Why Statistics are Irrelevant When Discussing Black Relationships.

Posted by Keith Reed at 13 July, at 11 : 06 AM Print

Today we have a guest post from Keith Reed, this is an article he wrote for another website.  With the subject matter in this article being highly discussed in society today, his take is a good one that a lot of people are starting to share.  This issue and discussion are growing old, despite that fact you continue to see it pop up almost everywhere.

Before mainstream media does its next  “Why black women can’t get married” treatment,   everybody breathe. Essentially when pieces like this run, you get the typical, knee-jerk reactions: “Why are the media exacerbating the statistics?”

“I’m so tired of stories about black women unable to find a man.”

Those are fair criticisms. I spent a decade working for big newspapers, magazines and the like and will be the first to admit that stories involving black folks’ intra-racial conflicts are usually crafted with the nuance of a sledgehammer by reporters and editors with a collective black cultural IQ of a class of D students.

But clueless white journalists don’t make for the most  valid critique of the recent work on black romantic relationships. The true fallibility of the sistas-can’t-get-hitched narrative is that it invariably revolves around statistics presented without context, and those kinds of statistics — the ones without something to compare them to — always lack relevance.

Putting the numbers on black relationships and marriage rates on paper or on air without telling us where we stand compared with other races, for example, lacks any real meaning. All year we’ve heard about a study that said 42 percent of black women in their prime marrying years are single. The conclusion quickly drawn by reporters and pundits was that “successful” (a word usually defying definition; are you successful if you drive a Benz but are in debt and self-loathing?) black women have left black men in the dust educationally and economically and are doomed to life alone because of it. Media ran with it: ABC’s Nightline did several segments, the New York Times and other media gave the data prominent treatment.

But that easy conclusion fizzles when you give the underlying data context: the percentage of all US  women, regardless of race, who have never been married has been increasing for decades. The same is true for men of all races. Though many, including myself, still believe marriage has a very important place in society (if not our own personal lives), the numbers don’t lie in saying that the institution has been in decline across the board, not just among sisters. Besides, many black women are single by choice and many others are lesbian or bisexual and not necessarily looking for committed relationships with men. Still others date interracially, decimating the premise that all of the available and unmarried black women are starved by an undersupply of brothers.

Beyond that, not every black woman is “marriageable” by the same standards that researchers and pundits use to exclude black men from the available pool. The 42 percent figure likely doesn’t subtract black women who fall into categories that would make anyone less “marriageable” by traditional definitions. The rate of incarceration among black women in the US is growing faster than that of black men, if only because there are but so many black men you can toss in jail. Black women have the highest rates of new HIV infections in the US. And despite the hoopla over black women surging financially while black men languish, a study I blogged about earlier this year showed that black women of prime marrying age lag black men, white men and women and Asian men and women in terms of net worth.

If you follow the logic that says looking for a hetero, single black man to marry will yield a bunch of underachieving, noncommittal fools who might be on the ‘down low’, you might also believe that a search for single, available sistas will yield a crew of HIV candidates who are likely broke and might be involved in criminal activity.

Which is exactly why neither paradigm is a good one and why trying to examine the complexities of relationships in a community as diverse and nuanced as ours by looking at statistics alone is a fail. It is impossible for empirical data, especially presented and regurgitated without analysis, context, nuance, cultural understanding and compassion, to lend a real understanding of a subject so layered.  And that, perhaps, is as it should be. After all, relationships and marriages happen between two people, not one woman and all of the available men in her city. If it’s one you’re seeking, the other 99.9 percent really don’t matter.

-Keith Reed

Keith Reed (known on the internets as @k_dot_re) has written for The Boston Globe, Essence, Ebony, Black Enterprise, TheRoot.com and blogs at keithreedsmoneycorner.com. He’s been an on-air contributor to PBS, National Public Radio and MSNBC. He is editor of Catalyst Ohio magazine, which focuses on education policy, is on the board of the National Association of Black Journalists, is developing a radio show and writing a book examining the statistics about black relationships. Argue with him on twitter at www.twitter.com/k_dot_re.

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