Unfortunately, a lot of things get my attention—hence why I recently deactivated all of my social media. With this being the case, I didn’t immediately start watching the show like I normally would’ve.

By the time I finally got around to watching, it was Thanksgiving 2024 and it was by chance. As I was scrolling through the overwhelming Prime Video content, my eyes stopped at this full bleed image of Aldis Hodge.

I meannnn… wouldn’t you stop as well?

But other than the fact that he’s fine AF, I stopped because Aldis wasn’t mixed in with other people, genders, ethnicities; or somewhere in the back; or off to the side. It was just him, a Black man, front and center. Taking up all that space.

And I’ll admit, that’s the sole reason that I started watching the show. Not because it is a crime thriller show based on a book written by the popular white author, James Patterson, but because the lead and cast was majority Black, specifically dark-skinned Black. Aldis Hodge, Isaiah Mustafa, and Juanita Jennings from Meet the Browns. Melody Hurd as Cross’ daughter, Caleb Elijah as his son.

Once I started watching, I realized it was also set in Washington D.C., aka Chocolate City. Suffice to say, I was hooked. When I went back to see exactly when I watched Season 1, turns out I watched the whole thing in just three days.

Welcome to Only If You Care. Every other Sunday (or Monday), I will deep dive into one thing that I’ve been intrigued by. Most times, it will be a book or a TV show, but occasionally, it might be something I ate or a city I visited… but it’ll be something that made me feel something. With this series, I hope that this will become a space for thoughtful and raw discourse with those who are always thinking, asking questions, making connections… but only if you care.

And y’all, the first season was so good.

You know that feeling when you watch a show, and you just know the writers are Black. Or that they have multiple women in the writing room. That feeling when you watch anything Issa Rae (Insecure, Rap Shit), Abbott Elementary, Forever, Atlanta, P-Valley… the list goes on and on, thankfully. It’s that feeling when the stories being told are authentic to our lived realities.

Then I went online, and everyone else agreed. Once the TikTok girlies start talking about it, you know it’s good. After so many of our favorite shows ending or being cancelled, the Black community finally had another show for us to enjoy and talk about. But the joy only lasted one season.

More than a year after Season 1, Cross Season 2 premiered in February 2026. The first three episodes dropped at once, and trust, I clicked “Watch” as soon as it was available.

At first, I had grace for the plot. I wanted to give the writers time to tell us where things were going—how would they make Season 2 better than Season 1? Maybe they just need to get into the swing of things. But once Alex Cross started pursuing a white woman in Season 2, I knew it was too late. Let’s unpack it.

Just let a Black man love on a Black woman.

One of the best things about this show was that Alex Cross had a Black female love interest in Elle Monteiro (played by Samantha Walkes). It’s the classic story of: wife dies, husband is still grieving and refusing to pursue anyone romantically, but then his childhood love re-enters his life, they keep running into each other “by accident”, and all of a sudden, they’re fucking. It works everytime.

Plus, it helps that their relationship is the “ideal” representation of the Black love Black female audiences tend to gravitate towards and support. Why? Because even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s toxic as fuck, we’d rather see that than the alternative or nothing at all.

These days, it’s much more common to see a Black man romantically interested in a non-Black woman, compared to the 90s when it was the norm to see the likes of Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Regina Hall, or Megan Good as consistent love interests in Black love stories. It’s another reason why Ryan Coogler’s decision to write Wunmi Mosaku as Stack’s love interest was so impactful for many of us.

Back to Cross. So when I saw that this fine ass Black man and this fine ass Black woman were going to be together, baby I was locked in. And Samantha Walkes is just fineeeeee. Maybe I’m just mad because I didn’t get to see her that much on my screen this season LOL.

But as soon as me and every other Black woman watching were locked in, they took it away.

For the majority of Season 1, Alex and Elle were exploring their strong ass chemistry while recognizing there were obvious challenges. How soon is too soon to hook up with someone after your wife was murdered because of you? How do you introduce your kids to this new woman that they know, but don’t really know, but definitely know is not they’re mama?

Those type of challenges.

Then of course, Season 1 ended with Elle’s life being put in danger because of Alex (kind of, not really, but kind of… it’s complicated—watch the show).

