Cortney Wills is joined by Eboni K. Williams, who responds to the backlash she received after a recent episode of “theGrio with Eboni K. Williams” examined the trend of white women seeking their MRS degrees in college. The ladies take a deep dive into the nerves she struck when she advised Black women undergrads who desire marriage to prioritize finding a man while they still can. The former RHONY cast member and host of “Equal Justice with Judge Eboni K. Williams” also opens up about her journey to motherhood and how her own experiences have shaped her outlook on marriage.
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Panama Jackson [00:00:00] You are now listening to theGrio’s Black Podcast Network. Black Culture Amplified.
Cortney Wills [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to Acting Up. The Podcast that dives deep into the world of TV and fil. That highlights our people, our culture and our stories. I’m your host, Cortney Wills, and today I’m talking with Eboni K. Williams, former member of The Real Housewives of New York, current host of “theGrio with Eboni K. Williams” and newly minted judge. Who you can catch on “Equal Justice with Judge Eboni K. Williams.” Eboni, How are you?
Eboni K. Williams [00:00:38] Cortney, thank you for asking. Great to be with you, and congratulations again on your two lovely new bundles of joy. I’m feeling balanced right now in this moment, feeling some good vibes and feeling challenged in some spaces and that that’s part of the game. So, yeah, feeling pretty good.
Cortney Wills [00:00:57] Well, that is good to hear. So I came back to work from a long maternity leave to a writers strike. A SAG actors strike. So the fall TV lineup has been a lot weaker than I’m used to, but you have given me quite a bit to watch and think about on your show, and especially with yesterday’s episode, which has caused quite the stir on social media.
Eboni K. Williams [00:01:21] Indeed, and it’s interesting, Cortney, because I’m pretty bad actually, at anticipating which episodes of theGrio with Eboni K. Williams are going to have this type of effect and impact, and so I was actually minding my business and going about the business of a couple other projects I’m also working on. Yesterday afternoon, when, of course, our incredible social team posted the clip of the sidebar and then all things went berserk at that point forward. So it’s been an interesting 24 hours, to say the least.
Cortney Wills [00:01:54] So for those of you who didn’t see this clip, it is pretty viral on social media. Gotten a lot of response, both good and bad has to do with this trend that people have been talking about lately, and that is the trend of white women going to college to pursue, you know, the educational degrees of their choosing. But at the same time, prioritizing, getting a different kind of degree. What we’re talking about is women that go to college with the intention of getting engaged by the time they graduate. So they’re there to get an MRS degree, and that is something that our community doesn’t necessarily experience in the same way, that was the subject of Eboni’s show yesterday, and she had some really good insight, some really good statistics, as well as some commentary from experts, and what we saw, what people are reacting to is Eboni’s kind of personal reflection of that episode and that conversation, and so first, I kind of want to get into what the whole conversation was like in full. You can watch it on theGrio yourself and you can head over to theGrio dotcom to read about this episode as well. So let’s back up and talk about the subjects. White girls go to college and they have their eyes on the prize and that prize is usually a diamond, right?
Eboni K. Williams [00:03:17] Literally, it’s referred to Cortney as the ring before spring, and it’s sometimes can be a play on words or euphemism or sometimes it’s very literal. They are literally mandating for themselves and their peer group that when you walk across the stage that may with that diploma or degree, either at the undergraduate or graduate level, you best have a diamond of some sort on that left ring finger. Otherwise it is perceived in parts of their culture and white community as failure on some part or in in completion of the task at hand.
Cortney Wills [00:03:55] So what is so different when it comes to our community, to Black women in college and what we’re focused on when we’re.
