By Candace Y. Miller
On August 30, the National Public Radio news program, Morning Edition, did a report on the growing education gap between African-American men and women. African-American women are attending college in greater numbers than ever before but African-American men aren't keeping up with them. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 960,000 African-American women were enrolled in college and graduate school in 1997 compared to 572,000 African-American men.
There are many reasons for this disparity that I won't pursue here. Not only does it affect African-American men's career chances. It also affects their relationships with African-American women. One of the men interviewed for this segment made the following comment:
I've encountered the occasional article in Ebony and Essence that suggests that African-American professional women should give blue-collar guys a chance if they aren't having luck with African-American professional men. Now I do not accept the widely held view that the man should be the primary breadwinner and always earn more money than the woman. Nor am I snobbish enough to think blue-collar men don't have anything to offer well-educated, professional women. If a well-educated professional sister and her blue-collar beau can handle the salary disparity then more power to them. But professional woman/blue collar man relationships alone won't solve the marriage squeeze African-American women face. Because if African-American professional women turn to African-American blue collar men in large numbers, this will only deplete the pool of potential spouses for African-American women who hold blue collar or clerical type jobs.
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Regular Interracial Voice readers will recall my that in my previous editorial, Sauce for the Goose, I suggested that African-American women who haven't had much luck with African-American men should consider dating non-black men. African-American women face what sociologist Orlando Patterson refers to as a "marriage squeeze" brought about by a combination of demographics (more African-American women between the ages of 20-44 than African-American men in the same age group) and social ills such as substance abuse, unemployment and incarceration that effect men in greater numbers. Given these facts, not every African-American woman who wants to marry will be able to find a marriageable African-American man.