Black Men for Black Women?

UPDATED DECEMBER 20, 2011 7:06 PM

DEBATERS

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  A Shortage of Eligible Black Men

  RALPH RICHARD BANKS, STANFORD LAW PROFESSOR
  Marriage has declined throughout our society, but more so for African-Americans, and in particular black women.
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  A Shortage: Maybe, Maybe Not

  ANGELA STANLEY, KIRWAN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF RACE AND ETHNICITY, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
  If a black woman happens to be single, it is not necessarily a commentary on black men as eligible partners.
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  Education and Income, Not Race

  IVORY A. TOLDSON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, HOWARD UNIVERSITY
  If black people dealt with the facts, instead of the news media's 'battle of the black sexes,' they'd find healthy love in one another.
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  Blacks Need to Reinvent Marriage

  DALTON CONLEY, SOCIOLOGIST
  The dearth of 'marriageable' black men assumes that marital roles are inflexible, and that blacks only marry blacks.

INTRODUCTION

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In a recent essay in the Sunday Review, Angela Stanley, a researcher at Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University, wrote about being black, single and female and how friends and family worry that she’ll never find a husband because supposedly the statistics are stacked against her.

Is there a shortage of black men for black women? Does that question presume that men and women should marry someone of their own race? Ralph Richard Banks, the author of “Is Marriage for White People? How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone,” suggested this forum.