Now, realistically, this is something they could’ve worked on. This is not the first time a man has put the love of his life’s LIFE at risk because he wants to save the day. It’s classic patriarchal narcissistic masculinity—all those fun words.

But instead, for Season 2, the writers took this CHALLENGE between them as an excuse to end their relationship and for Alex to explore a different love interest. With a white woman.

Introducing Kayla Craig (played by Alona Tal). Insert another classic storyline, but here’s the TLDR: Alex and Kayla used to work together on the police force, they tried the romantic stuff and found they have “chemistry” but also realized they’re not healthy for one another so they shouldn’t hook up anymore and keep it strictly professional.

But he ends up working on a case that involves the FBI, and of course, she is his partner. And just like that, he has a new love interest.

But here’s my thing— and I’m not against white female love interests (I mean I am, but I’m not, but I am…)— but here’s my thing.

NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS. Literally no one asked for this. The audience didn’t ask for it, I refuse to believe that Aldis Hodge asked for this, nothing about Alex Cross the character asked for this. So whyyyyy???

Why can’t we just let a Black man love a Black woman?

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It shouldn’t come as a shock, but I have a theory that the powers that be—white supremacy—don’t want us to see Blackness represented authentically. Because if they did, this storyline would’ve never happened.

In what reality would a Black man from D.C. with a Black mama, two Black kids, a Black (deceased) wife, a Black girlfriend, and a Black best friend all of a sudden decide he’s interested in a white woman? MIND YOU, Kayla also slept with Sampson (Alex’s best friend) last season.

Nothing about Alex’s story indicates an interest in white women, and nothing in his character indicates that he would sleep with someone that his best friend also slept with like last year. Ew. It just doesn’t make sense.

The authentic reality is that the majority of Black people date other Black people. Just like the majority of other races date within their race. But for some reason, we’re constantly shown images of Black men in particular pursuing white women.

There’s a lot of history and sociology that I can unpack, and even more from Cross that makes me turn my ears up to Alex and Kayla’s relationship, but that’s literally a whole dissertation. For the purposes of this post, I’ll keep the complexities to a minimum.

For a show with 40% Black viewership, and I’d bet that 39.9% of the 40% are Black women, there was no reason to take this turn. It felt highly forced, unnatural, and unnecessary. If you think I’m being dramatic, just go to Reddit and you’ll see.

I hope this analysis doesn’t sound like I’m anti-interracial relationships. Not to be that person, but I’ve dated people outside of my race, so that’s definitely not the problem.

The problem is that the majority of Black men are in relationships with Black women, but the majority of relationships we see in mainstream media—from social media to television—says the opposite. It perpetuates this notion that a majority of Black men are dating white women. Which is simply not true.

Black women are already told we’re undesirable, that we’re angry, aggressive, ugly. All the worst things in the world. Then we get a character like Elle, someone who is soft but powerful. Beautiful and desired. A Black love that’s not perfect, but no love is. Unfortunately, Cross is just another show that used Black women to get their viewership up, then disregarded us for the new “norm”.

To wrap this up —

Read more from The Budding Season:

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I’ve tried and failed to read and finish bell hooks’ All About Love so many times. I think it’s safe that’s a universal experience for many of us because the book challenges our ideology on a myriad of beliefs, which can be a lot process.

But I can’t say the same for bell hooks’ The Will to Change. This book? I finished it in a week.

For context, right now, I’m job-less and trying to reconnect with my childhood interests like reading. But instead of reading books or authors that I’m already familiar or comfortable with, I want to use this time as a playground for leaning into the texts that move me. Which books pique my curiosity for no particular reason? Which book covers pull me in? What cultural perspectives have I never cared to read before, but I might make a connection with?

With this in mind, I took a trip to Waterstones (the UK’s Barnes & Nobles) two weeks ago. I knew I was interested in reading more feminist texts, but I didn’t have a specific book in mind. Of course, Waterstones had All About Love, like I said before, I’ve tried to read the book for three years and I don’t think I’ve finished a full chapter.

But I’d never heard of her book, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Very quickly, I learned that The Will to Change is thought to be a companion to her love trilogy - All About Love, Salvation, and Communion. Written in 2004, bell hooks’ explores how the patriarchy is the underlying societal structure that keeps not just men, but women as well, in a dominator model prohibiting recovery of self, love, and relatedness.

