Posted on 08/06/2011 12:05:55 AM PDT by oblomov
"At this point in my life," says Audrey, age 39, "I thought I'd be married with children." A native of southeast Washington, D.C., and the child of parents who are approaching their 50th wedding anniversary, Audrey seems like the proverbial "good catch"—smart, funny, well-educated, attractive.
Audrey earns a good living, too, with an income from management consulting that far surpasses what her parents ever made. Her social life is busy as well, filled with family, friends and church.
Only about one in 20 black women is interracially married; they are much less likely than black men to cross the race line.
What Audrey lacks is a husband. As she told me, sitting at a restaurant in the fashionable Dupont Circle neighborhood of the nation's capital, "I'm trying to get to a point where I accept that marriage may never happen for me."
Audrey belongs to the most unmarried group of people in the U.S.: black women. Nearly 70% of black women are unmarried, and the racial gap in marriage spans the socioeconomic spectrum, from the urban poor to well-off suburban professionals. Three in 10 college-educated black women haven't married by age 40; their white peers are less than half as likely to have remained unwed.
What explains this marriage gap? As a black man, my interest in the issue is more than academic. I've looked at all the studies—the history, the social science, the government data—and I've spent a year traveling the country interviewing scores of professional black women. In exchange for my promise to conceal their identities (in part by using pseudonyms, as I've done here), they shared with me their most personal experiences and desires in relation to marriage and family.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We did, but they die rather quickly. The children lose interest in a few hours. Been through fish, hamster, anole (small lizard), hermit crabs; now we have a guinea pig.
Fortunately we cared for a relative’s dog while they were away; everything I predicted about our children not walking/feeding/cleaning up after it came true, and my wife doesn’t ask me to get them one any more.
Without question, the most racist people (conversations) I have encountered have been with African American female co-workers.
I am white, married (DH is also white); have kids; so I was never any threat to my co-workers...but, a light skinned AfAm woman would be unmercifully talked about—just because she was ‘light.’ A white woman found to be dating a Black man, would make the entire group (shades of color didn’t matter at that point) pathological in their anger.
Toss in for good measure the ‘need’ for acrylic nails (but abject hate for the Asian nail techs who they frequented) and it was like the Twilight Zone.
Yes T-C, I can confirm that. Multi-critter house here too...
As Dave Barry would say, our big ‘main’ pet is a rather large (well fed) german sheppard terrier ??? mix. He is mostly black in coloring. The uber pampered Bichon gets ‘scared’ and needs picked up when our big guy barks at her (he spends his days on look out duty at the front window and protects us from neighbors dogs; UPS drivers; and Campaigning pols). We call out the Bichon’s behavior as ‘raaaacist.’
I’m white with straight black hair.
I plopped into a chair at a mall haircutting salon last year for a quick trim.
The beautician was a lovely black lady who was a bit chatty.
My straight black hair brought out an odd emotional reaction in her. I got a loooong story about her younger sister’s straight hair, while she and her older sister have curly hair. The oldest sister treated the baby sister differently.Now that they’re all adult, she was still sad and said, “even today, she’ll invite my younger sister out to lunch and ignore me”
I don’t think we understand how deep-seated these issues are with them. She looked to be in her 40’s and it almost brought tears to her eyes.
I really don’t know what can be done about it, it’s their culture.
Anoreth had some hermit crabs; I think they died of boredom.
Currently we have a greyhound, two cats, a chameleon, a bearded dragon, a leopard gecko, and two anoles. The snake, a dragon, an anole, a fish, and a gerbil have died in past four or five months, and we’re not planning to replace anything until after our vacation in September.
I was stunned (and this was close to 20 years ago) to learn what my office friends spent on their hair (strightening chems; colors; weaves were just becoming popular). I left that job (it was in a County govt office) because DH and I purchased a house in a neighboring county, but I remember thinking my co-workers didn’t buy real estate due to tieing up all their money in ‘hair’ issues.
It really was irrational and sad.
Things happen. I have French, English, Irish, Scottish, German, Austrian, Czech and American Indian.
Many black males have a problem with it are not above beating the crap out of a nonblack who would dare date their women.
IOW blacks are chauvinistic. It's a cultural artifact of the American South which, according toBlack Rednecks and White Liberals - Thomas Sowelltraces to the north of England.
‘I was raised not to be racist, and that’s the way I am.’
Good for you. Just don’t let your faith in Mankind lead you to stop watching your back.
A Nigerian buddy of mine married a US black woman. Man did he have a rough time - coming to work in fits of rage. Ended up in divorce. He then went back to the old country, got a wife, brought her over, and he’s been happy ever since.
There's her problem, right there. She must be on birth control, her gaydar's jammed.
“Too funny; the Yankee women I work with have either a cat or a dog, while all the other women (black, Hispanic, Asian) have children...”
I wish that it was funny, but that is EXACTLY what’s killing the demographics in this country.
That hasn't changed. Black women, especially "light skinned" black women, can't stand it when "their men" date and marry white women. I know this from experience.
Don’t forget the punitive Western World family court system and laws.
The woman can divorce the man on a whim, take his children, make him pay through the nose, then if he DARES to move on, she punishes him by withholding and brainwashing the children against him.
Doesn’t sound very attractive to me if I were a Western man.
As I always tell people regarding discrimination...
If you try to pet 9 dobermans and each one of them bites you, you are nothing less than a fool not to be cautious when you come across that tenth doberman.
Righteous and reasoned discrimination is what saves us from being bitten again.
They call straight hair “good” hair.
Heh heh. I worked on Capitol Hill over twenty years ago. It was widely referred to as “Bouffant Circle” in those less-PC days. There were some excellent independent bookstores there, however.
From the article:
“Given her milk-chocolate complexion, green eyes and curly hair, Cecelia worried that a biracial baby might come out looking white. Cecelia wanted chocolate babies not just so they would stay connected to black culture, but for another reason as well: So that no one would ever question whether they were hers. With biracial children, she feared that she might be mistaken for the nanny. Many black women share her anxiety about having a biracial child.”
Holy cow.
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