Ralph Richard Banks - Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone
Here you can read online Ralph Richard Banks - Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2011, publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone
- Author:
- Publisher:Penguin Publishing Group
- Genre:
- Year:2011
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
A distinguished Stanford law professor examines the steep decline in marriage rates among the African American middle class, and offers a paradoxical-nearly incendiary-solution.
Black women are three times as likely as white women to never marry.
That sobering statistic reflects a broader reality: African Americans are the most unmarried people in our nation, and contrary to public perception the racial gap in marriage is not confined to women or the poor. Black men, particularly the most successful and affluent, are less likely to marry than their white counterparts. College educated black women are twice as likely as their white peers never to marry.
Is Marriage for White People? is the first book to illuminate the many facets of the African American marriage decline and its implications for American society. The book explains the social and economic forces that have undermined marriage for African Americans and that shape everyones lives. It distills the best available research to trace the black marriage declines far reaching consequences, including the disproportionate likelihood of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, single parenthood, same sex relationships, polygamous relationships, and celibacy among black women.
This book centers on the experiences not of men or of the poor but of those black women who have surged ahead, even as black men have fallen behind. Theirs is a story that has not been told. Empirical evidence documents its social significance, but its meaning emerges through stories drawn from the lives of women across the nation. Is Marriage for White People? frames the stark predicament that millions of black women now face: marry down or marry out. At the core of the inquiry is a paradox substantiated by evidence and experience alike: If more black women married white men, then more black men and women would marry each other.
This book not only sits at the intersection of two large and well- established markets-race and marriage-it responds to yearnings that are widespread and deep in American society. The African American marriage decline is a secret in plain view about which people want to know more, intertwining as it does two of the most vexing issues in contemporary society. The fact that the most prominent family in our nation is now an African American couple only intensifies the interest, and the market. A book that entertains as it informs, Is Marriage for White People? will be the definitive guide to one of the most monumental social developments of the past half century.
Black women are three times as likely as white women to never marry.
That sobering statistic reflects a broader reality: African Americans are the most unmarried people in our nation, and contrary to public perception the racial gap in marriage is not confined to women or the poor. Black men, particularly the most successful and affluent, are less likely to marry than their white counterparts. College educated black women are twice as likely as their white peers never to marry.
Is Marriage for White People? is the first book to illuminate the many facets of the African American marriage decline and its implications for American society. The book explains the social and economic forces that have undermined marriage for African Americans and that shape everyones lives. It distills the best available research to trace the black marriage declines far reaching consequences, including the disproportionate likelihood of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, single parenthood, same sex relationships, polygamous relationships, and celibacy among black women.
This book centers on the experiences not of men or of the poor but of those black women who have surged ahead, even as black men have fallen behind. Theirs is a story that has not been told. Empirical evidence documents its social significance, but its meaning emerges through stories drawn from the lives of women across the nation. Is Marriage for White People? frames the stark predicament that millions of black women now face: marry down or marry out. At the core of the inquiry is a paradox substantiated by evidence and experience alike: If more black women married white men, then more black men and women would marry each other.
This book not only sits at the intersection of two large and well- established markets-race and marriage-it responds to yearnings that are widespread and deep in American society. The African American marriage decline is a secret in plain view about which people want to know more, intertwining as it does two of the most vexing issues in contemporary society. The fact that the most prominent family in our nation is now an African American couple only intensifies the interest, and the market. A book that entertains as it informs, Is Marriage for White People? will be the definitive guide to one of the most monumental social developments of the past half century.
Ralph Richard Banks: author's other books
Who wrote Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Katrina Bell McDonald
Hillary Potter
Dianne M. Stewart
Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Table of Contents
For my brilliant and beautiful wife, Jennifer Lynn Eberhardt
Reexamine everything. Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing or shout or testify or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came.
James Baldwin, The Price of the Ticket
INTRODUCTION
On a bitter cold day in January 2009, throngs formed on the National Mall in the predawn darkness, and as the skies lightened, the crowd swelled to a million strong. Children atop fathers shoulders; old ladies in wheelchairs thankful to have lived to see this day; college students barely old enough to vote; white-collar professionals with rooms at four-star hotels; and blue-collar workers who had journeyed three days by busthey came from all parts of the nation and all walks of life to join in the making of history.
My family had made the journey as well. Like most people, we had never attended a presidential inauguration. And I was hesitant to go to this oneconcerned about the cost, the crowds, our children missing schoolbut my wife, a woman who by her own admission never cared much for politics, insisted. So from California to D.C., with three young boys in tow, we went.
