ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON ON MARRIAGE AND BLACK FAMILIES: Excerpts

"We are seeing a sea change in African-American life. It cannot continue or we will not continue as a viable people. I just want to put it as starkly as I can. We've got to get the attention of our community and our country. It is impossible to overestimate what has happened to our community in only a single generation or two or what might then happen in my son's generation if it continues at this pace." (p. 7)

"There is already a catastrophic disparity between the number of marriageable young, black men, and by that I only mean men with enough sense of their future, men without a felony conviction, men whose lifestyle is not rooted in the underground economy or the ghetto culture, between those men and the number of marriageable young, black women; that is, women who have jobs or who know they're going to get a job, who are trying to get a job, who are trying to get an education. That is the catastrophic disparity. These disparities are worse than wartime disparities." (p. 7)

"Somebody has to speak up for marriage. Somebody has to speak up for family. Somebody has to talk some turkey about it, but they need somebody to back them up because preaching about it can make people cynical if they see nothing in the society that makes them marriageable. Yet, somebody needs to bring the moral and practical clarity up front about marriage, about what it's meant to family life, about what it's meant to the progress of African Americans from slavery until today. It must be done in the name of marriage. We must do it in the name of the black family, but we must do it, first and foremost, for our own children." (p. 12-13)

The whole thing, in PDF form, is here.
posted by Eve at 8:39 PM | link

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