Jimi Izrael on the Black Women Not Getting Married Crisis
from his formspring account http://formspring.me/jimiiizrael:
What do you think of the media’s current focus on black women not being married?
I think it has reached a fever-pitch. I think the approach to the story/problem, to this point, has been counter-intuitive.
To wit:
If black men were as messed up as conventional wisdom (Essence Magazine) would have you believe, then they would not be attractive to any prospective partner. Yet, they manage to do ok in the marriage/dating pool. This idea that black women are loyal to the race and therefore only want to marry black men is ridiculous. It doesn’t pass the smell test. There are ALOT of sisters w/white boys. So Obviously, they are a viable alternative. But even some white boys don’t want to be bothered. Everyone, in fact, seems to fair better than black women in relationships — why is this? I don’t know, and I don’t pretend to know.
The stats are interesting, but they don’t tell us some important things. Like, this 42% of black women who won’t/don’t get married — are they heterosexual? Do they even WANT to be married? And once you count out the women who don’t like men, who are under-educated, who have multitple babies by multiple (3 or more) men, are the rest even marriageble? If these practical matters be the criteria, that is. This does not account for all the angry post-feminism black "feminists," who are only marginally eligible, if that. Gender, in and of itself, does not make you wife material. Once you weed through the numbers, you realize that the ratio of marriage black men to marriage black women? ABOUT EVEN.
I think there is something happening in the socialization of some, SOME black women that hobbles their marriageablity — and I talk about that a bit in my book "The Denzel Principle." I don’t have any answers, but I try to give you alot to think about.