After the swearing in, we joined thousands of others lining the route for the inaugural parade. No sooner had the presidential limousine appeared, it seemed, than it stopped and its door opened. Into the frigid air emerged our new president and first lady. They held hands and smiled as they walked, waving to the crowd, whispering into each others ears, sharing a laugh. They seemed to be having fun. Together.
For all the African Americans who have occupied the spotlightfrom Oprah Winfrey to Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan to Tiger Woods, Condoleezza Rice to Colin Powellvirtually none have done so as a couple, much less been as prominent as the president and first lady. Their residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue not only places them at the center of our political life, it embeds them in our cultural imagination. Theyre the iconic family with whom we are all called to feel kinship: two accomplished parents, adorable children, a doting grandmother, andsince moving into the most fabled home in the landa dog. Theyre like the Huxtablesonly real, and better.
But the captivating image of Barack and Michelle also accentuates a sobering reality. As African Americans, they are extraordinary in the most ordinary way: They are a married couple raising their children together.
Over the past half century, African Americans have become the most unmarried people in our nation. By far. We are the least likely to marry and the most likely to divorce; we maintain fewer committed and enduring relationships than any other group. Not since slavery have black men and women been as unpartnered as we are now.
Although the African American marriage decline is especially pronounced among the poor, it is apparent as well among the affluent: doctors, lawyers, corporate professionals. Black women of all socioeconomic classes remain single in part because the ranks of black men have been decimated by incarceration, educational failure, and economic disadvantage. In recent years, two black women have graduated college for every one black man. Two to one. Every year. As a result, college-educated black women are more likely than college-educated women of other races to remain unmarried or to wed a less-educated man who earns less than they do. More than half of married black women who have graduated from college have a less-educated husband who did not. Yet despite the shortage of black male peers, black women do not marry men of other races. Black women marry across class lines, but not race lines. They marry down but not out. Thus, they lead the most racially segregated intimate lives of any Americans.
Why? Why are black women the least likely to marry out? What are the consequences of the unprecedented rates at which they marry down or remain unmarried? These are the questions at the heart of my inquiry. I find the answers in two very different types of evidence. For more than a year, I traveled the country interviewing scores of professional black women at length about their relationships with men. Their stories, told with courage and candor, are certain to resonate deeply with some readers and to surprise or even shock others. Before I conducted my first interview, I devoted several years to the study of the black marriage decline. I began, as law professors typically do, with judicial decisions and legislative enactments but soon found myself immersed in history, social science, and government data about the United States population.
Throughout this book I repeatedly invoke the idea of the relationship market. Although love cannot be bought or sold, the market metaphor highlights two developments that account for the marriage decline. One is that the rules of the market have changed, so that people marry for different reasons and with different expectations than in earlier eras. The other development is equally unprecedented: that women have moved ahead economically and educationally as men have begun to fall behind.
Researching this book has been illuminatingindeed, liberating. But writing it has been a struggle. Although the intersection of race and family has been one of my intellectual preoccupations since my undergraduate days more than twenty years ago, and a professional focus since I joined the Stanford Law School faculty more than a decade ago, finding my voice in these pages has not been easy. This book confronts some uncomfortable truths about relationships between black men and women.
This book begins with African Americans, but it does not end with them. The story I tell of African Americans and marriage may seem exceptionaland in some ways it isbut it is also representative, distinct more in degree than in kind. Americans of all races are substantially less likely to be married now than their predecessors were a few generations ago. And throughout society, many men are struggling economically, victims of technological change and an increasingly global market for labor. As a majority of our nations college graduates, women are becoming better positioned than men to take advantage of the economic opportunities of the coming decades. And todays high-achieving women are already more likely than ever to marry men who are either lower earning or less educated than they are.
As particular as the black experience may seem, it implicates readers of all races. The terrain of marriage and intimacy is shifting, for everyone, as never before. Black people are at the center of a social transformation whose reverberations encompass us all.
CHAPTER 1
The Marriage Decline
Audrey Jones is thirty-nine years old. A native of southeast Washington, D.C., she is the child of parents who have been married for nearly half a century. After graduating from high school, she attended Spelman College in Atlanta, then business school in New York. During her studies, she traveled the world and became multilingual. When she returned to D.C., she took a job with a multinational consulting company, where she found business solutions for one client after another. The company has rewarded her with increased responsibilities and compensation, and she now earns more than her father and mother ever did, combined. More important, though, she enjoys her work; it is challenging and fulfilling. She cherishes the life that she has made for herself:her family, her friends, her church community.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone»
Look at similar books to Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Katrina Bell McDonald
Hillary Potter
Dianne M. Stewart
Reviews about «Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone»
Discussion, reviews of the book Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.