By Black Love And Marriage.com on July 10, 2012
In Singles & Dating
By WisdomIsMisery
Before I begin this post, I need to dispel a few rumors. For one, there is no black women marriage crisis. That is a myth, mostly broadcast by news outlets looking to gain easy views, reads, and rehashed blog topics. However, black women do marry later – 75% will marry by age 35. Secondly, there is no interracial marriage crisis. According to two doctorates from Howard and Morehouse University, “Six percent of married black men who are high school dropouts have a white wife and 92% have black wives. Among black men with college degrees, 10% have a white wife and 85% have black wives.” When eight of 10 black men will marry a black women, it doesn’t seem like much of an epidemic. Lastly, no list is all-inclusive.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way.
Lack of appropriate role models.
This is not meant to disrespect single mothers. Honestly, having a bad father in the home is no better than having an absent father. No, this is about a lack of role models for young black men, regardless of their paternal relation or non-relation to the young man in particular. A number of black men don’t have enough appropriate role models to look up to, speak to, and/or imitate. They must figure out how to be men on their own, because they were never shown in practice what being a man entails when they were young and impressionable.
Result: Since a number of black men never observed the roles and responsibilities a man is supposed to play in a woman’s life as a husband/father – other than what they’ve seen on TV, movies, or heard in music – they marry later. Many black men have to figure out their place in a woman’s life through trial and error. Naturally, this ‘on the job training’ takes longer, and we are assuming they ever figure it out.
“The economy, stupid.” – James Carville
I’m not going to deliver a tirade about ‘The Man’ holding the black man down. I’m simply going to state a few universal facts. Fact: Unemployed people tend not to get married. Fact: In May 2012, the national unemploymentrate in the United States was 8.2 percent. For African American men it was 13.6 percent. For context, it was 13.6 percent in 2007, too.
Result: It’s hard to get married when you’re statistically and historically underemployed.
Black men don’t view black women as a team member.
Many men view women as another achievement once they’re successful. While we can unite as a people when we are called upon for a cause, on the day-to-day front black men and women have a very independent structure. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only culture that champions the ‘independent woman’ and ‘M.O.B.’ manifestos in song. I’m not saying this is good or bad. I am saying it wasn’t always this way. Many young black men and women view themselves as independent. In fact, to be seen as co-dependent is seen as a weakness not a strength. If we don’t see a need for each other, is it any wonder why we act like we don’t need each other?
Result: Many black men feel they need to be established before they can approach the woman they want or he won’t be “worthy” of her. Further, some women believe, as Kanye West so ingeniously put forth in song, “I aint sayin she a gold digger but she aint messin with no broke n….” Success takes time, especially when you’re determined to do it alone instead of as a team.
More black women are going to college than black men.
This one is twofold. First, there was a time in America where you could still make a decent income even without a college education. Presently, 60 percent of new jobs require a college degree – many employers require a degree for entry-level work simply because they can. In 2011, women of all races obtained college degrees faster than men. For African American women, this rate was almost 2 to 1. Secondly, a number of studies have shown college graduates, both men and women, prefer marrying college-educated partners.
Result: Unfortunately, in this case, perception is reality. Women have fewer college-educated men to “choose” from and men have fewer women willing to “settle” for them if they don’t attend college.
There isn’t much gained from marriage that is not readily available in single life.
Other than a legal binding document and tax benefits, there isn’t much to be said for the additional benefits of marriage in 2012 in the minds of most men. If you’re already living together, having s*x, and/or having children, then what difference will getting married make? There is the benefit of security and unifying your bond in the eyes of the Lord (even though you’ve already been sinning), friends and family, but truth be told, that doesn’t concern most young men as early or often as it concerns most young women.
Result: He might eventually put a ring on it, but you must accept that he might not be working on the same timeline as you or as they said back in the day, “why buy the cow when you can drink the milk for free?”
Marriage isn’t their top priority.
Admittedly, I don’t’ have any stats on this, so I’m going to use my personal experience. From my observations, black men simply don’t view marriage as part of their list of accomplishments. Many of my friends want to get married but they don’t give it top billing. In other words, they have any other number of life goals they’d like to accomplish before they get married instead of seeing marriage as an intricate part of their accomplishments. I have no idea why this is but I’ll paraphrase something one of them told me in response to a similar write-up:
Men are simply choosing their own paths minus the influence of women. When women collectively said ‘we don’t just want to be wives, mothers, and home makers, we want to decide what we want to be in life’ they had their movement and they were liberated from being what men wanted them to be.
Women want to be whatever they choose (housewife, career woman, etc), and men must accept it. That’s fine, yet women still want men to be the traditional man (husband, father, provider). If you ask me, men are simply exercising the opportunity to choose what they want to be as well.
Result: In my opinion, neither men nor women are wrong here. We need to do a better job of understanding how our priorities differ. Then we can better understand how we can meet half-way instead of demanding that the only right way is our way.
As I said in the beginning, this list is not all-inclusive. Some of the points are interrelated and apply to some black men more than others or not at all. However, the issues that affect black men also affect black women – and both suffer directly and indirectly as a result. Most blogs focus on finger pointing and assigning blame rather than accepting that black men and women should be on the same team and hopefully working towards the same goals. In reality, it often feels like we believe we have to step on top of one another in order to reach the mountaintop instead of offering each other a helping hand. What is the result of this biased, self-centered thinking? Black men take longer to put a ring on it, and both men and women struggle longer apart when they could be succeeding together.
WisdomIsMisery aka WIM uses his formal training as an internal auditor to provide objective, yet opinionated, qualitative and quantitative analysis on life, love, and everything in between. As a Scorpio, many women wish death on WIM and some have attempted to hasten its arrival. WIM is not a model, a model citizen, or a role model. See more of WIM on his weekly write-ups for SBM and on Twitter @WisdomIsMisery.
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Thursday, July 12th 2012 at 10:29AM
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