continued........
Marry for love'
Like Banks, Moore says, "I would tell my sister to marry for love," irrespective of race. "If that person makes you happy, you should pursue that relationship."
But the book's assumptions have come under attack by Howard University professor Ivory A. Toldson and Morehouse College professor Bryant Marks. They say they've looked at the same data -- from the census and American Community Surveys -- through a different lens, and found it less gloomy.
If the analysis is limited to blacks over age 35, the number of single women drops, they say. And in major cities such as Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, women with doctorates are more than twice as likely to be married as those with a high school degree. Finally, although black women have more degrees, that doesn't translate into high incomes: In fact, more black men than black women earn more than $75,000 a year.
"Entrepreneurial elements of America have found a variety of creative ways to benefit financially from black females' anxieties at the expense of black male egos," Toldson told the African-American online magazine the Root in a reference to Banks. "If you can show somebody that there is a really devastating problem, they'll pay more attention to you.
"He's not going to show you any evidence to the contrary because he wants his book to be found," she said.
Journalist and Middlebury College graduate Dori J. Maynard, president and CEO of the Oakland-based Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, co-founded by her father, criticizes "a media-driven narrative -- desperate black women seeking husbands -- that flies in the face of a lot of people's realities." The widow of African-American architect Charles Grant Lewis, Maynard says, "This conversation would be a lot more helpful if we also included the experience of the 75 percent of black women who are happily married and raising children in two-parent families.
Conclusions challenged
"This picture distorts the picture of African-American women who are happy, fulfilled and living good and productive lives," Maynard says. "It is also a distortion of black men, as well -- portraying them as pathetic losers who we wouldn't want to be married to -- which has not been my experience."
Banks' solution was also challenged by African-American scholars in a "virtual symposium" held by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Council on Contemporary Families.
There, Professor Micere Keels of the University of Chicago argued that black women don't rule out nonblack partners. Rather, studies show they receive fewer advances from whites, Latinos or Asians.
"The only viable solution for black women's low likelihood of marriage is to correct society's failure to educate all our boys," she concluded.
Similarly, Kansas University professor Shirley Hill said in the same symposium that "dealing with structural issues" -- such as high unemployment and incarceration of black men -- "gets us closer to the root of the problem."
There's a reason that black women are wary of white men: white men's attitudes toward them, said symposium participant Belinda Tucker, a professor at UCLA. "Media portrayals of black women as either hypersexualized or Big Mommas continue to encourage exploitative attitudes," she said. By dating black men, women are "safe from societal rejections."
And while interracial families are a potent symbol of a society that's healing its racial divide, raising multiracial children is a challenge that Banks doesn't address, said symposium participant Jenifer Bratter of Rice University.
"Biracial children often face racial difficulties from both sides of the racial spectrum, leaving parents to help their children to make sense of these experiences," she said.
Taps into anxieties
Banks shrugs off such criticism with the confidence of an attorney used to sparring.
"There's resistance to an issue that seems fairly simple: If there are two few men in your own group, why not consider men of other groups?" he asks.
But he concedes that his suggestion taps into deep-seated anxieties that people have about race.
It's natural to fear assimilation, particularly if you're from a marginalized group, he says. And women -- of all races -- have greater concern than men about perpetuating their culture.
"Black women are the most loyal of all," he says. "But they pay a very high price."
Racial identities change, over generations. "It's fruitless to worry about it, as though you could preserve it," he continues. "It's like putting your finger in a dike. Your children will see the world differently than you or I do.
"The black experience is more varied now," he says. "Our children have grown up in an integrated Palo Alto or Orinda. They don't have the experience of living in the Jim Crow South."
For Banks, the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" still makes his skin tingle, evoking memories of hearing the "Negro National Anthem" while growing up in an all-black Cleveland neighborhood.
But it means nothing to his sons, he observes, now students at Menlo Park's integrated Phillips Brooks School and Hillsborough's college-prep Crystal Springs Uplands School.
And when they bring home a date?
"I want them to be happy, whoever they're with," Banks says. "It's hard to make a relationship work. Compatibility now is more about class and background and experiences and aspirations and values than about race."