Eboni K. Williams [00:04:02] I’m going to answer that question differently today, Cortney, that I would have even answered it yesterday, which to me shows the power of this conversation even for me, because we are all. To me, this is why I do what I do in the way that I do it, which many can label provocative or, you know. Well, we’ll leave it there for n, andnd and it’s because I so deeply enjoy and more importantly, deeply, deeply find and hold value in the expansive conversation around difficult topi, andnd this is difficult because it’s a matter of the heart and it’s something that is deeply personal to Black women in particul, andnd that’s very much who this conversation is for, in case anybody was confused. I very much appreciate the commentary and voyeurism of the brothers on this one, but this is very much a conversation designed and intended for Black women. Full stop. Getting to to your your inquiry. This is I’m realizing today, Cortney, that what is different in our culture historically from the way white women pursue this very topic pivots and turns on the issue of socioeconomics within the Black community. So talking to some other Black women today that are differently situated than I am, who are not first generation college graduates from their family, who are not the first in their family to go to professional or graduate school. As I am. I’m a first generation undergraduate experience. I’m a first generation attorney and the first person in my family to be a part of the Divine Nine as a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha is already incorporated. My point there is I am the first in my nuclear family to ascend to dimensions of socioeconomic elitism, to just say it plainly, and so I would have thought that this was basically the, quote, white girl thing until further conversations in the past 24 hours and even reflections when I think back about even my experience at UNC-Chapel Hill over 20 years ago and the way I pursued my education and career path versus some of my counterparts who did come from Legacy Jack and Jill, who did come from legacy AKA. Whose mothers were a member of, you know, some of the most elite social and service organizations in the country who were generations of doctors, lawyers fill in the blank. They were actually informed Cortney that many of them were coached by their mamas, the grand mamas, even their fathers, in some instances, to go to school with marriage, marriage and life partnership on the table as much as that bachelor’s degree. So I think it’s really more of it’s more nuanced than just Black women being different than white women. I think we have to further deviate the specificity here and talk about kind of first generation or maybe second generation Black women who typically approach this differently, who are often told, I’ll speak for myself, my mother, Gloria, who did not have the full advantage of formal education but is a brilliant mind and amazing entrepreneur nonetheless. Her thing was boys are a distraction. I’m sending you to Chapel Hill for you to get that degree as soon as possible. Keep in mind Cortney, I went to school. I was a big nerd, still am. I’m 16 years old. Matriculating to UNC-Chapel Hill on a full merit scholarship. So Gloria’s command was stay focused, get the undergrad degree, go on to a higher level education, law school, Ph.D., what have you. Build your career, build your financial foundation so that you will never have to depend on anyone less than a man or anyone else, and after you’ve done all of that building academically and financially, pick your head up at that point in life and then look to partner with someone, and I think that is very common advice from first generation college ascenders.
Cortney Wills [00:07:58] Yes. You know, you made a lot of interesting points there, and one of them is simply that just with the hours, you know, since this conversation has erupted, upon reflection, you are right. Being nice, organizing that your outlook, you know that your frame of reference on this topic isn’t just informed by the fact that you are a Black woman. It is informed by what your socioeconomic background was. You know, probably the fact that you had a mother who was focused on her education.
Eboni K. Williams [00:08:28] Who was single, who was single.
Cortney Wills [00:08:30] Absolutely, and the fact that there there is intersectionality in our experience, and when I was watching the show and later thinking about it, one of my first question, what persons was like, okay, let’s play this out. Eboni’s advice, Let’s do this. I graduated at 20 and I had my kids at, I think 31 and 30, so. I’m thinking, who’s going to pay for these kids? At least 21 and 22 year olds who find their mate prioritize getting married, do it and are making. You know what the U.S. average is for recent college graduates, which is certainly wouldn’t have been enough to raise my kid, and so I wondered. My mind what’s economic actually like weight if or how biologically great. Let’s all have babies when we’re 25. Be easy. It’ll come back and our bodies will bounce back. But who’s going to pay for it? And.
Eboni K. Williams [00:09:30] Right. Yeah. So that’s interesting, right? Because that’s a perfect place to start, and now upon you, like you say, broadening even my own perspective and lens, that’s less of a concern with many of these generational white college young ladies and generational Black college young ladies, because they’re coming from families of wealth. So they are not concerned as to who’s paying for, you know, the lifestyle that we want these children to have in these circumstances, because they there’s built there’s a built in wealth safety net for those particular women.
Cortney Wills [00:10:01] Absolutely, and really, for a lot of those women, Black or white, the path to financial stability is marrying into a family that already has wealth, and that that’s a very different kind of route to success, and, you know, I think that what we saw initially were Black women reacting to a seeing that isolated part of the clip that did not in any way acknowledge that it is problematic, that this is even an issue placed in our laps as Black women, that this is something that somehow we have to contend with because of our circumstances. But you did acknowledge that earlier in the episode. What I saw was a visceral reaction to. What people understood your advice to be, which was. Look at yourself like property and your values going up and down, and you better get out there before your stock plumets. You’re rotting and this is your problem.
Eboni K. Williams [00:11:06] I’m sorry, it’s the rotting part for me. But I hear you.
Cortney Wills [00:11:09] I you know, I mean, there are so many messages. Obviously, we are sensitive, maybe hypersensitive about any and all issues of life decisions, fertility, sexuality, marriage, like so many things or hot button issues. So many things feel out of our control, and so many things feel like no matter how much you plan and no matter how much you aspire for your life to shake out of a certain way, you really don’t have control over something that feels urgent and important, and I know from this reaction that this is an urgent and important conversation to have.
