Byron puts me on to an interesting article in The Economist about the plight of black women. The difficulty they face is that there is tremendous competition among black women for the shrinking pool of marriageable black men which leads to a number of very regrettable social consequences:
Imagine that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called "The Logic of Life". With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she "steals" a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.
Real life is more complicated, of course, but this simple model illustrates an important truth. In the marriage market, numbers matter. And among African-Americans, the disparity is much worse than in Mr Harford's imaginary example. Between the ages of 20 and 29, one black man in nine is behind bars. For black women of the same age, the figure is about one in 150. For obvious reasons, convicts are excluded from the dating pool. And many women also steer clear of ex-cons, which makes a big difference when one young black man in three can expect to be locked up at some point.
The article concludes that this disparity is largely responsible for the explosion of unwed motherhood in the black community and matriarchal families:
Black women tend to stay in school longer than black men. Looking only at the non-incarcerated population, black women are 40% more likely to go to college. They are also more likely than white women to seek work. One reason why so many black women strive so hard is because they do not expect to split the household bills with a male provider. And the educational disparity creates its own tensions. If you are a college-educated black woman with a good job and you wish to marry a black man who is your socioeconomic equal, the odds are not good.
"I thought I was a catch," sighs an attractive black female doctor at a hospital in Washington, DC. Black men with good jobs know they are "a hot commodity", she observes. When there are six women chasing one man, "It's like, what are you going to do extra, to get his attention?" Some women offer sex on the first date, she says, which makes life harder for those who prefer to combine romance with commitment.
The Economist opines that the solution is to stop incarcerating black men for non-violent crimes, but I don't see how that helps. It makes more men available, perhaps, but it does nothing to improve the quality of the marriage pool. Educated black women looking for a quality male are not going to be helped by increasing the number of unincarcerated criminals in the pool.
Perhaps it will soon get to the point where such women get tired of the social inhibitions in the black community against dating white men and start competing with white women for white males. If that happens there could be serious sociological consequences for African-American society as the most "desirable" black women move out of that community to marry white men. Those left, both male and female, will be poorer, less educated and more dysfunctional, but how else can this problem be solved?
RLC
