There is some serious head-tripping going on here, and I have a feeling it doesn’t just have to do with black women. It has to do with a deep re-appraisal of relative social value during this time of economic insecurity. Women have been able to hold onto their jobs in this economy better than men have. On a racial level, sociologist William Julius Wilson noted during a recent speech at Harvard’s Black Policy Conference that for the first time in more than a decade, the relative black unemployment rate is less than a 2-to-1 ratio to the white rate. The white unemployment rate is still far lower, but the relative income insecurity of white workers is rising faster.

We see that anxiety over lost status manifesting publicly in political rallies. And some people are looking for comfort in the perceived misfortune of others. (Is that hard-wired? A 2007 brain scan study from the University of Bonn that showed that relative wealth seems to tickle our pleasure centers more than absolute wealth. In other words, we want to be better-than even more than we want to be better off.) Right now, it’s the black woman’s turn to play the black sheep. Or as one person who wrote into my blog put it, “The `sad lonely career woman’ is the `welfare queen’ of the 2000s.”
The black women I know — married, unmarried, intra- or inter-racially partnered, gay and straight — tend have thought this situation out a little bit. I’m not talking just about the marriage situation, but the scapegoat situation. If you go into African-American communities, you’ll find black women trying to save men, children, and family members… sometimes to the detriment of our own finances and health. That may be stupid, but it’s a loving kind of stupid more than a selfish kind of stupid. (And yes, there are black women of the selfish-stupid kind, and they seem to take all the spots on the reality shows.)
Women of other races are also working on figuring out how to live, love, work, and parent. Yet we don’t ask the same critical questions about all demographics. Southern white Christian women (and men) are far more likely to marry than African-Americans. But what is sometimes called the “Bible Belt” also has a divorce rate far higher than the national average, and double that of some states. And speaking of divorce — a lot of these marriage statistics ask if women have been married by the age of 40, not if the marriage is sustained.

All that said, there is an unfulfilled longing on the part of too many black women for partnership and marriage. So what do we do? Hopefully, we love. We risk. We fail. We try again. Our love has to start with ourselves and radiate out to others. Maybe we black women are figuring some stuff out, like how to drop the baggage and not bring it forward into the next generation. Learning to love yourself and other takes time. (By the way, sisters, if you graduate from college, you’re twice as likely to get married after the age of forty than if you don’t.)

At moments of frustration with the narrative imposed on black women, I turn to the wisdom of multiply Grammy-nominated singer Ledisi. She sings, “Get outta my kitchen, telling me how to cook. It ain’t none of your business. Ain’t no need to look.” I would turn that a bit and say, at the very least, if America is looking for a problem, there’s plenty of folks whose kitchens we might want to take a look at.

So let me broaden things out a bit. I’m one of the unmarried over-40 college-educated African-American women who appear to be causing people to trip out. I’ve had my concerns about what marriage means both to the people in marriages and to society. I’ve been speaking to some never-married black women, and gay men and women, who question the structure of the institution. Why is marriage an institution that confers legal benefits and joint ownership; tax structures and healthcare options? Should it be as powerful now in our life as it was? Should it be expanded (for example, to gay couples) or legally reconceived?

In any case… my second round of thinking on the Single Black Woman Challenge is that the bigger challenge is for single black women (and frankly, for most interested parties) to understand what marriage is or isn’t. Is it a way out of poverty? Sometimes– through smart decisionmaking and shared costs like housing. But if you are broke and marry a broke person, you will still be broke, sometimes more so by assuming responsibility for some of their debt.

I had a profound moment sitting with fellow journalist and WGBH radio host Callie Crossley recently. She said her mother questioned younger generations’ relationships. If I remember the recap of her mothers’ words right, they were along the lines of: We joined [in marraige] to build. You build and then try to join together.

