Sometime back, National Public Radio released the results of a most interesting poll: it found that, when asked, nearly 45% of American Black men would like, at the very least, a long term relationship if not get married; while barely 25% of American Black women reported the same thing! These findings, along with other anecdotal evidence, flies in the face of what we’ve heard from what I have coined, “Black Vaginavision” over the past few decades… Black men (especially those who are seen by a plurality of Black women as desirable) are “Peter Pans in blackface” and refuse to commit; while Black women themselves very much are interested in marriage and relationships.
Yet, the evidence is overwhelming, that there are some 2 million more Black women than Black men, nearly a quarter of a million more Black men are married than Black women, and the out of wedlock birthrate in Black women, which has historically always been higher than the overall national average, has now reached 77% with no end in sight. Put this together with the fact that Black women also divorce at higher rates than other ethnic groups of women.
Mumia Obsidian Ali