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The black women left behind find that potential partners of the same race are scarce,...The imbalance has also forced women to rely on themselves — often alone.

The black women left behind find that potential partners of the same race are scarce,...The imbalance has also forced women to rely on themselves — often alone... There is a pretty obvious solution to this problem which has been legal since 1967. It works well and the babies come out really cute. Weird how the NYT glosses that over...

Someone1234 12y ago
Interracial marriage only works as a "solution" if there were an inverse imbalance in other racial communities to supply the men needed to fulfil the shortfall. It also completely ignores the fact that people in the black communities may not wish to date people from other races. it isn't a breading farm after all, people's choices matter a lot. If black woman want to date a black man, that is completely normal/understandable/a valid choice.
- infruset 12y ago
  You are starting from the assumption that it is normal that people date inside of their "race". This is an assumption that is very often made by Hollywood movies and which I find offensive, all the more because it is self-fulfilling: if you only see people of the same skin color dating one another, you're probably less likely to imagine yourself outside of the norm you perceive.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Your offense is of no concern to me. The stats back up that people prefer to date within their own race when they can. Ultimately I am just arguing that people's choice is important to the whole topic, if black women would prefer to date black men, pointing out that they could date white or asian men won't help the situation.
    - tomjen3 12y ago
      Actually you are wrong in this specific case. Okcupid has the data (http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-...) which shows that black women are more likely to reply to men now of her own race (and white men are almost at the top).
      - Someone1234 12y ago
        Let me remind you what I said verbatim: > The stats back up that people prefer to date within their own race when they can. That's exactly what your data shows. If you look across all races, there is a clear bias towards people dating their own race. You can find exceptions, but those are within one or two data points, and the trend overall remains true. > which shows that black women are more likely to reply to men now of her own race (and white men are almost at the top). By just 2 points. And black men prefer black women. You did find an exception, but keep looking and the trend maintains. Also, quick reminder that my original post focused on personal choice being important. Nobody suggesting forcing people to date a certain race, just that personal choice might get in the way of the "solution" to the problem the OP suggested (inter-racial marriage).
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - yesiamyourdad 12y ago
        Problems with that paper. If OKCupid addressed these in their data set, the didn't say. 1. OKCupid is a worldwide site but they don't say whether they're correcting for that by limiting to the USA 2. They don't say anything about correcting for regional differences. 3. They say nothing about the message rates. What percentage of a black woman's incoming mail is from white men? If it's some small percentage, can one discount the novelty effect? 4. They don't correct for income. Since in the US, black men have the lowest income of any group, it's much more likely that a given the choice between a black man and a white man, the white man will have the higher income. 5. Likewise for education level of the sender. 6. Likewise for message content. Is it possible that black men send messages with different content than white men? 7. Finally, this only considers message rates, as if the goal of a dating site is only to get other people to return your messages. This isn't any kind of a scientific study. Please don't act as though OKCupid has proven anything significant.
  - baddox 12y ago
    > You are starting from the assumption that it is normal that people date inside of their "race". I think that claim is sufficiently substantiated that it ought not be called an "assumption."
    - infruset 12y ago
      Well, I would like to oppose two things to this: - this may be exceedingly US centered, as in my country it is not quite as obvious. In fact, the word "race" does not even exist in my language (at least in the American meaning, the equivalent is only used for animals). - I think questioning assumptions allows one to better discern what is inherited prejudice and what is a universal fact. As you may guess, I think this is an instance of the former and certainly not a permanent/immutable state of things. Furthermore, I think when one claims something is "substantiated", one should come with strong evidence.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > You are starting from the assumption that it is normal that people date inside of their "race". This assumption is very much true in modern American society, though somewhat less so than previously.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    There's quite a bit of research to back up his assumption. Every article I've read on the subject bemoans the situation of black women and at the same time points out they have no interest (statistically, anyway) in men of other races.
- raldi 12y ago
  > Interracial marriage only works as a "solution" if there were an inverse imbalance in other racial communities to supply the men needed to fulfil the shortfall. There is: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/03/14/Interracial-marriage-gender-gap-grows/86571047663924/ http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/03/14/Interracial-marriage-... "Asian women had white husbands 3.08 times more often than Asian men had white wives. [...] Oddly enough, the 1990 ratios for black-white and white-Asian marriages were mirror images of each other."