Eboni K. Williams [00:11:43] Well, that’s the part we do know, right, is the fact that the visceral nature of the responses, no matter what they you know, how they show up, tells us that we’ve struck a nerve, and I’ve struck a nerve as a journalist and as a cultural commentator on a conversation that Black women, I think, have some desperation and urgency to use your word around, and of course we do. Let’s be clear. Of course, Black women care about our families. Black women care about our bodies. Black women care about our hearts and our overall social, economic and political positioning. None of that should be news to anybody, and so when you add this component of and I can see completely Cortney. There’s only but so much control any of us have on these particular aspects of our lives and of our futures and of our existence, and also, I guess this would be a good time to say something that I probably erroneously think doesn’t need to be said. But but let me make it plain. 90% of the topics I tackle, whether they be the gap in marriage for Black women or other, whether they be the gap in home ownership between Black citizens and non-Black, whether it is the gap in education or wealth or systemic incarceration of Black men or Black people. I’m already coming from a premise of a none of this should be on us. I’m already coming from a prism of yet and here we are. Since our origins on these shores in 1619 performing labor that but for the social positioning of us as Black people and Black women in this particular context, specifically, we would not be asked nor required to even consider, let alone to do, and so my work, if you will, in all of these spaces, Cortney, comes from a place of I’m so grateful and reverent to my peers in all of these spaces, in both blind social justice and journalism that do the work of dismantling systems. That is actually not my calling. I’m very clear on that. My unique calling I put forward is the navigation of broken systems in the meantime. So I think that context can be helpful here as we continue discussing it.
Cortney Wills [00:14:09] Absolutely. I mean, that is, you know, not a disclaimer, but it absolutely, again, is a frame of reference that I don’t think is apparent in a 60 second social media clip.
Eboni K. Williams [00:14:20] Totally agree.
Cortney Wills [00:14:21] How do you feel? Well, just like. Let’s get out of the way. How you feel about the Black women. Who were, clearly hurt, I think, and offended by your comments yesterday.
Eboni K. Williams [00:14:38] I hold the space for them, Cortney. God knows I do. I hold the space for Black women whose, you know, who go do to my commentary in what I said and the way I said it, which will probably just in a second, Felt triggered, felt pain, felt talked down to maybe felt some level of shame and frankly at some point upset in this and maybe just flat out anger. I hold the space for all of that reaction, and I also. Stand on what I said, who I said it to, and why I said it. Because I personally. This is a personal. Value system here coming out bright. I believe candor can be the most effective form of compassion. That that is a me thing, and I know lots of folks maybe disagree with that as well. But the candor for me is very important. It is very important for my own personal navigation of spaces. Cortney And this has been me since childhood. I like to really know the minutia of my environment and the paradigm in which I’m operating. For instance, I went to USC, Chapel Hill. As I mentioned, I was dropped off on campus at 16 years old and told go be great. Go be, go be the the second coming of Obama, and before Obama even existed and Oprah and Michael Jackson and everything else, that that makes Black Americans fantastic. Okay. Thank you, Gloria. Good goodbye to you, and and right now, no pressure. But no, but very seriously, that that was absolutely the expectation, and just to kind of pull back the layer about me personally, people see the successes of my career, which I’m so benevolent and grateful for, and people always are like, Oh, your mom must be so proud. She feels I’m delivering on the gifts at a minimum. Really, I’m just being straight up with you, and so I think that also informs my viewpoint. Um, so I come from a space of expecting everything for Black women. So that that is the part of the visceral reaction that was actually not well, it was horrible to me. I understand why it was the reaction, but but, but that misunderstanding of my intention around this dialog, Cortney, was a pain point for me. I expect everything for Black women. If you don’t believe me, go listen to my tagline when I was a housewife. We have work twice as hard, for half as much, but now we are coming for everything, and that’s. I want nothing less than everything for Black women, including everything of our hearts, desires and many Black women desire marriage, period. Now, what I cannot do is give you any advice because I’ve not ever been successfully married, So I can not talk to all about how to be successfully married, how to stay married or any of that. But what I can speak to, because I’ve lived it and I’ve watched many of our cohort live it. Cortney Our best practices strategies to ensure the getting to the marriage destination. If that is your chief priority and that’s just a pure numbers analysis, that’s not rocket science and that’s not me being clairvoyant. That is simply saying that when you are an educated Black woman who desires, as most educated Black women do, to marry a Black educated man, also just your pure numbers best chances of doing that are when you are literally alongside those Black men who are simultaneously pursuing education alongside you. That’s the kind of bare bones of the argument I’m making and doing it from a place of, matter of fact, candor, because I just want people to have the most basic understanding of best scenario oper.. optionality, opportunity, proximity in those things.
