This is getting severely serious ladies:
Single black women with college degrees outnumber single black men with college degrees almost 3 to 1 in major urban areas such as Washington, according to a 2008 population survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. Given those numbers, any economist would advise them to start looking elsewhere. “Black women are in market failure,” says writer Karyn Langhorne Folan. “The solution is to find a new market for your commodity. And in this case, we are the commodity and the new market is men of other races.”
Folan is the author of “Don’t Bring Home a White Boy: And Other Notions That Keep Black Women From Dating Out,” published this month by Karen Hunter, an imprint of Pocket Books. In encouraging black women to date and marry interracially, the book has joined a broadening debate in recent years fueled by the blogosphere, the entertainment industry and comments by prominent African Americans. By promoting interracial love for some black women, Folan explains that she is not suggesting that there aren’t any good, single black men out there, or that every educated single black woman will not find an educated black mate. She is not bashing all black men or implying that all black women are aiming for the altar. The writer, mom and Harvard-educated lawyer says that she is just offering a reasonable solution to the shortage of available black men.
“Consider your options,” she says. Expand your horizons. Stop listening to your girlfriends. Forget about the brothers calling you a sellout. Get over those old images of slavery and stop blaming every white man for sins perpetrated by others. “In short,” Folan says, “some black women choose to demonize all white men rather than look objectively at the facts of our modern times, which are these: Some men, whatever their race, are bad for us. And the converse is true as well. Some men, whatever their race, are good for us.” Folan says such judgmental attitudes are rooted in “the myth of one voice,” as though all black people think the same, talk the same, want the same thing when, in reality, diversity is great within the race. “Black people are not a monolith, and one voice is a myth, and yet some black folks still seem certain that they know who has ‘stayed black’ and who has ‘sold out,’ ” Folan says.Being perceived by other blacks as a sellout is No. 8 on the list of nine “notions” preventing black women from dating and marrying interracially that Folan outlines and rebuts in her book. Those notions also include: (1) “After slavery, I would never, ever date a white man”; (4) “I don’t find white men attractive”; (5) “White men don’t find black women attractive unless they look like Beyoncé”; and (9) “We’d be too different.”
Instead of listening to others’ admonitions about white men, Folan says, “maybe we can look at the content of his character.” And instead of assuming white men don’t find black women attractive, consider, for a moment, that some do. Her husband, Kevin Folan, is across the room and beams at Folan as she talks, indicating that he certainly finds her attractive. She smiles at him. And from where you sit, you can see a chemistry. People who study race talk about the point beyond which you stop taking regular note of the person’s skin color, or hair or background. It happens in friendships, with relatives, with colleagues. You look across the table and the person you are talking to is not a white person or a black person, but simply a person. People who date and marry across cultures often describe this feeling. People on the sidelines might stare, but the couples themselves often become oblivious to it.
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