  - cowardlydragon 12y ago
    Asian males and black females are the losers?
    - analyst74 12y ago
      There is an obvious solution to that.
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  > It also completely ignores the fact that people in the black communities may not wish to date people from other races. I think it's more the other way around. My observation, and I believe this is backed up by research, is that black women are more willing to date outside their race than other races are willing to date black women. But yeah, people generally date within their race.
  - hn_ 12y ago
    I got curious and did a real quick google scholar search. The opposite is true. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.01135.x https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.01135.x >The theory of African American alienation is upheld, as African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races and are especially less willing to date European Americans.
    - brandonmenc 12y ago
      Not being able to read the study, it's not clear that it refutes my statement: > black women are more willing to date outside their race than other races are willing to date black women because both that statement and, "African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races," could be true simultaneously.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  You don't need an inverse imbalance (although I'm told one exists). If black women all dated outside their race, then an imbalance of 20% within the black community (assuming blacks make up 10% of the nation) and 0% elsewhere would become a 2% imbalance for Americans as a whole. I'm well aware people have choices and preferences - I personally prefer to date black and Indian women (and I even have subpreferences). But I'd probably go months without getting laid if I made black/Indian/34C or larger a hard requirement, and I don't think the NYT would portray me as a victim of anything other than my own choices.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  Not really. Even if there weren't an imbalance of men it would still smooth things out. Given that black people are about 13% of the total population the difference should largely disappear. And of course it is a valid choice for them to date whomever they want, but if they would only accept doctors with perfect tens and perfect abs then we would just shake our heads and ignore them. So why aren't we doing so now? Heck there are a lot of single men in Silicon Valley who would be decent dating material - so why care so much about the color of that persons skin?
hn_ 12y ago
They weren't glossing over it. The majority of people (black and otherwise) look for romantic partners that are much like themselves. That means same race, same ethnicity, same socioeconomic status, same religion, same sort of background (upbringing, culture, values, etc.). There are conscious and subconscious and cultural reasons why it may be desirable for people to do this and it is pretty socially acceptable to only date within your own race (and religion... etc.). Even just mere proximity leads to same race relationships. The article was specifically speaking about black women who are looking in the dating pool for a black partner (which is probably the majority of black woman) not to advocate black women look elsewhere for partners.
- Moshe_Silnorin 12y ago
  >The majority of people (black and otherwise) look for romantic partners that are much like themselves. This doesn't seem to be the case in Canada. My sister is married to an Indian fellow. My girlfriend was born in Xiamen. During high school a huge percentage of relationships were mixed race. Canada is a melting pot and it seems to work well.
  - whatsgood22 12y ago
    Your one anecdotal piece of evidence doesn't make it true, all aggregate data seems to indicate that people end up with people similar to themselves
  - positivejam 12y ago
    > My sister One anecdote > My girlfriend Another anecdote > During high school a huge percentage Now we're talking percentages, which is better. But you'd still need something better than your recollections (and probably something more specific than "huge"). Obviously, there are plenty of mixed-race relationships, and plenty of them are happy. But there is research that seems to indicate that there is something to what the parent comment was suggesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Similarity_attraction_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Simila...
  - anoonmoose 12y ago
dragonwriter 12y ago
> There is a pretty obvious solution to this problem which has been legal since 1967. The fact that it isn't illegal doesn't mean that there aren't strong cultural forces working against it on both sides in many cases. Centuries of slavery, followed by a century of overt de jure discrimination and segregation, followed by decades with a common overt racism and discrimination in both official and unofficial contexts even with notional legal equality were not produced by a white society which sees blacks as real equals, and have not produced a black society which sees whites as genuine partners. There are exceptional segments of both black and white society, and norms against interracial marriage are certainly weaker now than they were when it first became legal, but they are still a real thing that is deeply ingrained in who very many people are. So, its not a simple solution with real people, even if it is in abstract theory.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  ...have not produced a black society which sees whites as genuine partners. This is a problem which any individual woman can solve for herself by being more tolerant. This really is a simple solution that works with real people. I do it almost exclusively, albeit for semi-superficial reasons [1]. The closest I've ever had to a serious relationship with a person of my own race was a middle eastern woman who self-identified as "white". The world hasn't ended and no one really cares who I date. [1] I prefer the appearance of black and Indian women to other races. I also find most western women completely un-dateable and excluding western women gives me a mainly non-white dating pool.
