Black Women and Marriage
CNN is doing a series called Black in America. Online they had a piece related to this series titled “Black and Single: Is Marriage Really for White People?” This article I especially found interesting because it touched on many of the things I discussed in my last two blog posts explaining why so many modern women have trouble getting married. The TV specials and the linked article were the typical PC excuses and canards that we hear when it comes to this topic: noble black women are working hard and being super-successful in the classroom and the workplace, but the irresponsible black man is just fucking up left and right and as a result we’re stuck with the statistics of 45% of black women having never been married and a 70% illegitimacy rate in the black community.
I read this piece and almost responded on this blog, because I really get tired of how only black men are thrown under the bus in these reports, but black women are lionized to look so consistently noble, self-sacrificing. I’m not claiming black men are blameless here, just that we shouldn’t let black women totally off the hook here either, and we need start challenging some of these accepted premises if we really want to come up with solutions. Part of the problem is that despite all the talk about how black women have it harder than anyone else but in actuality that’s not entirely true. Oftentimes people will be deathly afraid of criticizing a black woman because with a black woman there is the fear of coming off both sexist and racist, which often shields them from criticism from white men, white women and even black men. You can call Paris Hilton a bleached blonde whore all you want in the media or even have two black male comedians make a mainstream movie mocking white women called White Chicks, but you can’t joke that black women are “nappy headed hoes” without a media firestorm. Seriously, picture a movie of two white comics dressed in blackface called “Black Chicks” where they send up all the stereotypical loud sassiness, eyerolling, and side-to-side neck thing people often associate with black women. Could you see that being made?
I started coming up with a lengthy response, but then I found a much better response in this audio podcast by Tariq Nasheed so I decided to just link to that instead. It has some salty language that you probably don’t want to listen to at work, but it is brutal in its lack of sugarcoating, but I think it’s a much more honest discussion of the topic than you’ll find when you look to the politically correct liberal mainstream media and the usual suspects of the popular black intelligentsia for answers. Nasheed really tells it like it is, and I must warn that many will find it offensive.
Another reason I didn’t write a lengthy response to the CNN series was because I think a lot of the writing I’ve done on the blog answers the questions well enough. Especially these four posts:
- Myth of the Ghetto Alpha Male
- Why Black American Chicks Like Thugs
- Why You Can’t Find a Husband Pt. 1
- Why You Can’t Find a Husband Pt. 2
Any response I’d make would end up repeating a lot of the same points I made in those posts anyway, so I figure it would be easier to just link to them.
As for the point about black illegitimacy, I really hate when the mainstream media covers things like this because as progressive liberals they’ll never attack the real culprit: the welfare state. Do you know that in 1940, the black illegitimacy rate was 19 percent, less than what it is now? After the 60s, when Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society welfare programs were introduced, illegitimacy rates in the black community immediately skyrocketed. By the early 1990s black illegitimacy was at 70%, where before the Great Society it was only 22%. Why? Because these welfare programs rewarded single-parent households!
If a woman had children out of wedlock, she got government assistance with housing, food, education and spending money. If a man was living in the house or she got married, she lost these benefits. And case workers would visit to make sure that no man was living in the household. This created an incentive to have children out of wedlock and to stay out of wedlock. And it also created a culture of phantom fathers, men who float in and out to check up on things but never actually live in the household or marry the mothers.
After getting used to this low level of required parental investment, it wasn’t much of a step for them to just stop coming around altogether after a while. The boys who grow up in this environment receive the message from their own households and those of their friends that noninvolvement is socially acceptable for a father. The girls receive the message that they don’t need a man for anything except a sperm donation and that the the government can be their husband and the father to their child. And many times this social pathology stays with black people even as later generations move up the socioeconomic ladder.
As for the incredible gap in accomplishment between black men and black women? Once again, look at entitlement programs. Between black men and black women, who has received a lion’s share of benefits from federal entitlement programs since the 60s? Programs that shielded them from the full consequences of their choices and allowed them to go to get food, schooling, education, housing and childcare? Among men and women of all races in America an accomplishment gap has arisen, but the welfare state, by giving a vast majority of benefits to black women over black men, has made this accomplishment gap even more extreme in the black community.