Cortney Wills [00:18:40] And I think that’s important. I think so much of what you said, I hope, will, you know, in some ways foster some understanding of where you were coming from, and so I think we kind of covered what this wasn’t. So let’s get into what this was, what you did say, what maybe those best practices, in your opinion, could be now inclusive of, you know, some of the evolving thoughts that in part on this and taking into account. So now we are talking to Black women in college and we’re not necessarily talking to the ones who are affluent, who do come from wealthy families, who more closely resemble the lives and interests of those wealthy white women. What is maybe the strategy and what is it from your perspective, which, you know, many of your fans and followers know you’ve been open about your desire to become a mother? We are seeing you as a single woman who is excelling in her career, and that is a place that a lot of women, a lot of my friends, a lot of colleagues find themselves in. They are approaching 40 or they are mid-forties or they are late 40s and they have created really beautiful lives for themselves and had really successful careers and are now extremely distraught at the fact that they are single, that they are not mothers, and that they are not confident in their ability to become mothers, you know, naturally or otherwise. That is indeed a real predicament. Now, whether or not that is something, you know, to put on the center of your plate when you’re 22, you know, maybe it’s 30, maybe, you know, maybe it’s 25. Who knows? But, addressing the fact that this is a kind of uh side dish that often comes with being a successful, college educated Black woman pursues her career. Where do we start this conversation and where do we start it with space for all of those women at the top?
Eboni K. Williams [00:20:48] I think we started early and I think we started often, Cortney, and again, this is not to discount or even undermine the advice that my totally well-meaning mother, Gloria, gave me, which for me, I want to say very plainly that advice lands for me because I am one of the most unequivocally, unabashedly, most relentlessly ambitious people you will ever meet. Black. White. Gay. Straight. Woman, man, and so I am somebody who it was in complete alignment with my actual desires to put career power fiscal success first. I also acknowledge myself as an outlier. I don’t think that most Black women, even the ones going to school to become the partners at the big white shoe law firms are the ones that are going to school 20, 50, 11 years to be the Ph.D. at Harvard University. I don’t think most women and I don’t think most Black women are picking career over husband and family. I really don’t, and I know that we’ve all heard the saying trope, whatever you want to call it. You can have all the things, but not at the same time. I want to kind of break down something you led with earlier in the conversation, Cortney, which is the visceral reaction to the nature of my equating Black women to participation in a marketplace. I again, this is my candor is compassion. It is a marketplace, in my estimation, as all things are marketplaces. We’re talking about electoral politics. I would I would use the same analysis as the voter. The electorate is the marketplace. So where you how you show up and your desirability as a candidate for those votes is your marketplace value. So if we’re talking about marriage, in my estimation, I see nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade, if you will. So. I think it’s important that we be really candid as Black women, Black educated women at this point and let’s just like you say, zoom out and talk to the 35 and up crowd just for the sake of this part of the conversation where I think most of the pain point is, and that is the fact that let’s really honestly say Cortney, and think about the last time we had conversations with other educated Black men, single or otherwise, and we asked them, what is it that you value in a female partner or a, you know, obviously a caveat. This whole conversation has been hetero normal, heteronormative in its centering. So let’s be clear. Okay. So with last time we had a conversation with hetero Black men that are educated and ask them what are your primary values when it comes to how you assess the desirability of a woman in your life? And let me tell you some of the things, Cortney, that I have not heard on the list. I have not heard about how educated Black men who we presume to be successful, although we all can hold a space where everybody educated, successful amen. But let’s go to the general correlation of educated and successful. Let me see what those men I find are not particularly interested in Cortney. I don’t think they’re particularly interested in fitting in on our calendars. Okay. The not particularly. Let me just go through my day. My day started very, very early in this morning. Okay? I had a pre-production call meeting with my team at theGrio. Then I got my self-care and were ready as I went to Midtown Manhattan to shoot several hours of theGrio. Then I raced back here to have this brilliant and informative dialog with you. After this, I will have to improve my glam to put on more appropriate attire to head downtown to a white shoe law firm while we participate in a three hour panel discussion with a whole bunch of white people for the most part, and talk about diversity in media and how it’s important to the liberation of Black America, and then after I’m done with that, I will then get to sit down and do pre-production for season three of Holding Point with Eboni Kay Williams, and that’s not even a happy day for me, to be candid with you, and what I’m putting out there is that in the world, this beautiful life that I have chosen and created for myself, there is not a whole lot of space for any man to be a huge priority for me, and that is an Eboni thing that I am owning. But I think if you talk to a lot of very successful Black women in that age group, 35 and up because of circumstances now saying that we just wanted the hard life as Summer Walker away, say, but circumstantially we found ourselves positioned to not be in the softest of lives right now because we’re going to get it, because we’re not going to be without, and why should we be? No, I think most men are trying to get in where they fit in in the lives of the next, you know, Oprah Winfrey’s of the World or the next Sheryl Sandberg’s of the world. By the way and I don’t think this is exclusively a Black issue, this part of it, because I’d like to know the tea on why Sheryl and that schoolteacher got married and divorced within 5 minutes anyway. But, you know, I don’t think most men, Cortney, are looking for women whose biological clocks are in a challenging place and that is the reality of any woman who is 35 and up. The reality is all women are born with all of the eggs you will ever have in your entire life, and most of us don’t know that until it’s too late, and all that’s happening every year, especially after 35. But really every year you have to wear bore even in utero is our egg reserve is diminishing. That’s a reality, and so most men are not looking to voluntarily sign up for a scenario we’re all on the onset of their relationship with you. Either they are going to be participating with you and, you know, some type of fertility journey or if they or if they had had children earlier in life. Most of them are not looking to start over again. So that was my dilemma. Is the type of man that I am most attracted to and with most desire to partner with are older men. I actually prefer men that are early fifties, 50 to 55. Those men, more than likely for my experience their children are mid-twenties to early thirties. Those men are not looking to diaper an infant again for the most part. So those are just some practical logistical challenges Cortney. You know, they want a woman for the most part who has a lot of space for them, who has a lot of time for them, who has the ability to create really kind of soft nurturing energies around them and for them and prioritize them and and be readily accessible and available to them per their mandate and not in a bossy way, just in a that’s the reason a lot of men work so hard and try to make as much money as possible so they can have the benefit of an accommodating woman, and I’m not saying that no educated, successful woman is accommodating. I am certain they are out there. I personally know some, but a lot of us that’s going to get it at this level. I’m of some of us that are earning in the top 1% of our respective communities and cities and only be but so accommodating Cortney because of everything else that is required for us to build and maintain the lifestyles we have built.