runako 12y ago
OKCupid has explored the topic of interracial dating repeatedly using their dataset. The most(?) recent results are here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/ Relevant summary: Black women are subjected to substantial penalties in the dating market by men of other ethnicities. In fact, black women are the recipients of the highest inter-racial penalties of any racial pair measured by OkCupid. (Although I generally agree with your point.)
- canvia 12y ago
  Perhaps there are other correlating factors such as obesity that tie into these disparities: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db131.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db131.htm
  - runako 12y ago
    It's almost not worth addressing, but read your source carefully and note that the disparity isn't enormous. Most Americans skew toward obese.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      It's absolutely worth addressing. But the answer is that OK Cupid's data controlled for attractiveness.
- itsybitsy 12y ago
  The OKCupid research doesn't account for socioeconomic backgrounds, which is ridiculous. Marriages are essentially financial transactions with significant economic considerations. Most people date within their socioeconomic background. This is much likely a greater bias than racial bias. Blacks are underrepresented in higher economic classes which are dominated by whites - not hard to see why dating between both races would be affected as a result. It's also likely the case that the OkCupid research samples heavily from the US population. Interracial dating in the US is encumbered by massive historical baggage from the slavery era. For instance, black women in the US are the only group of women that I'm aware of that are more inclined to "marry down" than to "marry out".
anigbrowl 12y ago
It works well and the babies come out really cute. All right, let's run this scenario forward in time. You meet a nice black lady, you fall in love, get married, and have a son. Now, while I hope things will be better in future, chances are that many structural racial disparities will still exist 10, 15, 20 years from now, though hopefully to a lesser degree. So your hypothetical son comes to you in the year 2030 and says 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.' What are you going to say? Tell him that it's a solved problem as far as you are concerned? Or tell him to just ignore the issue (even though it might be quite a pressing problem for him)? It's hard to escape the impression that you haven't really thought through the ramifications of this particular situation. Likewise, I suspect the reason that black women aren't just shrugging their shoulders and electing to marry outside their own ethnicity is at least partly because they're painfully aware that their offspring are likely to run into the same sort of problems they've faced themselves.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I think you've lost the thread. The problem I described as solved was "I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications". And yes, if that was my son's problem, I'd tell him to either lift and be awesome or accept being forever alone. As for requiring some specific experience to be a good parent, I find the idea a bit ridiculous. There are a variety of problems I haven't experienced and likely can't solve for my son. Experiencing racism from the larger society is, while not something I can solve, something I have experienced. So what?
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Hmmm. Original article talks about the difficulty of black women finding partners of their own race for family formation. You observe that a solution to this has been legal since 1967 (obviously referring to Loving v. Virginia) and that the potentially resulting babies are cute. I suggest that this is not such a simple issue, because the babies in question would still have to deal with structural racism later in life. Now you switch to saying that the problem was black women saying "I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications". So finding a life partner is now just a matter of getting a date, and preferring someone of your own race is now an 'extremely specific qualification'...and you think I've lost the thread? And yes, if that was my son's problem, I'd tell him to either lift and be awesome or accept being forever alone. The hypothetical problem I presented was 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.' as opposed to 'I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications.' While the latter problem could be an instance of the former, they're far from being identical. You'll forgive me if I don't go the effort of providing Venn diagrams to support this claim. As for requiring some specific experience to be a good parent, I find the idea a bit ridiculous. That's not what I'm suggesting, and is wholly an invention on your part. What I said was that you don't seem to have through through the sort of problems that your offspring would be likely to encounter; my thesis is that this lack of apparent concern would be a major disincentive to marriage for a lot of black women insofar as they're looking beyond their short-term personal desire and thinking about things like family formation...as discussed in the original article.

