My Apology to Black Women

By Djuan Coleon

I was listening to the radio and they were discussing the topic “Can Mr. Right Be White?” This topic arose to address the disparity between eligible Black women and Black men. A lot of Black women have grown tired of being alone or celibate and now were considering dating outside of the race to find love and companionship. I thought, Oh, here we go; more propaganda to tell Black people and Black women how messed up they are. Y’all know how the media do, so I checked the statistics out:

• In 1963 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, more than 70 percent of all Black families were headed by married couples. In 2002, that number was 48 percent.
• 42% Black women have never married. 45% of Black men have never married.
• The percentage of Black women who are married declined from 62 percent to 30 percent between 1950 and 2005.
• Studies reports that by the age of 30, 81 percent of White women and 77 percent of Hispanics and Asians will marry, but that only 52 percent of Black women will marry by that age.
• Black women are also the least likely to re-marry following divorce. Only 32 percent of Black women will get married again within five years of divorce; that figure is 58 percent for White women and 44 percent for Hispanic women.

- (statistics from Ebony, Nov, 2003 by Joy Bennett Kinnon)

Then you have to consider that 1 in 10 Black men will marry white women. Couple that with the prison industrial complex where brothers are going to jail as fast as they can build them. Multiply that with unemployment, which is higher now than it was during the Civil Rights era. The problem IS NOT BLACK WOMEN. Black women want to get married and raise a family. I look at the situation and feel like crap. Here we are stunting like we the “man,” but we can’t cover our women and even worse, they now have to go elsewhere to look for love. What a slap in the face, our greatest treasure, our prize, our Queens have no Kings willing to be Kings and be responsible for the race. We have to be responsible and accountable enough to realize that pontificating eloquent orations on Tavis Smiley’s State of Black America does not solve the major issue affecting Black America.