Since this is not one of her more popular books, there’s not a ton of discourse to engage with. But here are my thoughts and lessons from bell hooks’ The Will to Change… only if you care.

The patriarchy doesn’t see gender.

This might sound antithetical. Up until now, I’ve thought that women are the only true victims of the patriarchy, and men are the only true benefactors. But very quickly, bell hooks’ flipped this idea on its head.

First, she explains how maternal sadism is a functional symptom of the patriarchy. She says:

Clearly, patriarchal mothers who have rage at grown men act out with sons. They may either force the son to enter into an inappropriate relationship in which he must provide for her the emotional connection grown men deny her or engage in emotional abuse in which the son is constantly belittled and shamed. (63)

In many cases, mothers - who tend to be the primary caregivers - have primary influence over their children, including young boys. But because of their own sexist treatment within the patriarchy, they take their frustration of the system out out on their sons who are too young to know any better. These boys look to their mothers for love because they can’t find it in the world, but instead, they find a tyrant who hates them for the thing that oppresses them. These women, particularly single-mothers, end up feeding into patriarchal rhetoric, leaving boys and men feeling alone with no one to talk to.

This is not a concept feminist thinkers like discuss because it goes against their “antimale” thesis. It goes against the binary that men are society’s predators, and women are society’s prey. People like bell hooks’ who challenge this view are seen as “antifeminist” or “male centered”. Let’s get one thing straight - men definitely hold responsibility in the system. But until we’re able to recognize that men are also victims in the system, and that women play a role in this victimization, then we won’t be able to start to dismantle it.

If you lived everyday unable to be your true self, to explore those hidden parts of yourself and express yourself the way you want to – wouldn’t you be angry?

Men have daddy issues too!

Well, just like there’s maternal sadism, there’s paternal sadism. Two sides of the same coin. In The Will to Change, bell hooks’ lays out how the patriarchy teaches men to be in competition with each other, including with their own sons.

One of bell hooks’ major arguments is that men don’t love themselves because they don’t actually know themselves. They are not in tune with their emotions, and they don’t know how to trust themselves or others because they are scared of stepping out of the lines of patriarchy.

So when fathers look at their sons, who haven’t been indoctrinated into the patriarchy yet - they see young boys who can be who their fathers cannot be. Free.

In an effort to maintain their dominance and keep the wheels of patriarchy turning, they force their sons to undergo “boyhood socialization” - teaching them that emotional disconnection is the key to becoming a man. To prove this point, Terrence Real, a family therapist with expertise in male depression, explains:

The way we ‘turn boys into men’ is though injury: We sever them from their mothers… far too early. We pull them away from their own expressiveness, from the feelings, from sensitivity to others. ‘Be a man’ means suck it up and keep going. Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity. (60-61)

Mic drop.

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In the chapter, “Stopping Male Violence”, bell hooks’ argues that the first person who patriarchy teaches men to be violent towards is not women, but themselves. In order to ‘be a man’, they must go through self-mutilation and kill off all their emotional parts. Men must hide, push down, and suppress their true self. This keeps patriarchy as society’s dominant model, and allows men to continue to go through life without doing the hard but necessary inner work. Instead, they can continue to perpetuate toxic rhetoric and exhibit violence towards people with no accountability.

The practice of integrity is one’s search for wholeness and self-discovery, of intimacy with one-self and others

So, this is a big one. The concept of integrity, oneness, and self-discovery is the primary through-line in The Will to Change. We’ve already talked about why boys are socialized to disassociate from their emotions, but how do boys and men do this in practice?

First, and maybe you’re surprised that this hasn’t come up yet, but men are taught to take out their despair and rage over not knowing their true selves through domination and violence in sex. For men, sex is not about connecting with another person. It is the only way they are able to connect with themselves, their only outlet for their constant pain they’re in.

Is this why when women have sex, they tend to get more emotionally connected to their partner? In comparison, men have the opposite reaction?

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Now, if sex is where men go to release their pain, work is where they go to numb it. bell hooks’ argues that men use work as a place to avoid emotional connection, and the pleas from their community to give more of themselves. In Rediscovering Masculinity, Victor Seidler admits:

On a human level, this makes sense. We all have those things that we know we should do, and we know we’ll be better off if we do them, but we avoid it because facing it is more difficult than just ignoring it. I tend to do this with a lot of my friendships and relationships. I avoid writing about it, or asking myself the tough questions, because I’m scared of what I’ll uncover about myself and what I really want.