Someone1234 12y ago

Interracial marriage only works as a "solution" if there were an inverse imbalance in other racial communities to supply the men needed to fulfil the shortfall. It also completely ignores the fact that people in the black communities may not wish to date people from other races. it isn't a breading farm after all, people's choices matter a lot. If black woman want to date a black man, that is completely normal/understandable/a valid choice.

infruset 12y ago
You are starting from the assumption that it is normal that people date inside of their "race". This is an assumption that is very often made by Hollywood movies and which I find offensive, all the more because it is self-fulfilling: if you only see people of the same skin color dating one another, you're probably less likely to imagine yourself outside of the norm you perceive.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Your offense is of no concern to me. The stats back up that people prefer to date within their own race when they can. Ultimately I am just arguing that people's choice is important to the whole topic, if black women would prefer to date black men, pointing out that they could date white or asian men won't help the situation.
  - tomjen3 12y ago
    Actually you are wrong in this specific case. Okcupid has the data (http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-...) which shows that black women are more likely to reply to men now of her own race (and white men are almost at the top).
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      Let me remind you what I said verbatim: > The stats back up that people prefer to date within their own race when they can. That's exactly what your data shows. If you look across all races, there is a clear bias towards people dating their own race. You can find exceptions, but those are within one or two data points, and the trend overall remains true. > which shows that black women are more likely to reply to men now of her own race (and white men are almost at the top). By just 2 points. And black men prefer black women. You did find an exception, but keep looking and the trend maintains. Also, quick reminder that my original post focused on personal choice being important. Nobody suggesting forcing people to date a certain race, just that personal choice might get in the way of the "solution" to the problem the OP suggested (inter-racial marriage).
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - yesiamyourdad 12y ago
      Problems with that paper. If OKCupid addressed these in their data set, the didn't say. 1. OKCupid is a worldwide site but they don't say whether they're correcting for that by limiting to the USA 2. They don't say anything about correcting for regional differences. 3. They say nothing about the message rates. What percentage of a black woman's incoming mail is from white men? If it's some small percentage, can one discount the novelty effect? 4. They don't correct for income. Since in the US, black men have the lowest income of any group, it's much more likely that a given the choice between a black man and a white man, the white man will have the higher income. 5. Likewise for education level of the sender. 6. Likewise for message content. Is it possible that black men send messages with different content than white men? 7. Finally, this only considers message rates, as if the goal of a dating site is only to get other people to return your messages. This isn't any kind of a scientific study. Please don't act as though OKCupid has proven anything significant.
- baddox 12y ago
  > You are starting from the assumption that it is normal that people date inside of their "race". I think that claim is sufficiently substantiated that it ought not be called an "assumption."
  - infruset 12y ago
    Well, I would like to oppose two things to this: - this may be exceedingly US centered, as in my country it is not quite as obvious. In fact, the word "race" does not even exist in my language (at least in the American meaning, the equivalent is only used for animals). - I think questioning assumptions allows one to better discern what is inherited prejudice and what is a universal fact. As you may guess, I think this is an instance of the former and certainly not a permanent/immutable state of things. Furthermore, I think when one claims something is "substantiated", one should come with strong evidence.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > You are starting from the assumption that it is normal that people date inside of their "race". This assumption is very much true in modern American society, though somewhat less so than previously.
- tsotha 12y ago
  There's quite a bit of research to back up his assumption. Every article I've read on the subject bemoans the situation of black women and at the same time points out they have no interest (statistically, anyway) in men of other races.
raldi 12y ago
> Interracial marriage only works as a "solution" if there were an inverse imbalance in other racial communities to supply the men needed to fulfil the shortfall. There is: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/03/14/Interracial-marriage-gender-gap-grows/86571047663924/ http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/03/14/Interracial-marriage-... "Asian women had white husbands 3.08 times more often than Asian men had white wives. [...] Oddly enough, the 1990 ratios for black-white and white-Asian marriages were mirror images of each other."
- cowardlydragon 12y ago
  Asian males and black females are the losers?
  - analyst74 12y ago
    There is an obvious solution to that.
brandonmenc 12y ago
> It also completely ignores the fact that people in the black communities may not wish to date people from other races. I think it's more the other way around. My observation, and I believe this is backed up by research, is that black women are more willing to date outside their race than other races are willing to date black women. But yeah, people generally date within their race.
- hn_ 12y ago
  I got curious and did a real quick google scholar search. The opposite is true. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.01135.x https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.01135.x >The theory of African American alienation is upheld, as African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races and are especially less willing to date European Americans.
  - brandonmenc 12y ago
    Not being able to read the study, it's not clear that it refutes my statement: > black women are more willing to date outside their race than other races are willing to date black women because both that statement and, "African Americans are generally less willing to interracially date than other races," could be true simultaneously.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
You don't need an inverse imbalance (although I'm told one exists). If black women all dated outside their race, then an imbalance of 20% within the black community (assuming blacks make up 10% of the nation) and 0% elsewhere would become a 2% imbalance for Americans as a whole. I'm well aware people have choices and preferences - I personally prefer to date black and Indian women (and I even have subpreferences). But I'd probably go months without getting laid if I made black/Indian/34C or larger a hard requirement, and I don't think the NYT would portray me as a victim of anything other than my own choices.
tomjen3 12y ago
Not really. Even if there weren't an imbalance of men it would still smooth things out. Given that black people are about 13% of the total population the difference should largely disappear. And of course it is a valid choice for them to date whomever they want, but if they would only accept doctors with perfect tens and perfect abs then we would just shake our heads and ignore them. So why aren't we doing so now? Heck there are a lot of single men in Silicon Valley who would be decent dating material - so why care so much about the color of that persons skin?

