Apparently, black women and white women are in some competition. Whoever gets to the alter first is smarter and knows how to play the game. According to the article Why White Women Are Winning Uptown Magazine published last Friday, the reason that I am still single has everything to do with the fact that I don’t behave enough like a white woman. As the author Andrea Michelle sees it, white women look for a husband in college, value marriage more than blacks, and know how to treat their men without attitude or challenge. And all three of those reasons are reasons that white women get married more than black women. What I need to know is when did my love life became a competitive sport and more importantly why?
Of course all three factors were listed purely based on the writers assumptions and not followed by any statistics or factual information. Its true, white women statistically get married more than black women but I’m not sure if we really can name these reasons as why. How bout the history of African Americans in the United States? Education? Poverty? Or the overall fact that Americans as a whole are not getting married and staying married as they use to? Although most of the reasons that Andrea states are comparisons made between African American and White American women for years it’s just thoughtless to list those reasons as solutions to the thousands of black women worried about the probability of finding a partner. When did black women become so monolithic that we all suffer from the same issues? And when seeing others with the same blanket racial prejudices we face become okay?
For black women and white women, making finding a husband a priority at an early age doesn’t guarantee marriage and more importantly a good one. What bothers me the most about this article, (aside from the racist and baseless racial assumptions) is the belief that the act of marriage alone makes one person superior over an other. When I was 23, my Canadian struggling actor boyfriend who I knew no more than 2 months proposed to me. If I married him, I would have been married to a deeply insecure man with anger issues. But according to Andrea, “when it comes to playing for the ultimate title of wife, white women are the All Star MVPs”. So does that mean if I chose being trapped in an abusive marriage with a couple kids would I be idolized on a pedestal as well?
What happened to being in a healthy and productive relationship? Finding someone who loves you and supports you? Placing getting married alone as the ultimate goal in life is damaging to women as a whole and takes us back 50 years ago when women got married simply because they needed someone to take care of them. Our grandmothers and mothers fought for us, regardless of race, to have options in life and marriage is one of them.
I have lived with two white girlfriends. We shared dating horror stories love victories and heartbreaks. We are all still single and none of us see our love life as some racial sporting game. Honestly their love life hasn’t been any “better” than mine. We are all women interested in finding the right person for us and know that search comes with bumps and bruises along the way. Though it’s ignorant to believe race doesn’t affect my love life in Los Angeles, I don’t believe if I studied the behavior of my white counterparts my love life would miraculously change for the better. Sure our struggles as women are different because of our racial experience and culture but our life is our own- so individually identified it’s just crazy to compare.
Andrea Michelle then gives the example of a white friend in college who said “Well, if I don’t find my husband in undergrad I will just go to grad school – that’s what my mom told me”. Andrea Michelle uses this quote to illustrate that white women as a whole are getting married before black women because they are simply planning ahead. The quote is an example of a woman who is interested in getting married more than building a career but unfortunately, there are plenty of black women who feel the same way. We all got black girlfriends and family members who have never been interested in going to college or even getting a job. Gold diggers and women looking for a Mrs. Degree come in all shapes and sizes.
The author then asks “at what point, should pursuing an Mrs. take precedent over building professional success?” This is a great question that all women should ask themselves. But again this question has nothing to do with race, but more importantly has to do with the struggle between career and family that all educated women seem to face. There are plenty of white women that are just like me, pursuing her dreams, living her life to the fullest in hopes of finding the right partner for her along the way. And there have been plenty of black women married with professional careers balancing their job and family. With high divorce rates and less people getting married all over the world, there are plenty of white women struggling to find love in their thirties (Have we forgotten about Sex And The City, Lori Gottlieb, or Jennifer Aniston) and do not see getting married as the answer to all of life’s problems.
There are plenty of black women that are single because they have an attitude, don’t believe in marriage, and come from broken homes and there are white women who are single because they choose the wrong men, stay in abusive relationships and couldn’t flirt themselves out of a getting a parking ticket if they needed to. The point I am making is our issues are our own, and comparing oranges and apples ain’t going to get us closer to figuring them out.
So if I wanted to be like Andrea and write an article based on assumptions from my own life experience, I could argue a completely different reality. When looking at the 12 women that I am close to and hang out with on a regular basis, three of them are white and nine are black. Of the three that are white, none of them are married when six of my nine black girlfriends are. Apparently the relationships that surround me affect my own beliefs when it comes to love and marriage. As far as I’m concerned black women have every opportunity to be married and in successful relationships as white women. My black friends that are married are married because they want to and because they found the right person at the right time in their lives. The truth is we are in control of our lives, not statistics or silly racist assumptions.
So Uptown Magazine, it’s not just white women who are winning - it’s strong women who stay committed to what they want in their lives regardless of the thought and opinions of others. It’s the women who build their own life structure based on their own needs and personal values who are the champions in my eyes. And all women, regardless of the cultural and racial struggles that we all independently face, has the opportunity to do so.
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