The Media Thinks Single Black Women Have All the Problems

The media seems a lot more worried about the state of black families than white ones. But the latest news to come from the Census and the Pew Research Center reveals findings of concern to white families.

We've heard in the past about how among women, black women are the least likely to marry. We've been told that black women are romantically undesirable, too educated and successful for black men and unwilling or unable to pair up with non-blacks. The media wasn’t any kinder to black men — portraying them as shiftless, uneducated criminals who were either locked up, on the down low or lusting after white women.

When it comes to black spinsterhood, the media blames the social ills of black America, or pities black women for being destined to die alone.

But now that we've learned that among American women, white women are most likely to be childless, no one's drawing similar conclusions. Unlike their coverage of black women, the media isn’t faulting white women for this phenomenon or suggesting that white Americans are somehow dysfunctional because of it. News agencies aren’t asking if white women’s professional success is to blame for their childlessness, nor are they suggesting that white men are to blame for not committing to fatherhood with white women. Neither is the media portraying white childless women as somehow undesirable or as a group deserving of pity.

Instead, some news outlets almost seem to be going out of their way to downplay the findings about white women and childlessness.  The Washington Post, for example, made sure to mention how birthrates among all women have gone down since the 1970s. The same is true about marriage rates among women, but that hasn’t stopped the media from portraying single black women as grievous anomalies. In fact, though the Post article points out how some of these white women are childless by choice, in discussions about single black women, this point is conveniently omitted. Black women aren’t single by choice, they imply, but because black men don’t have their acts together and other men won’t have them. Cue the violins. How will they go on?

According to Census figures, about one in four U.S. counties are now home to more minority children than white children, and the number of white youth has dropped in all but eight states. Moreover, for every white born, one dies. Compare this to the U.S. Latino population, which has nine births for every death. Where’s the panic about these stats — the insinuations that white America is in crisis?

Instead of panic, we get reassurances. The Post article, for instance, made sure to include remarks from researchers about how childless women are as happy and psychologically sound as mothers. In contrast, articles about single black women depict the African-American community as though it's in crisis, its females doomed to a dismal, lonely fate.

My objective in writing this isn’t to encourage the media to turn on childless white women. But there's a clear double standard at work here that needs to be pointed out. Too often, news stories about unmarried black women feign concern over the fate of black women, but simply serve up hateful stereotypes about the black community that paint black women as unlovable and black men as no-good and shiftless. White, childless women don't deserve such superficial coverage, and neither do black single women.

Photo Credit: davhor