After years of inattention, in the past month, the mainstream media has suddenly turned its eye toward black women. And the resulting coverage, filtered through a pretty jaundiced lens, is enough to make me wish the world had never “discovered” us. Here are the messages we’ve heard: 1). Men don’t want us. 2). We don’t have any money. 3). We’re fat and unhealthy.
What the Media Wants You to Think About Black Women
Posted by Greg Laden on May 3, 2010
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My black sons, with advanced degrees, prefer to date black women with college degrees, preferably advanced degrees. They both find intelligent,well educated women, well traveled women the most attractive and sexy.
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And let’s examine the high-achieving black woman marriage ‘crisis,’ the narrative that chafes me the most. This narrative harps on the fact that some professional black women have trouble finding partners, which puts a willfully negative spin on what could actually be a positive story. We’re talking about high-achieving black women with academic and professional success, who also happen to be single and child-free. We could be wondering what’s right with these women that allowed them to find success in a society where the odds are stacked against them. What can we learn from black girls, for instance, that can help us raise black boys to equal rates of education and success? Instead, we devote ink and film to discovering what’s wrong with these women that they don’t have an Mrs. to go with their PhDs.
Uncanny how that narrative could have been about “high-achieving women” (meaning, mostly, white women) about, oh, twenty years ago…
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010
May 5, 2010
, which is now available for the 
