Black Marriage Through the Prism of Gender, Race, and Class

Abstract

Marriage continues to be a major life goal in the United States. The grim news about the state of Black heterosexual marriage can be found in headlines that bemoan the lack of marriageable Black men, and statistical studies that routinely show Black marriages are difficult to maintain. We argue that the stresses on Black marriages are best understood by looking at them through a prism that highlights the intersection of gender and race. We show that the role of Black wife is particularly challenging. When people reason from an unquestioned White model of marriage and relationships, they often suggest that there is something pathological about the marital patterns of Blacks. Yet using the race/gender prism, we construct an argument that these patterns are pioneering and call into question the logic of the White middle-class model of intimate relationships between women and men.