Black women should just quit life (a continuing series)

The New York Times’ Sam Roberts joins the growing list of people and publications who are strangely concerned with the marital prospects of black women:

It is a familiar lament of single African-American women: where are the “good” black men to marry?

A new study shows that more and more black men are marrying women of other races. In fact, more than 1 in 5 black men who wed (22 percent) married a nonblack woman in 2008. This compares with about 9 percent of black women, and represents a significant increase for black men — from 15.7 percent in 2000 and 7.9 percent in 1980

Thankfully, the times doesn’t go into the psychoanalyzing and concern-trolling that have become hallmarks of the genre. And of course, it’s worth mentioning that the vast majority of black men are married to, and will marry, black women. Still, I am really irritated by this article for the same reason I am really irritated by all of these “investigations” into the dating plight of African-American women. Namely, they each seem like an attempt to turn common problems into some kind of dating pathology, unique only to black people.

To steal a bit from a post I wrote a while back, it’s not just that these pieces rest on two, horribly flawed assumptions — all black women are heterosexual and want to get married — but that they ignore the often painful fact that dating is hard for everyone. Meeting people is hard for everyone. And it’s not an easy thing to turn a casual relationship into something lasting and meaningful. Black women are in the same boat as everyone else, and it’s deeply unfair to single them out for problems that are common to women of all colors.”

That said, if there’s anything redeeming about Roberts’ write-up, it’s that he nods to the fact that interracial marriage and the “blending” of America is often overstated:

“Children of white-Asian and white-Hispanic parents will have no problems calling themselves white, if that’s their choice,” said Andrew Hacker, a political scientist at Queens College of the City University of New York and the author of a book about race.

“But offspring of black and another ethnic parent won’t have that option,” Professor Hacker said. “They’ll be black because that’s the way they’re seen. Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, have all known that. Will that change? Don’t hold your breath.”

When it comes to race relations, we tend to view “white/black” as the key divide, when in truth, “non-black/black” is a far more useful and accurate way of approaching it. Whiteness is an expansive category with more than enough room for Asians, Hispanics, and the children of non-black interracial unions. In essence, everyone who isn’t black eventually becomes white, and as America becomes more diverse, the notion of who is “white” and who isn’t will adjust, with black people on the outside as foils to whiteness. Things will improve, definitely, but the stigma of blackness will remain and linger, even as we become a nation with more Rashida Jones’ than Reese Witherspoons.

*If you want to hear an interesting conversation on this very topic (involving me, no less!), check out episode 4 of PostBourgie: The Podcast.