Thursday, July 24, 2008

Black Relationships in America

A while back the New York Times reported that 70% of African American women live alone. The 2006 US Census Data concluded nearly 50% of African American women have never been married. Why is this? Some would have us believe that black women are single because our standards are too high. Why wait for the middle-class white collar brother when the man working on the construction site or collecting our trash is available? Others have said, the black woman's insistence on dating black men is the problem.
Why not look to other races for companionship,
black men have been doing it for years. Then there's the ol' too many black men are in jail, on drugs, or just downright trifling that it's become an issue of mathematics. Too many women, not enough men. I belong to the school that believes all of these things in some way are responsible for the disproportionate number of single black women to men. However I know that we can sit around and point fingers at each other until the cows come home and still not get anywhere unless we're willing to talk to one another. That's right black men and women together discussing relationships, marriage, parenting, finances and community building. Though I did not watch the CNN special, (I have satellite T.V. - it was raining - nuff said) I did watch a few of the segments made available on the CNN website (not sure if there from this special or an older one.) I am going to reserve my judgment of the series until I get a chance to watch it in it's entirety. What I will say is that I hope at the very least this special will open the door to a long overdue exchange between brothers and sisters.

Thank you to Dr. Joyce Morley Ball for taking time out to join me on this week's Cocoa Mode and also to playwright, Mary McCaullum. If you're in the DC area please consider seeing her play The 70% Club this Friday and Saturday night at Trinity College. You can buy your tickets here. See you there!


Photo by Derek Anderson

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm an African American man who is educated and currently single. I think that a lot of the times we want someone who is on our level regarding education and career, but what we also have to contend is the transferring the career position to one in their personal relationship. So if she's the director of sales, she wants to transfer that leadership to the household. I think many Black women don't want to be/or don't know how to be in the traditional role when it comes to being in a relationship.

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Anthony said...

Can I suggest a new idea that I have not heard mentinoed on the show yet...

1) we talk about maintaining our community as if we must date within our community in order to keep our race alive and pure. Which in my opinion sounds extremely "German" of us. (just food for thought)

2) Because this is a numbers issue it is perfectly fine to date outside of our race because of a factor that we often neglect. "The one drop rule" Not one of us here are 100% black, yet we are still...black. The women who just dont have a chance at finding a black man, rather than hold out, date outside your race. Raise a concious kid who I am willing to bet will love his black heritage. I think far less people will try to "pass" than they did in the late 1800 and early 1900.

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