At this point, I don’t even know what to say.

For the last near decade, I’ve been trying to be the voice of sanity and common sense in regards to addressing the staggering out-of-wedlock rates in the black community and teach and preach that black women have the right to marry before having children just like other races of women. I could not believe the backlash I received for trying to get black women to start operating on behalf of their own interests. The amount of fighting to struggle was unbelievable. And while birthrates have declined for black girls and women, stats STILL indicate marriage isn’t happening before kids are brought into the mix.

Some of you say that marriage is an outdating, even archaic institution. But it’s still the BEST we’ve got to protect our interests and those of our children. And statistics show that children who grow up in two-parent families are smarter, suffer less anxiety and depression, get in less trouble, and do better in school. I don’t know what to hear about your sister’s cousin’s friend who had eight kids that all went to Harvard. Stop making this exception the rule–it’s just another way to make excuses.

You might think that two parents cohabitating and when they have a child is much like a marriage. Uh…no.  That would be nice if it were true. Studies show that many black fathers bail on relationships with their children’s mother on or before they reach the age of five.

Okay; I know. Men do the asking when it comes to marriage, and quite frankly, black men aren’t doing a lot of asking. So why are so many black women still dating them exclusively? What we have in this community is a values problem, because, despite feminism, Trumpism, and classism, women of other races are still managing to find husbands before they have children, as indicated on this chart. [SOURCE]

And before you crow about racism in America, look at the stats of black women immigrants. Their out-of-wedlock rate is 34.2% compared to native-born black women who seem to love leading this stat. We often say that everyone copies black culture. But this is one trend most folks besides us know better than to adopt.

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Looking at this issue practically and from a position of pure self-interest, continuing to make this choice despite all the risks and pitfalls means there is something deeply wrong and perhaps irreversible in the American black culture value system. If black immigrants who come into this country will little advantages and language barriers can find husbands better than we can, that’s not a race problem. That an “us” problem.

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