hn_ 12y ago

They weren't glossing over it. The majority of people (black and otherwise) look for romantic partners that are much like themselves. That means same race, same ethnicity, same socioeconomic status, same religion, same sort of background (upbringing, culture, values, etc.). There are conscious and subconscious and cultural reasons why it may be desirable for people to do this and it is pretty socially acceptable to only date within your own race (and religion... etc.). Even just mere proximity leads to same race relationships. The article was specifically speaking about black women who are looking in the dating pool for a black partner (which is probably the majority of black woman) not to advocate black women look elsewhere for partners.

Moshe_Silnorin 12y ago
>The majority of people (black and otherwise) look for romantic partners that are much like themselves. This doesn't seem to be the case in Canada. My sister is married to an Indian fellow. My girlfriend was born in Xiamen. During high school a huge percentage of relationships were mixed race. Canada is a melting pot and it seems to work well.
- whatsgood22 12y ago
  Your one anecdotal piece of evidence doesn't make it true, all aggregate data seems to indicate that people end up with people similar to themselves
- positivejam 12y ago
  > My sister One anecdote > My girlfriend Another anecdote > During high school a huge percentage Now we're talking percentages, which is better. But you'd still need something better than your recollections (and probably something more specific than "huge"). Obviously, there are plenty of mixed-race relationships, and plenty of them are happy. But there is research that seems to indicate that there is something to what the parent comment was suggesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Similarity_attraction_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_attraction#Simila...
- anoonmoose 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

> There is a pretty obvious solution to this problem which has been legal since 1967. The fact that it isn't illegal doesn't mean that there aren't strong cultural forces working against it on both sides in many cases. Centuries of slavery, followed by a century of overt de jure discrimination and segregation, followed by decades with a common overt racism and discrimination in both official and unofficial contexts even with notional legal equality were not produced by a white society which sees blacks as real equals, and have not produced a black society which sees whites as genuine partners. There are exceptional segments of both black and white society, and norms against interracial marriage are certainly weaker now than they were when it first became legal, but they are still a real thing that is deeply ingrained in who very many people are. So, its not a simple solution with real people, even if it is in abstract theory.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
...have not produced a black society which sees whites as genuine partners. This is a problem which any individual woman can solve for herself by being more tolerant. This really is a simple solution that works with real people. I do it almost exclusively, albeit for semi-superficial reasons [1]. The closest I've ever had to a serious relationship with a person of my own race was a middle eastern woman who self-identified as "white". The world hasn't ended and no one really cares who I date. [1] I prefer the appearance of black and Indian women to other races. I also find most western women completely un-dateable and excluding western women gives me a mainly non-white dating pool.