You won’t find any mention of these factors on CNN though, even if they extended their Black in America series to a full year.
Recommended Reading:
(6 votes, average: 3.83 out of 5)
Loading ...
You can call Paris Hilton a bleached blonde whore all you want in the media or even have two black male comedians make a mainstream movie mocking white women called White Chicks, but you can?t joke that black women are ?nappy headed hoes? without a media firestorm.
Do you mean white people are restricted from insulting black women? I’m not particularly PC but quite frankly, the way black women are addressed or depicted by pretty mainstream (black) entertainers in their lyrics, videos, movies, etc. seems way more virulent than most of what I’ve seen about white women in white media – I really don’t think a mainstream white musician, director, etc. could get away with producing similar stuff that featured white women in this light w/o major major backlash from the media people (who generally seem to ignore the nasty stuff about black women if it’s produced by black people)
Mr. Rawness,
Another excellent, thought-provoking post. It bought back the time I walked out on “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” when I couldn’t take the deification of the title character anymore. I wouldn’t even hang in there long enough to watch Whoopi Goldberg die. I’d like to meet the person who wrote the script, and ask them how many times they expected me to endure the phrases “don’t go there,” and “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.” No one in the cast–save the hunk in Jamaica–appeared on screen without saying both.
Interesting twist; I read later that the real life guy from Jamaica [Winston, was it?] turned out to be gay and sued the author to support him for life.
Also liked your stuff on women and marriage. You are dead on when you point out that women assume their values = men’s values. Have you talked about the flip side? Many men assume that women will be seduced in the same way a man would be. For more insight, go to the master, Robert Greene’s Art of Seduction.
Keep up the good work.
Good points.
However, I do think you underestimate the impact that the sex ratio in the black community has on black women’s marriage prospects. If there are more available women than available men in a particular community not only does it mean that there are not enough potential husbands to go round, but that those that are there have less incentive to settle down. Women start engaging in a race to the bottom.
Thursdays last blog post..Publication
I remember when the black community was pushing for reparations for slavery just a few years ago, it might even still be an active campaign. Could you imagine if congress enacted that? God help us! T, you’re one of only a handful of guys I know that have managed to put two and two together on the matter. Welfare has been nothing but a dead albatross around the neck of the black community but try convincing a left wing liberal otherwise. Even worse, the black community is almost exclusively made up of liberal democrats with no apetite for welfare critique.
men who float in and out to check up on things but never actually live in the household or marry the mothers. After getting used to this low level of required parental investment, it wasn?t much of a step for them to just stop coming around altogether after a while
One could always go for the “bitchy black woman” theory to explain why black men flee, but it’s not like these men are being magically loyal to the white women that they meet as well…
If a woman had children out of wedlock, she got government assistance with housing, food, education and spending money. If a man was living in the house or she got married, she lost these benefits.
IMHO, I’m a liberal, and I think that was probably the worst decision made by public policy ever since as many have pointed out the long-term effects. Hell, granting welfare to unmarried couples as done in Europe probably would have been a slightly better choice in the long-run, especially if mandated with a minimum number of years of employment before applying or mandatory skills training or “volunteer” work.
Programs that shielded them from the full consequences of their choices and allowed them to go to get food, schooling, education, housing and childcare?
While early welfare checks had some buying power, welfare checks were never really fixed to inflation, and most of their buying power was lost over thirty years. The problem is that in many jurisdictions, one needed to apply for the entire welfare package in order to receive any benefits, and in a few cases, it was more productive than working at minimum wage and near minimum wage positions especially once day care, health care, and transport costs were included. In turn, the situation was exacerbated by the lack of employable black men for many of these women. For a woman on welfare, what was the point of getting married if they would take away your welfare check, home, and healthcare and the male’s earnings were never sufficient to provide for a comfortable life style.
OTOH, black poverty probably would have been reduced had more working black poor couples married as two couples working at minimum wage together would exceed the poverty line by a considerable factor.
BTW, I’ll also add that women were able to soak up so many educational opportunities because so many black men decided to go play with guns and have sex with the intent to get as many women pregnant as possible (or catch as many STDs as possible). In contrast, a good number of black women decided to get their act together to do “something” with themselves.