Cortney Wills [00:28:32] Well, you’ve said a lot of things there, only especially ones that resonated with me, and one thing and to think he how got in my mind and that one of them is this is a conversation that I find myself having often that I feel is relevant to this one that we’re having, and that is how few, and it actually really plays into, you know, the fact that we’re doing the episode right now. Representation of realistic and realistic portrayals of Black marriage are practically nonexistent. I’m talking right before you get married, right after you do the parenting journey like we actually particularly the Black community don’t really know what that looks good, bad, up or down. I think there is so much assumption about the experiences of whatever we are not right, like my assumptions of what it must be like to be 40 and single right now one night with four kids or my counterparts who are killing it, you know, professional and and again find themselves in the throes of fertility struggles and being single, thinking that, you know, I’ve got a really great. I mean, the grass is always greener. But aside from being greener, I think it’s just really mystical. Like, we don’t know what fighting in a healthy marriage looks. We don’t know what’s struggling in a healthy marriage looks like. So oftentimes I find myself discussing with my married friends, especially moms that my kids school that like we don’t know if we’re doing it right or wrong. Like you come up against something hard and you go, oh shit, that feels like a divorce, I think. But how often do you hear people who are still married really talking about what that looks like? Because one thing that I might tell my friends who, you know, are finally financial stable, who are the first in their families to get there, who do own their own homes before they get married. One thing that I would tell them is that I couldn’t afford you know to do this when I was 20, you know, and that I find myself in a I found myself in a unique position to be able to pursue my career for a good decade before I got married and had kids. I had two kids in two years. I took a break. I came back, I had a skill that allows me are allowed me to jump in and out. So if I was giving advice, it might be less on when to find a man or how to navigate that and more on how to set up your career to leave it in a place when you think you might want to plan to get pregnant to be able to leave and come back because I will talk to you about the mental load of being a mother, of being that no matter if you have a husband or not, if you’re a single mom, that mental weight, you know, the doctor’s appointments, the lunches, the school closing appointments like that, those things usually fall to the mother in a lot of cases, and so the way that you talk about what men of a certain age want from the woman they’re going to marry, that’s definitely not something that when you’re in the throes of motherhood, you’re probably providing to your husband in the way that you did when you were courting him or in the way that you can when your kids get a little bit older. So it’s almost like we’re talking from different vantage points about a lot of the same considerations, and because you’re coming from it as a single woman who doesn’t yet have children, you’re thinking about it in terms of the partner. Meanwhile, I’m thinking about it. I have a career, I have a husband and I have kids. I’m coming from it like it did not have it all at the same time, and, you know, I, I feel like I lucked out at the pieces fitting together. But a young person coming up, maybe my advice would be framed, you know, in in that way, and I think that you you tapped into one way of looking at it, and of course, that’s not the whole conversation. There’s so many ways to tackle this, and they are complex and they are layered in the personal. But we’re not you know, it’s not like not seeing things green and other people are seeing things red. We’re all talking about things, and like you said, how do we navigate?
