Posted on 04/13/2010 11:51:43 AM PDT by unclebankster
How the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women
IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called “The Logic of Life”. With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she “steals” a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.
Real life is more complicated, of course, but this simple model illustrates an important truth. In the marriage market, numbers matter. And among African-Americans, the disparity is much worse than in Mr Harford’s imaginary example. Between the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is about one in 150. For obvious reasons, convicts are excluded from the dating pool. And many women also steer clear of ex-cons, which makes a big difference when one young black man in three can expect to be locked up at some point.
Removing so many men from the marriage market has profound consequences. As incarceration rates exploded between 1970 and 2007, the proportion of US-born black women aged 30-44 who were married plunged from 62% to 33%. Why this happened is complex and furiously debated. The era of mass imprisonment began as traditional mores were already crumbling, following the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the invention of the contraceptive pill. It also coincided with greater opportunities for women in the workplace. These factors must surely have had something to do with the decline of marriage.
But jail is a big part of the problem, argue Kerwin Kofi Charles, now at the University of Chicago, and Ming Ching Luoh of National Taiwan University. They divided America up into geographical and racial “marriage markets”, to take account of the fact that most people marry someone of the same race who lives relatively close to them. Then, after crunching the census numbers, they found that a one percentage point increase in the male incarceration rate was associated with a 2.4-point reduction in the proportion of women who ever marry. Could it be, however, that mass incarceration is a symptom of increasing social dysfunction, and that it was this social dysfunction that caused marriage to wither? Probably not. For similar crimes, America imposes much harsher penalties than other rich countries. Mr Charles and Mr Luoh controlled for crime rates, as a proxy for social dysfunction, and found that it made no difference to their results. They concluded that “higher male imprisonment has lowered the likelihood that women marry…and caused a shift in the gains from marriage away from women and towards men.” Learning and earning
Similar problems afflict working-class whites, but they are more concentrated among blacks. Some 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock. The collapse of the traditional family has made black Americans far poorer and lonelier than they would otherwise have been. The least-educated black women suffer the most. In 2007 only 11% of US-born black women aged 30-44 without a high school diploma had a working spouse, according to the Pew Research Centre. Their college-educated sisters fare better, but are still affected by the sex imbalance. Because most seek husbands of the same race—96% of married black women are married to black men—they are ultimately fishing in the same pool.
Black women tend to stay in school longer than black men. Looking only at the non-incarcerated population, black women are 40% more likely to go to college. They are also more likely than white women to seek work. One reason why so many black women strive so hard is because they do not expect to split the household bills with a male provider. And the educational disparity creates its own tensions. If you are a college-educated black woman with a good job and you wish to marry a black man who is your socioeconomic equal, the odds are not good.
“I thought I was a catch,” sighs an attractive black female doctor at a hospital in Washington, DC. Black men with good jobs know they are “a hot commodity”, she observes. When there are six women chasing one man, “It’s like, what are you going to do extra, to get his attention?” Some women offer sex on the first date, she says, which makes life harder for those who prefer to combine romance with commitment. She complains about a recent boyfriend, an electrician whom she had been dating for about six months, whose phone started ringing late at night. It turned out to be his other girlfriend. Pressed, he said he didn’t realise the relationship was meant to be exclusive.
The skewed sex ratio “puts black women in an awful spot,” says Audrey Chapman, a relationship counsellor and the author of several books with titles such as “Getting Good Loving”. Her advice to single black women is pragmatic: love yourself, communicate better and so on. She says that many black men and women, having been brought up by single mothers, are unsure what role a man should play in the home. The women expect to be in charge; the men sometimes resent this. Nisa Muhammad of the Wedded Bliss Foundation, a pro-marriage group, urges her college-educated sisters to consider marrying honourable blue-collar workers, such as the postman. But the simplest way to help the black family would be to lock up fewer black men for non-violent offences.
Problem there is that black women need to start being nice to white men. Tough hill for many of them to climb.
I thought a lady - a perfect lady even - never tells?
:)
Who raises black boys to treat women as disposable, abuse them, and think making babies is a badge of honor?
Black women seem to complain about the very cultural problems they add to by teaching their sons not to ‘let no woman trap you’ into fatherhood. Making babies does not - committment or responsibility.
I’ve heard that, personally.
The irresponsible black males of today were raised , by their mothers, to avoid responsibility. That- and few black women want to be ‘answerable’ to a man. They want a ‘baby daddy’, but not a husband ‘in their business’.
So the cycle continues.
[”The era of mass imprisonment began as traditional mores were already crumbling, following the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the invention of the contraceptive pill. It also coincided with greater opportunities for women in the workplace.”]
The era of mass imprisonment? That’s a new one. Is the Economist trying to compete with the NY Times in inventing new social phenomena ?
The increase in illegitimate black children and the death of the “traditional black family” during the 1970’s has been generally attributed to the 70’s welfare programs, where poor single women were in effect subsidized for having babies. There is no mention of that in this article.
On the IMDB forums there’s a loooooong thread under Monster’s Ball where a black woman took Halle Berry to task, stating that “a black woman would never fall for a white man”.
That is what made me smile at the end of the article. You have a population of black women trolling for guys and the author picked “the postman” as a good catch. I had to laugh.
This problem would be easily solved by marrying males of other ethnic groups. Also, why do so many sleep with men having several children with no two having the same mother? Stop tolerating promiscuity and criminal behavior among your men, stop having children out of wedlock, and stop blaming the problem on racism.
You said it -
women, controlling access to sex, are THE civilizing factor in any culture.
Romance is when you actually go into the restaurant to eat. Love is when you go to one without a pickup window.
Perfectly said.
Thanks.
Its all about quality and doing without if necessary.
Nonsense! How about getting black men to stop committing more crimes than anyone else for starters? . . . Where does it say black women(or women of any other race) only have to date exclusively men from their own race? . . .
Amen. It's almost impossible to get locked up unless you commit several felonies over a period of time. It's a big lie that jails are full of "non-violent" offenders. Guess what? Burglary is a violent offense. It traumatizes its victims. And how does it help families to tolerate criminal behavior of any sort? Perhaps if black women stopped sleeping with criminals they'd have an incentive to quit crime.
Whenever they talk about black poverty, they almost never include the value of welfare benefits. Including the value of provided housing, food, health care, government education and other benefits puts the American poor above the "middle class" in many other countries.
The core constituency of the American welfare state is single minority women having babies. Various programs are obviously broader in scope, but that is the core target market.
For women who are not very intelligent and have zero ambition, becoming what is essentially a paid government employee paid to have babies by whomever they happen to hook up with, is a satisfactory deal.
The government subsidizes stupid women with low morals to produce babies. The cycle then grows with each generation. This is the core Democrat constituency.
The simplest way to help the black family would be for fewer black men to commit offenses.
Indeed. Burglary of an occupied building is a direct threat to inflict death or grave bodily harm on the occupants. In most States, it may be countered with lethal force.
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