Too Few Good Men Summary

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Statistically, black women today have an all time low in terms of marriage rates compared to women of different races. Marriage rates among black women has never been at the same rate of their white counterparts. One of the contributing factors to this plight is men, specifically the economical circumstances and position of black men. The article “Too Few Good Men? Available Partners and Single Motherhood among Latinas, African Americans, and Whites” by Lisa Catanzarite and Vilma Ortiz presents data that reveals the effects of this dilemma. Sticking to the single black female experience I will be comparing the data given on the marriage partners for single black female with the information shared in W.E.B Du Bois book titled “The Souls of…show more content…
These ratios reveal that the employed pool of black men in comparison to black females was only 0.55 and the marriageable pool index was 0.52. This shows that almost fifty percent of black women are left with unsuitable marriage partners. When this is compared to the white men ratio of 1.00 in the marriageable pool index, the reality that the SES of black men is very poor, becomes blatant. The declines in the male marriageable index are closely aligned with the decline in marriages among African-Americans. What this means is that the vast black women of good SES will have fewer incentives to marry and single motherhood will be more likely as shown in areas where black women's employment rates and pay are higher than black males. Which brings up a natural question, do black women of low SES marry in a large amount? and the answer would be no. The data from the article shows that “due both to differences in economic resources and prospects and to class differences in norms. Single motherhood is more acceptable and more prevalent among lower-class women than among those with higher SES. Because single, lower-class women have fewer hopes of status achievement than their middle- and upper-class counterparts, benefits…show more content…
The data from Lisa Catanzarite and Vilma Ortiz article is very revealing but it doesn’t explain very well how there are so few good black males, and without understanding the reason why that is it's difficult to move forward when looking for a solution. To understand why the data was so skewed negatively amongst black males I had to refer to the great debate between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. The debate between these two profounding leaders was on the position that black men should take moving forward in America. One of the central disagreements these two men had was specifically on the area of education. Booker T. Washington believed that African-Americans should engage in industrial education to pick up trade skills, which would gain white respect and be consistently economically stable. The difference between Du Bois view was that he believed African-Americans should strive towards arts and science and that Washington's view actually held black people back by keeping them in positions of low social and economic status, only capable of doing service

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