Similarly, when men go to work, they don’t have to think or talk about themselves because no one asks them. No one actually cares. bell hooks’ says that men at work don’t have relational skills, meaning they don’t share feelings in an effort to relate or connect with other men. Whereas in female-dominant workplaces, it’s common for coworkers to celebrate life events like being proposed to, getting married, giving birth, etc.

For men, you might not even know they have a baby on the way until the baby is born. And even then, no one is throwing a baby shower for him, or at least including him in the celebration. They’re not asked how they feel, or how it will change their life. Even with paternity leave - the practice is becoming more popular, but it’s still ridiculed and devalued in comparison to its counterpart.

So if men aren’t talking about their emotions at home, or at work, neither with themselves nor their community, who are they talking about it with?

When you can’t be your true self, you can’t experience joy or love. If you cannot be honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with other people.

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Ask yourself not just ‘Why’, but ‘How’?

Before I started writing this analysis, I quickly checked TikTok to see what people were saying. Many women had a problem with the book because they felt like she was saying that it’s women’s responsibility to educate men on how the patriarchy hurts them, and what they must do to heal. And I understand their frustrations. It’s like a Black person being responsible for educating white people on racism and how racism hurts them. And I, for one, refuse to do that.

But it is a worthy question to explore. Not just why patriarchy is set up this way, but how can we dismantle it? These are my three pillars that are the start to answering this question.

“As long as women remain the primary parental caregivers, we will have the lion’s share of responsibility for learning how to be intimate ourselves and sharing that knowledge with male and female children.” (148)

1. Replace the dominator model with a partnership model.

2. We must listen, forgive, and accept men into our community.

3. Let men grieve.

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In the chapter titled, “Feminist Manhood”, bell hooks’ describes a new way of being for men. Instead of being a part of the dominator model, which requires men to dominate in all aspects of their lives and remain cut off from their emotions in order to continue dominating - she suggests a partnership model.

“In a partnership model male identity, like it’s female counterpart, would be centered around the notion of an essential goodness that is inherently relationally oriented. Rather than assuming that males are born with the will to aggress, the culture would assume that males are born with the inherent will to connect.” (117)

In laymans terms, once men begin moving towards a partnership model, they will begin to value interdependency and community over domination. Instead of being chastised for talking about their feelings, they will be rewarded for their ability connect with others. This will be natural instead of forced. It will just be.

The next step is for those who have already done the work on themselves - men and women - to listen, forgive, and accept these new men into their community. bell hooks’ uses the Celie and Albert character relationship in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple as an example.

In the book, Celie is married to Albert, who is emotionally, physically, and verbally abusive to her. At the end of the book, Celie ends up forgiving him for the abuse because he has finally come to terms of why he spent years abusing her, realizing that it stems from his own trauma.

Now, as much as I agree with most of the tenets in The Will to Change, this example made me pause. I will never tell a survivor that they have to forgive their abuser, under no circumstances. However, if we start by taking this quote outside of the context of interpersonal abuse, then I do believe this is key to reintegrating men who are trying to leave the patriarchy in hopes of finding true relatedness and oneness with themselves.

If they are willing to go through this, which might be the hardest thing they intentionally go through in their lifetimes, we must let them know that there is hope on the other side. That after they do the work, there is light at the end of the tunnel. They will be rewarded with true sense of self, love, and community. Otherwise, what is the incentive?

We must understand that making this change requires going through the “portal of suffering”. To unlearn everything you’ve believed since you were born, to push against the patriarchy knowing you will be outcasted and ostracized, to give up your domination - it is a loss.

Like losing a parent or a loved one, losing yourself to find yourself again means grieving your former identity. Many men can’t get past their anger, which leads to depression, which leads back to denial.

“Anytime any of us takes significant steps to grow, we go through a process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.” (159)

Instead of moving onto acceptance, they get stuck in feeling helpless. We must allow men to grieve the only life they’ve known.

Ultimately, the best books are the ones that make you question yourself and how you move throughout the world. Questions that I’m still exploring…

How do I show love to the men in my life? How do I subconsciously contribute to the patriarchy and its norms? What role can I play in the lives of my younger siblings and the people around me to make sure I am playing my part? Not for all men, but for the men and women in my life.

