Hmmm, interesting. Clearly I am hanging around the wrong black and the wrong white people because the statistics from my hometown would be completely different. Seriously though, I have trouble assigning a race label to statistics such as these. It seems like a stretch to ascribe the given events to ethnicity. Which is why it is important that nyctea scandiaca raises questions about income and education levels as well. Otherwise it would seem as ridiculous as someone saying that suicide is part of the racial identity of whites due to their overwhelming rate of success.
Oh right, this is the Pit. So the OP asked a dumbass question but since his goal is enlightenment I think a rewording is in order. He should probably talk to more black folks cause this is really the first time I have heard this angle from a guy. Usually it comes from black women.
That report had good stats on race & education too. So clearly, the more educated you are, the less likely you are to have kids without being married. (Draw your own conclusions…)
Percentage of Births to Women Under Age 30 That Were Out of Wedlock, by Educational Attainment and Race/Ethnicity of the Mother, United States: 2003-2004
If I just may say… looking over my last post, those stats are sad and disturbing.
90% of babies born to black women with no high school diploma are out-of-wedlock?! Wow.
But compare this to 60% for whites, and 50% for hispanics. I think there is clearly some sort of cultural element. (“Baby Daddy” is a pop reference coming out of black culture, isn’t it?)
Some cultures may consider children raised ‘in wedlock’ of more importance than ending a family unit even when it would clearly benefit from a seperation, divorce, or avoiding marrying the scum who knocked you up in the first place. It is a shame if some silly stigma is causing some women in some cultures to start or stay in marriages with partners that are not good for the woman or the children. “Diddling your daughters” is a pop reference coming out of white culture, isn’t it?
I honestly don’t say that to be an ignorant idiot. I say it to raise the point that we sink into ridiculousness if we start painting the whole of black culture with the brush we use to paint the most ignorant and uneducated part of us…(those that would use the term ‘baby daddy’.
It is true that the ‘having children out of wedlock’ issue is one that is more frequent with black people than it is with other groups in our society…but it is not really relevent to what VC03’s co-worker was discussing. The real truth is that there are legion beautiful, black, educated, single women out there. If he is bringing enough to the table to hook one, in terms of education and character, he will find one.
The SDMB Wine Club keeps a list of whose turn it is to pick wine. I think the SDMB Black Spokesperson group needs to do the same. Its only fair that we know who is going to be speaking for all black people before we ask the question - and we can make sure that all the black folks on the board are properly identified - 'cause its so hard to tag people with the appropriate labels on the internet.
I find it amusing that people in this thread are acting like the pathologies of black Americans is a rarely discussed topic and that VCO3 is really trying to forge new ground in the area of rational discourse with his retarded OP. Black people as a group are always scrutinized. Statistics are always trotted out to remind the masses that black people are deviants from the white norm. “Why” is always fucking talked about. This topic is a million years old. It’s played out.
At a certain point it becomes obvious that too many people get off on talking about how blacks measure up to everyone else. I’m amazed at how many people are acting like VCO3’s co-worker’s opinion has merit. There are plenty of black women that are educated, childless, and of good character. There may be a greater percent of “undesirables” in the black female population relative to the pristine and flawless white one, but that doesn’t mean that good catches who are black are nonexistent or even rare.
