Black women are not working where the eligible men are also working. The result: black women have fewer opportunities for ‘dating, mating, and relating’ (hat tip to Chris for the phrase) men who are interested in the same. The result of the result? Black women have lower rates of marriage, in part because of our career choices.

From Opting Out by Maya A. Beasley:

Bowen and Bok’s seminal work on the life experiences and life outcomes of college adults at elite universities (1998) shows that African American and white students occupy career sectors in very different proportions. For example, while 76 percent of the white male graduates they tracked were working in the private sector, only 67 percent of black men and 48 percent of black men did so. Instead, African American graduates were disproportionately working in government or non-profit sectors–34 percent of black men and 52 percent of black women relative to 24 percent white men and 39 percent of white women.

Every so often one of the ladies here says they are not meeting non-black men who are interested in dating them. Now those ladies have a hint as to why that may be so: you work for the Department of Health and Human Services while many of the men you should be dating are working at Deloitte and Touche.

If you’re trying to catch fish, go where the fish are jumping. If your trying to catch a man, go where the men are working.