The Black Gender Gap

Those emerging trends represent a new promise of racial integration to some--and a threat of lost racial identity to others. Actor Samuel Jackson was caught a bit off guard when his only daughter, Zoe, began dating white boys in high school. "It was a little weird because you really always think of black couples being together and want that for your child, too," recalls Jackson's wife, Latanya Richardson. Last year the couple sent Zoe to Spelman College, a predominantly black all-female school in Atlanta. She now has a black boyfriend. "It made her father very happy," said Richardson. "I just think he wanted her to see the different side of things. To have the option of both, really."

Instead of crossing the racial line, others are trying to navigate the currents of interclass romance. Ellen Lewis, 32, a product manager for Oscar Mayer in Phoenix, Ariz., is married to a trucker. With a marketing degree and business experience, Lewis makes more than double her husband's salary. When they began dating, she hid all evidence of her success. "After a while, I could see he could probably handle it." But even now, says Lewis, "it's hard not to sense his resentment and his attitude that black women have it easier.'' Birmingham banker Malia Fort, who had a child (and is in a long-term relationship) with a laborer, has found the going somewhat smoother--in part because her expectations were brutally realistic. "He doesn't fit into my professional world, but he doesn't have to," she says.

In analyzing data collected from graduates of 28 selective colleges and universities, sociologist Donna Franklin found evidence of serious trouble with marriages where the wife was the dominant wage earner. The black women surveyed were much more likely than white women to have husbands who earned less; those who had been married were also more than twice as likely to have gotten divorced. The facts are not coincidental, says Franklin, author of "What's Love Got to Do With It?" --a probing look at relationships between black women and men. The higher divorce rate among highly educated black women was due, she believes, to the fact that they generally made more money than their mates.

Youtha Hardman-Cromwell, a Washington minister and associate professor at Wesley Theological Seminary, is hopeful that society is just going through a period of adjustment--that in the end, black women will not be penalized for marrying less successful men. "Look at how fragile interracial marriages once were," she says. But even among the most optimistic, there is an underlying sense of concern. Ella Bell, professor and soon-to-be Essence career-advice columnist, is far more successful than she ever dreamed she would be. Yet the never-married Bell is not exactly content. "I've come not to expect a traditional black husband," says Bell. "You can get a dog, keep yourself busy... keep yourself tired... You don't have to have a relationship," she says. Still, she wonders--neither morbidly nor excessively--if she "will die in a room all by myself."

Cassaundra Cain prepared her two daughters (now college-age) early on for the possibility of being alone. A divorced postal worker living in Atlanta, Cain says she "always stressed the Prince Charming thing wasn't our reality." She warned her daughters against getting "caught in what they saw young mainstream girls do... I tell them they're young black girls--that they may end up on their own and alone." Even for women in "mainstream" white America, says Franklin, hard times may lie ahead. Black women may be the leaders in the trend of marrying less successful men, but white women are surely following. And, argues Franklin, they will reap the same consequences--more domestic tension and higher divorce rates. Professor Bell agrees: "Nothing lies in isolation in a culture this fluid. So what happens to us will happen to them." But what exactly will happen to "us"? Bell concedes that black women, particularly young, black, educated women, are journeying into uncharted waters. "They have a degree of liberty no other group of black women have had... It'll be interesting to see what they do with it."

Interesting, indeed. There are several competing visions. In the most bleak, more and more black women will lead lives of success but also of isolation, as poorer, less well-prepared black women raise the community's children and perpetuate the existence of the "underclass." Then there is another view, one closer to that of Hardman-Cromwell's, the Washington minister. In that vision, black women are weathering a period of transition, after which they will find a way to balance happiness and success--and perhaps even serve as an inspiration for their sisters across the color line. It is, admittedly, the rosier view; but it is not necessarily less realistic. Given the history of black women on this planet, one would have to be supremely foolish to believe that there is any challenge they cannot overcome.

WITH ALLISON SAMUELS

© 2003