Interracial marriage for black women would ‘unquestionably’ serve the black race.
At least, that’s what author and Stanford University law professor, Ralph Richard Banks says.
“The best thing black women can do, not only for themselves but to promote the cause of black marriage, is to expand their options and consider relations with men of other races.”
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In his recent book, Is Marriage for White People? How the African-American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone, Banks makes the claim that educated, middle-class black women can solve their ‘marriage-less’ woes by dating non-black men.
Throughout the book, Banks lays down the critical stats.
70 percent of African-American woman are unmarried- single, widowed or divorced- compared to 45 percent of their white counterparts. African-Americans have higher divorce rates than any other group. 50 percent of black couples divorce within the first 10 years of marriage compared to about a third of whites.
Black women have surpassed black men on the whole educationally and professionally. They’re graduating from college and earning more than African-American men. One in every 10 black men in their early ‘20s or ‘30s are in prison or in jail. In essence, there is a disparity between the conditions and circumstances of black men and black women.
Clearly, black men are lagging behind.
Despite all this, black women, to a large extent, have stuck by their black men. They are the least likely out of other ethnic groups to marry outside of their race.
This creates a scene where too many black women are going after a scarce commodity: the eligible black man.
Black men, according to Banks, therefore, have an upper hand when it comes to their relationships with African-American females.
“The remaining black men who are in the population, they have a lot of power,” Banks told theGrio.
“Black men being in short supply means they can dictate the terms of the relationship and they often dictate terms that are not to the woman’s liking.”
Discussions about the inability of educated African-American women to find a life partner are nothing new. It’s the kind of talk that is commonplace in beauty salons, at dinner tables and even in classrooms. But recently, that conversation is now taking place in the public arena as mainstream media outlets have taken interest in what has become a trend nearly half a century in the making: African-Americans have become the most unmarried people in the nation.
The title for the book came from a 2006 Washington Post article in which a writer quotes an African-American sixth grader in a Washington, D.C. classroom who said: “Marriage is for white people.”
