a huge fan of her show Iyanla, Fix My Life.
Williams is someone who I only discovered recently. She’s a lawyer, television host, and the first Black housewife on Real Housewives of New York (RHONY). She’s outspoken, funny, smart, and to me she just seems like a real sweetheart, and most importantly, a girl’s girl. Watching her on her controversial season of RHONY, where she faced covert and overt racism from her cast mates, she always seemed like a good friend and a good time.
In a clip that has recently gone viral, Williams was having a conversation with Vanzant on TheGrio with Eboni K. Williams. She asked Vanzant —
how women need to position ourselves so that we can be in our divinity, so we can have our crowns right, how we can create and not build when some of us feel the men that are available to us — they are not positioned to protect nor provide. Because of some of the statistics we just talked about…they’re not earning the incomes, they’re not having the resources, and some of them are not even showing up in the leadership…
Ms. Vanzant responded —
Would you date a bus driver?
Williams — If he owns the bus…if he owns it. If he owns the bus, Iyanla.
Vanzant — No…see that’s wrong. That’s a problem. That’s a problem. Because the standards and criteria that we use to measure men is off for who we are as women and who they are in the society. I would date a bus driver. If he loved driving the bus, if he was a man of integrity, if he was good to his mama, if he treated me well, I would date a bus driver.
Naturally, this exchange led to a lot of differing opinions.
I will say this. Eboni Williams is a Black woman. There was no way that she could answer this question without being raked over the coals.
If she had answered that she would date a bus driver, there would have been many people…