That’s so much of where we are today. In ways we never could have before, black women are building. And we are building hard — acing education; ending up in high places (often not paid what we are worth, but….). If you have two people building, who’s going to raise the kids? Now I sound like a conservative. Some of my views about what makes family work probably are. But I believe deeply in a safety net, as well as the oft-embraced work ethic. Life is hard work and should also be fun. Work should be rewarded financially and otherwise, yet if societies don’t have some kind of safety net why should they exist at all? I also feel (as author/federal finance warrior/possible future Supreme Court Nominee Elizabeth Warren puts it) that there is a “Two-Income Trap” and there are a lot of people running in place and thinking they’re getting somewhere. If marriage is the ultimate scenario, is there a fiscal space for one parent staying at home (by choice, of course; for a few years maybe), and which communities can afford that? A lot of this circles back to public policy questions about how to make work work for families.

[Yes, I realize not everyone wants kids. Marriages without kids are definitely different... I'm not sure they're simpler, but at least everyone in the family is a legal adult! You can hold folks accountable, IN THEORY, for their behavior; with kids, what they do/how they grow is your responsibility -- legally as well as morally.]

My views on marriage have changed. Before, they were vague, and they were about love, kids, joy, and pain. Now, having seen many marriages and divorces among friends and mentors… and remarriages… I see what made author Lori Gottleib write, “Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.”

I hope I can create a marriage that is built on love, but also is a partnership to run an interesting “nonprofit” whose mission is to generate security for the families from which we come and which we are building. That is not just financial security — though that’s important, in ways I never understood when I was younger — but also educational security (making sure children and adults both have chances for lifelong learning); physical security (that people in the family network have access to healthcare and are able to live in safe communities, which can have different definitions to each person); and in some ways most important to me, inter-generational knowledge security. We should have a reasonable expectation that part of our function as a family is to document and archive who we are and pass that on to the next generation… our ethics, our values, our history, and how our stories intertwine with the world at large.

That’s what I’m looking forward to when I get married. Empire building, of a very small and specific sort. And you can bet my nonprofit’s plans include camping trips, barbecues, travel and photo-ops. Life is to be lived, not just acquired.

My first name means happy, and this year I intend to live my naming.

During 2009, I lost my job as host of the radio show News and Notes and decided to explore what I was meant to do versus taking a new job right away. I questioned that decision many times (often while looking at bills), but as I rang in the New Year I realized that I made the right decision for this stage of my life. My quest to “Be Farai” is to find what I’m really meant to do, and enjoying doing it.

I’ve worked a series of high profile jobs and learned that my work is one of the most fulfilling parts of my life, but it can’t be the only thing in my life. While continuing to write, broadcast, and publish (my first novel came out this year) I have also taken time to hike, go on a fitness retreat, and reconnect with friends and family. I’ve lost 20 pounds since my top weight of 2009 (which was my top weight ever), and I’m working to keep the numbers trending down with a new exercise regime and more cooking at home.

I feel reinvigorated in pursuing new media projects, especially around the intersection of social networking and citizen media. Our emotions and cycles of politics and social engagement affect our ability to process information. It seems impossible to talk about changing the news industry without acknowledging that news, without context, is something many people find alienating if not outright toxic. I believe that social networking can provide a community for both media producers and media consumers (many of whom are becoming one and the same) which allows us a space where we can discuss and process news, and the emotions that news generates.

Fifteen years after my first blog posts, I’m making 2010 the year I begin blogging seriously again. I’m working to figure out what makes sense in our age of niche-media-moguls. (I’m a fan of just talking about whatever interests me, but I also recognize I need structure.) Theda Sandiford, @bondgyrl on Twitter, and I have been comparing notes about approach.

In any case, despite the upheavals, I will put 2009 down in the WIN column of life: a year of change, growth, stress, maturity, and health. I wish all the best to everyone in 2010.

And: good advice via Twitter from a media maker:

@AnnCurry: Breathe in the New Year. As you breathe out, let go of what you don’t need.

Peace,
F