Single Women In America

Late last night I was perusing my cable line-up, first very happy to discover that I had TV One finally, which meant that I could watch all the episodes of Martin that I wanted to watch. A little later, I noticed that Oprah was on and there was an ‘America Talks to Oprah’ episode or something like that. You know what’s funny is that I came in on the middle of a discussion on how there are now more single women in the country than married women, and what followed was an interesting discussion on the merits of being married versus being single. Allow me to say before I go on that I’m a proponent of neither, or I suppose both. Everyone has to do what’s right for them, and I definitely think that not everyone should be married. I suppose the thing that irked me about what some of the women in the audience had to say about it all. One woman thought that marriage should not be looked at as some sort of burden and that married people are a very important part of keeping a community together. In some ways I agree with that, but for the most part nobody should be married for marriage’s sake. If you are in love, are a responsible individual, want to share your life with someone, I say go for it. But if it’s like ‘hey, okay, I finished college, have a good job, what’s next? Oh time to get married’ I’d say you could possibly be heading for trouble.

The discussion devolved into one of my all-time favorite subjects, which is that of black women and our marriage (or lack thereof) rate. Where the percentage of single American women overall is 51%, according to Oprah statistics the percentage of African-American single women was something like 70%. Whuh? Man! One black woman in the audience went on to address that statistic by letting everyone know that she dates all types of men, which for me didn’t explain the statistic. So anyhow, Oprah engages her for a moment before explaining how the statistic made sense to her because so many black men are unavailable, which she could see happening by the number of her black girlfriends who are still single. I thought, ‘oh, here we go…’

In the next split second another black woman got up to speak her mind, and let folks know that she was married to a good black man and that they are out there, then went on to introduce her single available brother seated next to her in the studio audience. I was relieved that that sister was there, because I felt like the issue wasn’t really being addressed fairly. For one, African Americans happen to be a diverse group of people and I think there are many reasons and subsets of reasons why black women are single in such higher proportions than the national average. I wish that for once the generalizations on the subject would cease though, and I wish too that black people that feel like a non-black mate or date is the answer to all of their problems would really think about what they are assuming. The bottom line is that if you have nothing to offer, than nothing is what you will get. That goes for black, white, purple, yellow, or anyone of plaid or polka-dot race. Most people gravitate toward that which they are most comfortable and accustomed to, and that’s one of the reasons why people tend to marry people that look like them and/or think like them. I do believe the ‘shortage’ of black men to marry is all in the minds of those who haven’t taken the time to look inward at their own situations. I think it’s all a bunch of hype that we need to get past and it just keeps us isolated from each other.

Chandra Adams
Author
Shades of Retribution
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