David Alexanders last blog post..The Ghetto Mouse and his Bougie Uncle
I’m not some big supporter of welfare by any means, nor do I think most liberals are. But you seem to be implying that living off welfare is some easy, long term living situation.
try convincing a left wing liberal otherwise
A lot of liberals have good reasoning abilities and sympathize/agree with conservatives on numerous issues.
http://www.reddit.com/comments....._only_one/
I think right now the true left-wing liberals would give up on many different things to have a real democracy, constitutional guarantees, as many young liberals are seeing first hand the terrible effects of big government.
It’s why a lot of bleeding heart liberals are supporting libertarians.
by the buzz-term “big government”, do you mean spying on our own citizens? creating a whole new branch of government (homeland “security”)? perhaps building up a $482 Billion deficit?
I think we’re overlooking a big factor in this debate. The single-mother and father factor. The problem is that after being burnt by child support payments on one child, I suspect black men are very reluctant to pay child support on additional children that aren’t their responsibility. In effect, it turns single moms into less desirable partners, especially if they have more than one child. Eventually, you’ll end up with men who’ll stay long term and avoid marriage, and create more children out of wedlock.
BTW, fun fact, the birth rate amongst married blacks is lower than that of married whites.
David Alexanders last blog post..The Ghetto Mouse and his Bougie Uncle
I think you’re quite wrong on a bio-evolutionary scale.
For most of the time since behaviorally modern humans emerged around 70K years ago, people lived in hunter-gather tribes, with pretty much egalitarian attitudes (even the best hunter can be unlucky and thus must build trust-networks), and the habit of simply moving out of the way of others. Slaves and conquest on a major scale were useless since people moved around like the Plains Indians. “Alpha” males who put other men down ended up with a spear in their backside.
It was only in the move to pastoralists (think the Mongols) and particularly the agriculturalists around 11K years ago that enough excess resources could be distributed in a patronage network that Alphas could lord it over the Betas. In Europe this was reversed by Germanic/Celtic tribalism plus Christian monogamy, fairly recently.
Moreover, the white rate of illegitimacy in 1965 was 4%, it is now 34%, and in the UK OVER 50% as it is in most Northern European countries.
It is far more likely that the Pill and Condom (technology) plus rising income for women around the globe allowed women the “LUXURY” of the Alpha. Alpha men are not good reproductive bets unless they provide a lot of resources. A pretty girl has resources all her own, but a son needs a father’s resources to compete (social, monetary, and guidance-wise). Women are just as likely to produce sons as daughters, so evo-bio wise the beta provider is a far better bet, unless the society is filled with Big Men who use massive violence to take whatever they want. [Africa, Edo Japan, Imperial China being good examples.]
An alternative explanation would be: Black women with increasing income and freedom chose the thuggiest thug because he is more testosterone filled and the downside of no provision for sons is taken care of by welfare. But White women in the US and Europe make many of the same choices (Theodore Dalrymple in “Life at the Bottom” talking of the WHite UK underclass could be describing US ghetto life).
T –
Have you seen black guys game? It’s horrible. Everything is a frontal assult in your face type deal. “Hey baby you gotta a boyfriend” or the always popular “man you look good”. Now wonder black women get the nice treatment, if you had to put up with shit like that day in and day out people just feel sorry for you.
zprs last blog post..man up
JY – black rappers get a pass as far as insulting black women. Apparently if you’re black and you put your misogyny on top of a hot beat, it’s okay. Although some college women did give Nelly some hell over his misogyny a few years back.
Conqueror – That McMillan split was so ugly, especially the pettiness on her part.
David Alexander:
I honestly don’t know about that. Near me in Ft. Greene and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn there are lots of interracial couples with middle class black men and women of other races happily married and raising kids. You also see some black women happily married and raising kids with white men. (The black men dating interracially is definitely significantly higher than the black women though). I really do think there’s a civil war going on among black men and women these days and most of their problems these days are more with relating to each other specifically than relating to the opposite sex in general.
Rick:
You’d be surprised what one can get used to. There are families out there who have had multiple generations on welfare and get comfortable being on it. It’s a horrible long-term solution though but people do it.