Eboni K. Williams [00:33:08] Absolutely. It only makes sense to me, Cortney, that your vantage point is going to be centered around your lived experience as a woman who had and has a great career, who got married at, you know, a more kind of statistically average age of 30. Sounds like you had your children very quickly in succession, had much more career, had two beautiful babies. That makes sense to me now. I will say this. As I said earlier, nothing about what I am articulating is around and then what? I’m not talking to women about balancing motherhood and marriage. I don’t know shit about that, let’s be clear. I am simply talking about getting to what I’m hearing a lot of my peer group, I’m hearing some soars, I’m hearing friends, I hearing people out the coverage, they’re simply saying, I never even got the ring. That ring before a spring thing that’s real for some women or is real for more women, they will care to admit it. Okay. It matters still in our society when a man drops on a knee and asks you to be his wife, and for those of us who have had that, because, you know, under what’s often hidden or forgotten in this conversation is I have been married. It was a very brief marriage. It was in my late twenties, and it wasn’t for me, and that’s no problem. But it wasn’t for me then, and, you know, I was in a very long term relationship, you know, four plus years with a man, and we were on that marriage track, and then I decided, guess what? Once again, it’s not for me. So I ended that engagement, and right now in my life, I make no bones about saying it’s simply not my priority, and I believe it isn’t also marriage. Just look a bunch of different ways. Right. There’s that piece of it. They’re very egalitarian marriages. They they’re marriages that are more what we consider traditional in those ways, and there’s open marriages and there’s all types of things that work for all types of people, and I’m here for it all. But I am somebody that views marriage as two individuals, creating something that is larger than themselves through the marriage piece. Right, and I know enough about my own self to say I am not at a place where I desire to create something that is going to pivot much of my focus right now is I can continue to maximize and pursue my full spiritual gifts. That’s a me thing. I want to go back to something you said, which is, you know, about the your advice would be kind of more centered on building a career that allows that flexibility, that of course, that makes sense. Right? But again, I’m not even touching the motherhood piece in my analysis. I am strictly focused on the women that they are one to, and third priority is really I want to be married to a Black educated man, and I’m really narrowing my take to that particular isolated group of women, and I’m not speaking beyond that because I don’t have enough data points to to to speak to it intelligently, and I certainly don’t have the lived experience.
Cortney Wills [00:36:06] What do you think about what you just said? Really struck me for two reasons. One is, I absolutely looked at this as not just women who want to be married, but women who want to be married, particularly because they want to be mothers, and I think we did that with obviously, we did talk you know, you did reference fertility in declining fertility, being kind of, you know, part of that, you know, the falling stock of us, if you will, as we. So that’s one reason that I looked at it that way. But the other reason is that I think honestly, as a married mother, I am like, why would it be? But why would you get married if you don’t.
Eboni K. Williams [00:36:52] For social approval and I’m not saying that I’m not laughing because that is a very we cannot sit here and pretend, Cortney, that we don’t live in an America that regardless of race, there is not social stigma attached to women who do not have someone elses last name that do not have that ring or band on their fourth finger, who again had never had a man say, I choose you to the exclusion of all others. You are my pick. Where do you think the phrase getting chose came from Cortney? That’s where it comes from. So and I also have several very close friends who the motherhood, yes, they would have liked it, maybe, but if they had to choose the validate and I think we project things on certain words like validation or privilege and we make them negative. I don’t think it’s negative necessarily. It means something to a lot of women, whether they admitted to you or not, to have a husband, to have someone walk beside me in life, no matter what’s going on behind closed doors, like you say, no matter if the minute I pop this baby out, forget him is me and my baby because we all know about those relationships and marriages right? And we know how unsuccessful they tend to be even when they sustain. Right? So, no, there is a real category of Black women who the ring, the wedding, the marriage, the my husband of it all means a great deal.
Cortney Wills [00:38:31] Well, God Bless ’em.
Eboni K. Williams [00:38:32] I hear you but I’m just telling you because I think I’m just a punching. It’s really in the streets, absolutely.
Cortney Wills [00:38:38] No, that is so real, and I’m. I’m only laughing, obviously, because I’m in such a different position, yea.
Eboni K. Williams [00:38:44] And I just. Yeah. No, not. I’m sorry. I just feel like you’re, you’re, you’re now exciting me around the issue, right? Because a lot of my lack of urgency around the marriage piece is because I’ve already been married. I’m not going to sit up here and act like I’m immune to social elements and act like my desire to, even in my most recent relationship. Would I have gone down that aisle and risked what I knew intellectually was going to be a high risk dynamic based off of who I was at that time, who he was at that time, would I have gone through with it knowing it was less than, you know, super likely to succeed for the sake of having that affermation? Maybe. Maybe. I think I get to sit here with a more kind of cavalier attitude about it all, because I got I had my solid blue label gouge out, I had my cushion cut diamond, I had my five course meal. So I do I’ve experienced that particular form of social validation. I was chosen and then I decided I didn’t really want to be chosen right now, and and that’s a different positioning than my peers who are also stunning. Successful. Wealthy, and never had somebody choose them in that way.