runako 12y ago

OKCupid has explored the topic of interracial dating repeatedly using their dataset. The most(?) recent results are here: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/ http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/race-attraction-2009-2014/ Relevant summary: Black women are subjected to substantial penalties in the dating market by men of other ethnicities. In fact, black women are the recipients of the highest inter-racial penalties of any racial pair measured by OkCupid. (Although I generally agree with your point.)

canvia 12y ago
Perhaps there are other correlating factors such as obesity that tie into these disparities: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db131.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db131.htm
- runako 12y ago
  It's almost not worth addressing, but read your source carefully and note that the disparity isn't enormous. Most Americans skew toward obese.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    It's absolutely worth addressing. But the answer is that OK Cupid's data controlled for attractiveness.
itsybitsy 12y ago
The OKCupid research doesn't account for socioeconomic backgrounds, which is ridiculous. Marriages are essentially financial transactions with significant economic considerations. Most people date within their socioeconomic background. This is much likely a greater bias than racial bias. Blacks are underrepresented in higher economic classes which are dominated by whites - not hard to see why dating between both races would be affected as a result. It's also likely the case that the OkCupid research samples heavily from the US population. Interracial dating in the US is encumbered by massive historical baggage from the slavery era. For instance, black women in the US are the only group of women that I'm aware of that are more inclined to "marry down" than to "marry out".

anigbrowl 12y ago

It works well and the babies come out really cute. All right, let's run this scenario forward in time. You meet a nice black lady, you fall in love, get married, and have a son. Now, while I hope things will be better in future, chances are that many structural racial disparities will still exist 10, 15, 20 years from now, though hopefully to a lesser degree. So your hypothetical son comes to you in the year 2030 and says 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.' What are you going to say? Tell him that it's a solved problem as far as you are concerned? Or tell him to just ignore the issue (even though it might be quite a pressing problem for him)? It's hard to escape the impression that you haven't really thought through the ramifications of this particular situation. Likewise, I suspect the reason that black women aren't just shrugging their shoulders and electing to marry outside their own ethnicity is at least partly because they're painfully aware that their offspring are likely to run into the same sort of problems they've faced themselves.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
I think you've lost the thread. The problem I described as solved was "I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications". And yes, if that was my son's problem, I'd tell him to either lift and be awesome or accept being forever alone. As for requiring some specific experience to be a good parent, I find the idea a bit ridiculous. There are a variety of problems I haven't experienced and likely can't solve for my son. Experiencing racism from the larger society is, while not something I can solve, something I have experienced. So what?
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Hmmm. Original article talks about the difficulty of black women finding partners of their own race for family formation. You observe that a solution to this has been legal since 1967 (obviously referring to Loving v. Virginia) and that the potentially resulting babies are cute. I suggest that this is not such a simple issue, because the babies in question would still have to deal with structural racism later in life. Now you switch to saying that the problem was black women saying "I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications". So finding a life partner is now just a matter of getting a date, and preferring someone of your own race is now an 'extremely specific qualification'...and you think I've lost the thread? And yes, if that was my son's problem, I'd tell him to either lift and be awesome or accept being forever alone. The hypothetical problem I presented was 'Dad, quite a lot of people express hostility towards me on the basis that I'm black. Help me out.' as opposed to 'I can't get a date that matches my extremely specific qualifications.' While the latter problem could be an instance of the former, they're far from being identical. You'll forgive me if I don't go the effort of providing Venn diagrams to support this claim. As for requiring some specific experience to be a good parent, I find the idea a bit ridiculous. That's not what I'm suggesting, and is wholly an invention on your part. What I said was that you don't seem to have through through the sort of problems that your offspring would be likely to encounter; my thesis is that this lack of apparent concern would be a major disincentive to marriage for a lot of black women insofar as they're looking beyond their short-term personal desire and thinking about things like family formation...as discussed in the original article.