Hope – I wish we had more of those rational liberals in NYC.
Rick – Bush is as big government as any liberal. No argument there from me.
Whiskey – I don’t think what you’re saying actually contradicts me. I think welfare does shield a lot of single women from the short term consequences of their actions, as beta providers lose one of their biggest bargaining chips: the ability to provide security. Thanks to the welfare state, the government can handle the security aspect. I think I touched on this in my “thug” article.
zpr – You have to differentiate between ghetto black guys and nonghetto black guys. Black guys with a ghetto mentality totally have that awful game you describe. It’s hyperaggressive, blunt, almost confrontational and it’s always obsessed with whether the girl has a boyfriend or not. You see this boyfriend obsession a lot in R&B and rap songs even, where there are an astounding amount of songs and throwaway lyrics focused on banging or stealing someone else’s girl. But the thing you have to understand is that THERE ARE A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF BLACK WOMEN THAT RESPOND TO SUCH GAME. That is exactly why these guys do it. If it never worked, they’d stop it. If you talk to educated and middle class black guys, one of their big complaints is that they were often considered corny or “soft” by black chicks growing up for not having this “thug game” and they feel like they were alwauys losing out to the thugs. The problem with these bad game guys is that when they end up dealing with women who don’t like that type of game, whether black or from other races, they are at a loss as to what to do because they’ve developed no versatility.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a surprising amount of middle-class black women, at least before they get old enough to wise up, respond to this thug game too, it’s not just the hoodrats. I’ll tell you the story about this from my college days. I used to date exclusively black women, and one of the main things I had to learn in order to get anywhere with women was to get more hyperaggressive. The polite stuff just got no respect for them and I would get dissed HARD. The way I learned I had to be hyperaggressive to get anywhere was one time when I went to a hip-hop club and it turned out to be ghetto as hell, full of thug guys with doorags and wifebeaters and big jewelry. We were way overdressed and had no idea the crowd would be so trashy. But to our surprise, we saw a lot of the supposedly classier black women from our university at the party, dancing and hooking up with these ghetto thug guys. Turned out that on the down low these girls were regulars at this horribly ghetto spot. In the daytime they were fronting like A Different World, at nighttime it was Boyz N The Hood. These guys were doing the exact game you describe, with the arm grab as the chicks passed by, frontal assault, in your face, etc. and these girls were loving it. We were doing the polite, witty, charming game and were getting NOWHERE. Some girls even asked why we were acting so corny and shy. As an experiment, since we had nothing to lose, we decided to switch up and come at them like hoodrats. The response was instantly more positive.
So don’t create this image in your mind of a whole legion of black women waiting for someone to come at them polite, demure and respectfully and lamenting that it doesn’t happen. Many black women want precisely that type of game and there is no need to feel sorry for them. I do feel sorry for the black women who are classy and totally don’t want thugs or hyperaggressive borderline assault that unfairly get lumped in with the ones that do, though.
If you want an idea of what I’m talking about, check out recent comments by the actress Lauren London. Google “Lauren London thugs” and read the results you get.
As for the incredible gap in accomplishment between black men and black women? Once again, look at entitlement programs
T, this is simply not true. There are a number of reasons blk women have excelled in education when blk men have not:
1. Blk men can/will do jobs, which require one to get dirty or have brawn. Most women don’t won’t to get dirty and/or are not as strong as the average man. So we don?t find many women working as mechanics, plumbers, construction workers. This is also partially explains the education gap among WM&WW.
2. Many women who are single parents realize that in order for them to set up a good life for their children, they must get an education for a profession which can give them some type of job stability. ex. nursing
3. To many YBM fall pray to the stereotypes on MTV&BET, and believe that it is a true representation of what an African-American male should be. This is why you have people like Little John who comes from a very well to do back ground perping like he is from the hood. Lil John’s parents are rumored to be a neuro(tp) surgeon and physicist.
4. Black women don’t cosign or support hood rat behavior, in the same manner that some blk men will cosign or not speak out against thuggish behavior amongst yourselves. We call each other out for that garbage. EX. have children by many different men, a BW is called a hood rat. Even hood or thuggish blk men detest hoodrat behavior in blk women.