Cortney Wills [00:40:12] Fair, that is that is that is definitely um the experience I think of a lot of women that I know and one other kind of experience of a lot of women who reacted to this story was feeling like, again, why is this our fault? Why aren’t you talking to the men? Why aren’t we changing some of the factors that contribute to this situation? There are less Black men in college than Black women. You know all of the statistics that we already know. Why don’t we address it? Well, you said earlier you weren’t talking to me. You were talking to us. You were talking to Black women. But what if you were talking to Black men? Let’s talk to them for a second. Or better, let’s talk about them. What about them and their role in this.
Eboni K. Williams [00:41:02] The first thing I would say is I just I personally believe that Black men are more effective leading a conversation with Black men on these issues or a litany of reasons. But I will entertain this prism here. The good news is Cortney is here at theGrio with Eboni K. Williams, we do have these conversations on a daily basis. Now, I know they don’t all have the viral nature of this particular one, but I wish they had. I really do. I wish than what I had on a Black male doctor of education, the brother’s name escapes me right now, but he was on our show about two months ago and we had a three at three segments that were all about closing the educational gap, both at the secondary level and also higher education. In fact, he was the dean or the president of a community college out in California, and we spoke in very specific terms, Cortney, about how do we get more Black boys to see themselves as college material, because much of the gap is rooted in that disconnection. Little Black girls, not all of us, but many of us at a relatively early enough age are perceived as college material. We have an expectation of going to college and then some. Like I spoke about, you know, Gloria, more of us get that, whether it’s from our mothers, from our teachers, you know, and different people in society can see, college and beyond better for Black girls than they do for Black boys. That’s not my opinion. That’s in the data. There’s study after study that show that that when a Black girl and a Black boy show up in the same third grade classroom, there is already a different level of academic expectation for those two. Then you add the fact that Black boys are being suspended at higher rates than even Black girls, who even we are being suspended at rates that are horrified compared to our white peers. So the short answer is we have that conversation all the time on, I was about to say on The View. But they need to have to, but on theGrio with Eboni K. Williams, right? I have no fear and no discontent for talking about how Black boys and men can participate in this issue and solutions around this issue. As you said, even in this interview, that, you know, people didn’t really see the whole entirety of. I asked the expert guests that was joining me in the conversation, sis, we can’t marry ourselves. How do we get Black boys that are young Black men that are on these college campuses to be more college minded earlier? Some are that, and that’s really again, that’s where I’m narrowly tailoring my advice to. I’m telling the young Black girls that are on these campuses across America and beyond to focus on the young Black boys who whether it’s cause they came out of Jack and Jill or, you know, they momma had him in the AKA cotillion being somebody’s date. It’s all over. Cause that’s what it looked like, right? These are the young Black boys who are also invested in a model of Black economic and social advancement that requires a Black wife. I’m all about that and we have it. They just don’t go viral the way that this conversation happened and I’m not upset at it. I’m a student of the business. Cortney, I understand why this is much more intoxicating content and intriguing conversation than a dialog that’s talking about the numbers and the strategies as to why the academic expectations and outcomes of young Black boys in this country do not mirror that of young Black women, and I will say to those that are wondering, white girls are seeing a similar gap starting to encroach upon their community to actually, which is why they’re getting even more aggressive with their ring before spring. White women are going to law school more than white men. That is a numerical reality. White women are starting to enter and graduate from medical schools at rates that rival white men. So that gender gap is showing up across racial spectrums. We won’t even talk about Latina women. Oh, my God. They are just clobbering the rate of Latino men who are enrolling in higher education and professional school. So. It’s a real thing, and why is it on us as Black women? One could argue it’s not on us, but I go back to my original point. I want us to have what we want. Well, I want us to have everything, our heart’s desire, and if you tell me, you. If you told me I really want a Birkin bag. You know what I’m not going to do with you, Cortney. I’m not going to sit up here and have a conversation with you about how Birkin bag shouldn’t cost as much as they do. I’m not going to have a conversation with you about how Hermes should be more diplomatic in their access points to general consumers. I’m not going to have any of those conversations with you. I’m going to have a conversation with you as to how we can get the money up to go walk into Hermes off of Madison and get that motherfucking bargain. I don’t know if you can cuss on here, but that’s the conversation I’m going to have with you. Now, other people might have a conversation with you about, well, why does it have to be a bargain? Open your choices up. Have you see some of these Louis Vuitton bags? Have you seen some of these Michael Khors bags? That’s the uh, well, what about white men? Well, what about non Black men? Or, why do you have to be an educated man? What about the plumbers? What about the barbers? The what abous are great arguments. I’m not a what about person? You told me you wanted Birkin, bitch. Let’s go.
Cortney Wills [00:46:32] Well, Eboni, what about you know, obviously the emotions have been stirred, people get personal. A lot of the comments are like, why are you talking to me about what I should do to get married? Because you are not married. You know, we’re talking about fertility. You have been open about your desire to become a mother. You are not yet a mother. I, I again, you know, I, I watch your show and I react to what you said already knowing those things about you. So I come to the conversation, knowing you know, where your approach is informed by, and therefore I take it as in some ways. Here is a place where I can struggling and message to my younger self, and I guess then what I know now. Dot, dot, dot, and it is that also. In a way where you were coming from?
