In a piece for Marie Claire, The Root contributing editor Helena Andrews says she's declaring war on the alleged epidemic of singledom among African-American women. And her first weapon is her own relationship story.
So, according to the data — and the media that are obsessed with it — I'm screwed. As a 31-year-old college-educated black woman who's never been married, everywhere I turn, the odds of finding a good man are against me. That is, of course, until I turn over every morning to the man sleeping next to me. He is (gasp) black. He is (quelle surprise!) college-educated. He isn't a felon, a deadbeat, a father of illegitimate children, or a cheat — all the categories women like me are forced to choose from, according to the seemingly never-ending stories about the "crisis" of black marriage. Attention, media! There is no crisis in my bedroom …
How could my experience and that of so many other black women be so different from the official statistics? I wanted to find out — so I started digging. Because so many news reports repeat the 70 percent figure without citing a source, I went straight to the mother lode of demographic data: the U.S. Census.
Read Helena Andrews' entire piece at Marie Claire.
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Helena Andrews is a contributing editor at The Root and author of Bitch Is the New Black, a memoir in essays. Follow her on Twitter.