Whatever you do, do not turn into David Alexander. I would hate to see you have that much hatred towards black women
I agree wholeheartedly with the author. The amount of Deflection evident in the post of ChicNoir is incredibly disappointing and shows why BM must avoid marriage and children in this modern society if for no other reason than from being sold out by our sisters, to scared to own up to their errors, content and resigned to peg the demise of the black community on BM (its been made so comfortable for them w/the assistance of the Liberal Media) when their fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.
And now men just avoid them. Bite me once…
Yep- I’m unmarried (divorced)
And yep- my hair is so nappie that I yell occasionally while I’m combing it- it’s so nappy that I can’t save money because I have to buy so many d******** perms and relaxers and flat irons! My hair gives me headaches- I am convinced of this, but I don’t tell anyone else that their hair is nappie unless I’m mad at them- because I swear they get mad as all get out. Who knows why?!
And do black men like to marry? Do mice like being caught in mouse traps? Oh- my bad- that is not a fair question is it? The one next to me is playing the song “I got 99 problems but a (woman who wants to get married) is not one”. Okay- he played it within the last 10 minutes of me sitting here and I’ve dedicated an article to this problem- but changed the word black men to simply “men”, so as to protect the males who I would like to call out- but am way too nice to do…
Previous article copy:
I am now approaching old maid status and while I am lucky to be the mother of three wonderful offspring, I am a severely lonely single mother. I am looking for romantic stability and yet I have dated new age males, who seem to have a fear of contracts that are not sports related. Marriage is a contract that seems unappealing to the males I have encountered within the past year or so. I have noticed that asking a male to get married is much like asking a shark to become a vegetarian, at this point. I have decided to become a born again virgin. I have gone from dropping it like it’s hot to sitting it down and retiring it- for all of the last few hours, anyway. If he likes it, he should put a ring on it, or at least contribute to paying for a car for it to ride in and pay for day care. At present, the funniness of my situation is nothing that I can share with adults on a stage, at present, because I am farther from a comedy club than Bugs bunny is from the forrest.
I am psychic and my name is Seloma- so I know that black men have issues with marriage- ok- peeps- and it’s probably because many of them can’t support black women, since they’re currently on the bottom of the financial poll- according to polls…
1-800-918-9240
Yep- my 3 kids are by different dads- because these guys talked to each other about what a terrible person I was so that they could cock-block as it were- and I still got me some more cock- I fooled them lol lol
Um the first baby daddy I was too hard on- he was the nicest one- but I didn’t settle for his thoughts on, “all women are hoes” mentality- and no- he wasn’t just talking about black women either- his brother is with a white woman…
but if I could go back in time I would stay with him because I would rather have had all of my children by the same man but the guys get to spread their seeds around so why shouldn’t females, if they want- I can make pretty babies even if I can’t seem to lower my standards enough to put some voodoo on one of these guys and make one marry me!
ALL OF YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT WELLFARE WAS A TO KILL OFF THE BLACK FAMILY, BUT IT BACKFIRED, NOW UNEMPLOYMENT IS THE WHITE MANS WELFARE AND IT IS NOW FAILING, HID IT ALL THESE YEARS RIDING OUT THE SYSTEM NOW ITS IN THE SAME PLACE AS WELFARE, GOD IS IN CHARGE. AND AS FAR AS THE BLACK WOMEN, BECAUSE THEY HAVE RAISE THE SORRY ASS WHITE WOMENS CHILDREN AND WERE MADE TO HAVE SEX WITH THE GAY ASS WHITE SLAVE OWNER, SOME TIMES IN THE SAME BED WITH HER HUSBAND, HAVING TO WATCH AND NOT BEING ABLE TO PROTECT HER, I SAY SHE DESERVES TO BE ANY F——WAY SHE HAS TO OR WANTS TO BE EDUCATED OR NOT WE HAVE PAID THE COST AND SHOULD BE RESPECTED BY ALL. ALL OF YOU THAT TRY TO SPEAK FOR BLACK WOMEN, TRY LEARNING WHAT THE HELL YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT! .