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The fact that 42 percent of African American females may never marry suggests that either marriage in the African American community is obsolete or the marital mindset on it needs a radical change.
Today “gangster rap” is showing its full force at destroying the future of Black America by being de facto propaganda that enchants many young African American males with being misogynistic, uneducated, thugs, and overly machismo. These anti-social values run counterpoise to what is necessary to develop and maintain a stable household. On the other hand, black females are educating themselves and moving up the socioeconomic success ladder.
The case I am making is there is a huge chasm between the mainstream competitiveness of African American males and females. The deadliness of yesteryear’s racial segregation epoch guaranteed little competition from nonblack Americans for African American males because state laws and the Ku Klux Klan lynching were excellent deterrents to interracial relationships and marriages. In 1967 when the US Supreme Court knocked down the anti-miscegenation laws they ignited the interracial marriage age.
The 1964 civil rights act and 1965 voting rights act allowed black women to join in the upward mobility wave of the women rights movement. BlackAmericans.com reports, “. . . 35 percent of Black males enrolled in college graduate within six years compared to 45 percent of Black females, 59 percent of White males and 46 percent of Hispanic men who entered college the same year.” Hence marrying a college educated black male is a competitive quest.
George Curry reveals how well nonblack women are advancing in landing African American husbands. “An estimated 1.3 percent of Black males and 0.9 percent of African-American females married outside their race in 1960. By 2008, however, 22 percent of Black males married a non-Black and 8.9 percent of African-American women.” Clearly, the Twenty-First Century marital trend in mainstream America suggests that African American women must adopt a racial and ethnic diversity mindset when they consider potential mates.
On-air-radio personality Rush Limbaugh is the darling of America’s ultra-rightwing conservatives in shaping public opinion by making provocative statements, so African American national radio celebrities have similar power in the black community. I do not hesitate to take Limbaugh to the woodshed when I feel he is being a demagogue.
Limbaugh is blatant that suggests you do not have to guess at his points. Yet subtlety can be as effective in making ones points. I like to listen to African American Michael Baisden’s radio show through WDAS in Philadelphia, PA when I am driving home. He and George Wilborn will make provocative statements. Baisden commented that he had dated women of color and he intimated an aversion with Caucasian and Asian women. Wilborn said that he had dated all sorts of women.
I wondered whether Baisden was placating unmarried black females knowing they may harbor disdain for white females who they see as taking potential black male husbands or was he being a de facto anti-racial diversity zealot. In the first case, Baisden would be condescending emotionally to unmarried black females’ plight by not saying anything, even though right, to alienate his audience. However, in the second case he appears no different from Rush Limbaugh for he is not using his bully-pulpit to promote the further evolution of the American melting pot instead he is opting to perpetuate the roots of America’s segregation epoch where black females had no marital competitive threat from nonblack women.
I encouraged my daughter to follow her heart and not waste a lot of time allowing other people to define her selection of a mate. Today, she is an Ivy League University educated professional woman who is married to a white chap with two wonderful biological sons. I think Michael Baisden should be promoting marital diversity with African American women for that is the Twenty First Century United States of America marital paradigm and not appear to be trying to cherry pick Twentieth Century racial segregation mindsets to justify today’s black female marital crisis.