Eboni K. Williams [00:47:27] I’ll start with the fertility piece I’m looking at right now. You know, with the way AI and technology is, I’m like, I’ll put the bottle of the prescription bottle in front of you because somebody done came up to my house, girl. I’m on one of my fertility medications as we speak because I am currently in my process to get what’s what is called an ERA, and I won’t go into the details, but people can Google it. Essentially. It is a pre biopsy procedure that immediately predates my embryo transfer. So it’s happening, y’all. So y’all can go ahead and make that she she don’t handle kids argument while you can over the next couple of months here because the baby’s coming, and what I also know Cortney is the baby is coming in a way that I am excited about. I actually think this particular motherhood journey is a really good fit for me and my temperament, my resources, my environment, my support system, and my personality. Quite frankly, I probably wouldn’t be the best co-parent. That’s just a whole nother conversation for another day child. Anyway, we’ll table that a lot and also know that this is not a journey most Black women want to go on. I know, and I know that because I talk to them and most Black women are like sis I commend you. I think it’s brave. I think it’s powerful. I think your transparency about it is really beautiful, and you could never be me. Never be me, and these are the Black women with the resources to do it. It’s not a resource thing. They don’t desire to parent solo. They don’t desire to be even in the waiting room of the fertility clinic by themselves. They don’t desire to be going through the lamaze class with a female friend versus their lover or their partner. They don’t even really desire to bring a life into this world Cortney if it is not the origin story of a love story. That’s that’s what most Black women want out of motherhood. So what am I going to look like sitting here being like, Oh, y’all don’t worry about your dwindling fertility or any of the other consequences that do come along with the sage advice of go get it, go get it, go get it, and then after you’ve gone to get it, have these considerations, because this is not a scenario that most Black women would desire. Cry no river for me. I’m excited about my baby and I’m excited to be a mom in this particular format. I don’t. This is where, again, I think I’m an outlier. I don’t think this journey is for most of us.
Cortney Wills [00:49:59] Congratulations, I mean couldn’t hold my smile, I’m so excited for you.
Eboni K. Williams [00:50:02] Thank you. I’m very excited, and I’m also scared to death. Right? But here we go.
Cortney Wills [00:50:08] And thank you for your candor in in you know, in that regard that it’s a very private journey that is a very, I’m sure, emotional journey, and I think that you being this transparent, again, you know, these are important conversations to have and you’re not coming at it like you had it figured out or you’ve got all of the answers, and also just like marriage, just like motherhood, just like, you know, pursuing a professional career, we can champion that and we can support that and be grateful for having the parts of that. But we have and still be real about what’s hard about and yes, warn others about what’s hard about it and what we wish in it, and I think that sometimes we’ve got to get through that. You know, I think that this conversation has really shed a light on where you were coming from. I think that it has also expanded into, you know, to include thoughts that you’ve had since the initial conversation, and I think that it’s just really peals a layer back on you and your life that I hope people can take into consideration and realize, you know. These conversations are, they’re going to be hard, but it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be had, and I just commend you for having the wherewithal to continue to have them despite, you know, some of the some of the bumps that come along.
Eboni K. Williams [00:51:32] Now, the hard parts and I’ll just say and final thoughts that. Nothing about my original take or anything we’ve said in this conversation today is designed to be a scare tactic. This is not about amplifying a scarcity mindset, which I don’t believe in. It’s really about what you mentioned, Cortney, which is I wish someone would have told me, right? That is my intention for this entire dialog, not because I wish someone would have told me, and now I’m forcing this as the exclusive mantra for life of all Black women and girls. It’s simply, I wish I would have known this part of it earlier. I might or might not even have made different decisions. But I am a believer in making the most informed decision and choice that is humanly possible based on access to all information available, and that is literally my why for this whole dialog.
Cortney Wills [00:52:31] I’m really glad you said that, because for those of you that don’t like to watch entire clips or reading articles, she did not say that had she known this, she would have gotten married straight out of college. She simply said she wished she would have had all of the possible information, which I think goes for a lot. So again, Eboni, I thank you so much for your candor today. You know, and to your contribution, as always, this is a really fun welcome back for me, and I’m really loving watching you on TV everyday.
Eboni K. Williams [00:52:59] Excellent. Thank you, Cortney. Congratulations again.
Cortney Wills [00:53:05] Thank you for listening to Acting Up. If you liked what you heard, please give us a five star review and subscribe to this show wherever you listen to your podcasts. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcasts at theGrio dot com. Follow us on Instagram at Acting Update Pod Acting Up is brought to you by theGrio and Executive produced by Cortney Wills.