"I'd tell them: 'If you find someone who is purple, and it works, go for that.' "
Marry for love'
Like Banks, Moore says, "I would tell my sister to marry for love," irrespective of race. "If that person makes you happy, you should pursue that relationship."
But the book's assumptions have come under attack by Howard University professor Ivory A. Toldson and Morehouse College professor Bryant Marks. They say they've looked at the same data -- from the census and American Community Surveys -- through a different lens, and found it less gloomy.
If the analysis is limited to blacks over age 35, the number of single women drops, they say. And in major cities such as Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, women with doctorates are more than twice as likely to be married as those with a high school degree. Finally, although black women have more degrees, that doesn't translate into high incomes: In fact, more black men than black women earn more than $75,000 a year.
"Entrepreneurial elements of America have found a variety of creative ways to benefit financially from black females' anxieties at the expense of black male egos," Toldson told the African-American online magazine the Root in a reference to Banks. "If you can show somebody that there is a really devastating problem, they'll pay more attention to you.
"He's not going to show you any evidence to the contrary because he wants his book to be found," she said.
Journalist and Middlebury College graduate Dori J. Maynard, president and CEO of the Oakland-based Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, co-founded by her father, criticizes "a media-driven narrative -- desperate black women seeking husbands -- that flies in the face of a lot of people's realities." The widow of African-American architect Charles Grant Lewis, Maynard says, "This conversation would be a lot more helpful if we also included the experience of the 75 percent of black women who are happily married and raising children in two-parent families.
Conclusions challenged
"This picture distorts the picture of African-American women who are happy, fulfilled and living good and productive lives," Maynard says. "It is also a distortion of black men, as well -- portraying them as pathetic losers who we wouldn't want to be married to -- which has not been my experience."
Banks' solution was also challenged by African-American scholars in a "virtual symposium" held by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Council on Contemporary Families.
There, Professor Micere Keels of the University of Chicago argued that black women don't rule out nonblack partners. Rather, studies show they receive fewer advances from whites, Latinos or Asians.
"The only viable solution for black women's low likelihood of marriage is to correct society's failure to educate all our boys," she concluded.
Similarly, Kansas University professor Shirley Hill said in the same symposium that "dealing with structural issues" -- such as high unemployment and incarceration of black men -- "gets us closer to the root of the problem."
There's a reason that black women are wary of white men: white men's attitudes toward them, said symposium participant Belinda Tucker, a professor at UCLA. "Media portrayals of black women as either hypersexualized or Big Mommas continue to encourage exploitative attitudes," she said. By dating black men, women are "safe from societal rejections."
And while interracial families are a potent symbol of a society that's healing its racial divide, raising multiracial children is a challenge that Banks doesn't address, said symposium participant Jenifer Bratter of Rice University.
"Biracial children often face racial difficulties from both sides of the racial spectrum, leaving parents to help their children to make sense of these experiences," she said.
Taps into anxieties
Banks shrugs off such criticism with the confidence of an attorney used to sparring.
"There's resistance to an issue that seems fairly simple: If there are two few men in your own group, why not consider men of other groups?" he asks.
But he concedes that his suggestion taps into deep-seated anxieties that people have about race.
It's natural to fear assimilation, particularly if you're from a marginalized group, he says. And women -- of all races -- have greater concern than men about perpetuating their culture.
"Black women are the most loyal of all," he says. "But they pay a very high price."
Racial identities change, over generations. "It's fruitless to worry about it, as though you could preserve it," he continues. "It's like putting your finger in a dike. Your children will see the world differently than you or I do.
"The black experience is more varied now," he says. "Our children have grown up in an integrated Palo Alto or Orinda. They don't have the experience of living in the Jim Crow South."
For Banks, the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing" still makes his skin tingle, evoking memories of hearing the "Negro National Anthem" while growing up in an all-black Cleveland neighborhood.
But it means nothing to his sons, he observes, now students at Menlo Park's integrated Phillips Brooks School and Hillsborough's college-prep Crystal Springs Uplands School.
And when they bring home a date?
"I want them to be happy, whoever they're with," Banks says. "It's hard to make a relationship work. Compatibility now is more about class and background and experiences and aspirations and values than about race."
"I'd tell them: 'If you find someone who is purple, and it works, go for that.' "
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