“It is the will to change that motivates us to seek help. It is the fear to change that motivates us to resist the very help we seek.” - Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Intimacy

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A Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell. I bought this book without a lot of research because my book club, The Page Turners, picked it for our February selection. When I read the inside blurb, which poses the question: “In a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black?”–I knew I was locked in.

The book follows Charlie Brunton, a formerly incarcerated Black man who is teaching at Howard University when we first meet him. Pretty quickly into the book, he gets a phone call from his daughter, Sidney, who was the product of his passionate three-day relationship with a white woman. And of course, that didn’t end well… (spoiler: she ends up accusing him of rape, hence why he was in jail).

Anyways, A Sky Full of Elephants follows them on a journey through America after a semi-apocalyptic event that kills all the white people in the country. But before we can answer the original question, we must answer: In a world with white people, what does it mean to be Black? One of the characters in the book, Tau, says this during a conversation with Charlie to explain why he’s so angry all the time.

I don’t hate white people. I hate the whole world for letting what happened to us go on the way it did. You telling me hundreds of years of torture and couldn’t nobody stop it? And ain’t nobody want to rectify it? Hell yeah, damn right I’m mad and I’ll be mad forever, until the day I die, and even then I want them to set my coffin on fire, so I can be mad in the afterlife. Because what happened to our people deserves that kind of mad. And if won’t nobody else feel it, I’ll goddamn feel it for everybody. That’s my liberation. (243-44)

Oftentimes, being Black in America and across the diaspora, means living with anger from young. And it can start small–from not seeing little Black girls in cult childhood movies like Elf or Home Alone, to your parents getting pulled over by the police because you don’t have a seatbelt on in the backseat, and you’re terrified but you don’t know why (especially since the police are supposed to help, right?).

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And it’s not about being Black, or wishing you weren’t Black–let’s not get it twisted. It’s about being constantly reminded that you are other, that you are less than, that you are not the beauty standard. That no one wants to truly live as a Black person, only cosplay as one and profit from it. And the fact that we are forced to live amongst people who have and continue to subjugate us will never allow us to truly be free.

Now, that we have that sorted, here’s an excerpt that tries to answer the first question:

Arms first, then shoulders, hips, then knees. Moving proved easier than she expected, familiar even. Before long the spell of rhythm worked through her, spinning her in circles, expelling laughter and tears. And there was so very much to expel. So many questions. So many fears. So much longing. Cracking. From the inside. Breaking, burning. Sidney danced harder, aware of how the movement blended her into everyone dancing in the street. And the riling felt so very good. To cry, scream, sweat, and laugh through the physicality. Remaking her in the therapy of something primal. The more she danced, the more a tremendous lump inside her gave away. The beat bopped in her bones. Her muscles swelled of joy. Freedom. Laughter as a form of movement that popped, rocked, allowed her to slip free of herself and be gone into the rhythm. Burning up. Boiling. Steaming. So hot she spiraled upward. They all did. Far away from everything. (171)

Without a doubt, this scene reminds me of the scene in Sinners (yes, that one). Not only of how music brings Black people together and connects us across generations, but how it is a necessary physical and cathartic release for many of us. It’s a raw and primal feeling to be able to move your body the way you want to, to scream as loud as you want to, to be as happy and carefree as you want to. For hundreds of years, this was taken from us. But now we’re reclaiming the power in it.

Knowing this, it’s impossible to expect that we remove ourselves from our history, from the trauma that undoubtedly lives inside us. In our nappy hair, our almond eyes, our bulbous noses, our big lips, our thick thighs and big booties. And in order for us not to burn the world down around us (because we could if we wanted to) with everyone in it, we have to let it out. One way or another.

So in a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black? It means to be free, truly free. To be unapologetically ourselves. To imagine the impossible, and have it come true.

Other things I love…

1. Listening to Durand Bernarr’s Grammy-wining album, BLOOM

2. Yasmin finally ditching Henry on Industry to join forces with Harper, ending up having a classic 20-something-year-old post-club experience.

3. NPR Tiny Desk dropping a new video every day this week, specifically FLO, Jill Scott, and Buddy Guy

4. iPhone Mirroring

5. Free will.