Topics: Life Matters - Full program podcast
When I moved to the US in my late teens, one of the first things I was indoctrinated into was the idea that there is a shortage of black men. I remember a group of us black girls sitting on my college roommate’s bed as she gravely recited the stats, “42% of black women never get married because a lot of black men are in jail, and the good ones are marrying white girls. Just look at our school!” My stomach turned. Black girls greatly outnumbered black boys at my conservative, suburban college, and a good 40% of them were dating interracially.
The panic stayed with me throughout my early adulthood. I felt melancholy when the black men around me took up non-black wives and girlfriends and smugness whenever a black man tried to make a pass at me without his non-black partner noticing. I held up black male celebrities who married black women as beacons. Hope that some of ‘them’ saw the value in ‘us.’
If you were to ask me today what I think about the increasing number of black men dating and marrying interracially, you would be met with indifference.