Thank God I'm Natural

This past week, eighteen year old Caster Semenya of South Africa was forced to undergo tests to prove she was in fact female and therefore eligible to participate in the women’s world track and field finals in Berlin at the World Athletics Championship. After becoming the new 800-metre world champion, Semenya’s gender was called into question by the the International Association of Athletics Federations due to the “dramatic improvement [of her] times, her muscular build, and her deep voice.”

Although they are now being reported in the press, these allegations are not new. In fact, they have followed Semenya for years. Semenya’s 80-year-old grandmother Maphuthi Sekgala told the press that Semenya had long been teased about her boyish looks and for being the only girl in her local soccer team The runner’s coach Michael Seme also laughed off the allegations that Semenya is a man, but added that she has been “crudely humiliated” on a few occasions, recalling a specific example from earlier this year when the police tried to barr her from using the ladies restroom at at a petrol station in Cape Town.

Semenya’s fight to prove that she is a woman is not only significant in a modern context in raising the distinction between sex and gender, but the portrayal of black femininity from a historical standpoint as well. Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, ex-slave Sojouner Truth delivered a riveting speech, which can be read here, at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. When addressing the audience, Truth asked the rhetorical question “Ain’t I A Woman” to drive home the point that the issue of women’s suffrage applied to both black and white women, alike.

Back then, the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was just one of many organization’s that upheld the racist ideologues of the day. Excluding black women from membership, the NAWSA garnered significant support from southern women by asserting that the white woman’s vote would serve to maintain white supremacy in the South. In response, black women, such as Mary Church Terrell, formed the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) to further suffrage among Negro woman in 1996. In sum, the women’s movement, sought both directly and indirectly to exclude black women from it’s efforts, leaving Truth to ask that famous question.

While black women have made significant gains since the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, it’s interesting that nearly a century later, we, as black women, are still forced to ask “Ain’t I A Woman?” Whether we’re dropping it like it’s hot like Karrine Steffans in a rap music video, presented as a controlling and overbearing Omarosa-esque character on some reality tv series, or being asked to subject to a series of medical tests and psychological examinations to prove that we are in deed female, we are constantly finding ourselves defending our femininity, balancing the contradictions of womanhood with our experiences, and repeating this familiar refrain.

I’m sorry is it just me, but is the media running out of news to cover. I feel like the issue of the educated black women being destined for spinsterhood was last month’s news. I guess I’m wrong because MSNBC just featured an article this weekend titled “Marriage eludes high-achieving black women– Many remain single and childless, according to new research”.

Just in case you missed it, this topic was recently covered on CNN’s Black in America, in the Boston Globe (“Younger blacks absorb a wariness of marriage”) and in the Washington Post (“Marriage is for White People). It seems like the mainstream media has this record playing on heavy rotation, but is occasionally willing to throw in an article or two about the growing number of black men living on the down low just to keep it interesting.

While I’ve included a link to the MSNBC article, for your reading pleasure, I would say it’s not even worth your time, unless you want to hear the same recycled arguments being made over and over again. Basically, the author contends that successful black women can’t find anyone to marry, because of the educational gap between the sexes, black men are in jail, and highly educated black men are choosing to marry white women.

After hearing this subject covered for the gazillionth time, I’m beginning to question why is there such a preoccupation with this issue. While I am not disputing the data or the statistics cited, these articles barely begin to scratch the surface when it comes to black relationships and often times present a one sided view of what’s occurring in our community. In my experience, I have found that a number of highly educated, highly successful black women are getting married. Sadly enough, these articles paint such a bleak picture of black relationships, that you would think Michelle and Barack were one of the only living examples of black love.

Nowhere in the article is there any mention of the number of black women with higher degrees who are getting married or the ones who are choosing to marry outside of their race. In case anyone from MSNBC or any news media outlet is reading this and opts to do a story on this topic again, they should check out the links to the following websites and give me a call first. Although I’m still single, 75% of my black female classmate from high school are married with children.

In addition to its skewed reporting, one of my main criticisms of that article is the title. It claims to point to “new research”, but the author supplies no new data (the statistics are from 2002), provides no new assumptions, and generate no solutions. Yes, our community has it fair share of problems when it comes to the family unit, which may be responsible for a number of social ills. But, in my experience, there is nothing like a black family. It’s not just about Thanksgiving and family reunions, but black families, with all their warts and dysfunction, tend to be very close. I would take a black family any day, with the exceptions being the Jacksons (I’m just being real), over any statistic alternative.

I may be generalizing, but black families are some of the most loving, welcoming families I know. It don’t matter if you bring home a white boy, daddy will forgive you, or if you are wrongly accused of a crime and sentenced to life in prison, momma is going to have a hot plate of fried chicken and potato salad waiting for you when you get out. I also have friends, whose parents, grandparents and cousins drove 18 hours from Gulfport, Mississippi to Cambridge, Massachusetts just to see them walk across a stage and get their diploma. And, of course, everybody has a black aunt, grandmother, or distant cousin that is always “praying” for them. Speaking from experience, statistics can’t even begin to describe what makes the black family the black family or to capture the love that is shared between its members.

While I may not agree with all of the following bullet points, here are some plausible explanations that may be responsible for the decline in the number of black women getting married, and which may be worthy of further discussion in the future:

• The social and professional pressure to get married is often greater in the white community among the highly educated than it is in the black community. When I started working at my first law firm, nearly all of the white men in my entering class were married. In corporate America, married people seemed to be viewed as having a greater investment (e.g. more to lose) in the job and as being more stable.

• The economic benefits of marriage can sometimes be greater for highly educated whites than blacks. Given the disproportional allocation of wealth in America, marriage may be especially important for whites when accumulated wealth, inheritances, legacy, etc. are at stake.

• Although blacks are not marrying one another in as great of numbers, they may be cohabiting or living together as common law wife and husband, due in part to social policies that arose in the 1950s, which provided greater government benefits to households headed by single women.

• The pressure on black women with advanced degrees to succeed may be far greater than their white female counterparts (e.g. a black woman who has JD/MBA may find that she is under greater pressure to put career before settling down, because she has become an example not only to her family, but her community)

• The decline in black marriage rates could also be temporary. Black men and women are new to this higher education thing and it may take some time and adjustment for the sexes to learn to co-exist as a family unit given the nontraditional roles each is expected to take on and the lack of role models in this area.

• Finally, marriage takes work and maybe black women are just choosing alternative lifestyles that satisfy their preferences. One of my best friends from college, who lives in Miami and is pushing a convertible Benz, would not trade her lifestyle today for a Sierra minivan covered with juice stains and crushed cheerios, and two kids in the suburbs.

So, I implore future “researchers”, that if we’re going to have this conversation again, can we at least get Weezy or Kells to do the remix, because this record is played out..

Always keeping it 100,

CT