Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovich on Bloomberg Radio. No dabt
Speaker 1: about it. Understanding our world and how it ticks or
Speaker 1: doesn't involves a deeper understanding of all the sections, division,
Speaker 1: subsets and groups that truly make up a country, and
Speaker 1: that includes, as a new book points out, the forty
Speaker 1: five percent of Black women and men in the US
Speaker 1: that have never been married and that represent a compositional
Speaker 1: shift in the black middle class. So let's get to
Speaker 1: it with doctor Chris Marsh, Associate professor at the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland. Her book The Love Jones Cohort, Single and
Speaker 1: Living Alone in the Black middle Class is with Us.
Speaker 1: She joins us via zoom in Maryland with Us as
Speaker 1: well Bloomberg Media Editorial Head of Inclusive Programming, Chartia Brantley.
Speaker 1: She is also Deputy bureau chief here at Bloomberg Knew
Speaker 1: She's in our studio, doctor March. So great to have
Speaker 1: you here with Shartilla and myself, Chartia bringing you and
Speaker 1: your book to our attention. So we're grateful to her
Speaker 1: for that. The title Schartia knew what it meant I didn't.
Speaker 1: It came from a movie, So explain it. The Love
Speaker 1: Jones Cohort, what it's all about. Yes, it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: to be with you today. So the Love Jones Cohort.
Speaker 1: The title comes from a movie called Love Jones. When
Speaker 1: we think of like the quintessential black middle class family
Speaker 1: or upper Black middle class family, we often default to
Speaker 1: the Huxtables on The Cosby Show. But the Love Jones
Speaker 1: is where we started to see a demographic shift away
Speaker 1: from married couples to young Black professionals who weren't married
Speaker 1: and didn't have any children. So the demographics in the
Speaker 1: movie Love Jones is who I'm really trying to talk
Speaker 1: about in the book, and cohort is nothing more than
Speaker 1: a demographic term that means a band of people. Now
Speaker 1: I'm flipping through your book and I cannot wait to
Speaker 1: read a page by page from beginning to end. And
Speaker 1: in many ways it feels like a textbook but has
Speaker 1: a lot of personal stories. Just reading the profiles of
Speaker 1: the more than sixty people you spoke to, I felt
Speaker 1: like I know them because many of them are people
Speaker 1: that I know in my life, my family members, my friends.
Speaker 1: And your book has been described as quote a structural
Speaker 1: understanding of how identities of race, class, gender, and singleness
Speaker 1: reconfigure the black middle class. So can you break that
Speaker 1: down for us, doctor Marsh? Absolutely. So. A lot of times,
Speaker 1: especially like in Black America, yea professional black women, and
Speaker 1: people often ask the professional black woman, why aren't you married?
Speaker 1: Why don't you have any children? And so if we're
Speaker 1: not careful, it becomes the very individual conversation, and so
Speaker 1: people in the quote board to feel like, something's wrong
Speaker 1: with me. I'm not married, I don't have any children.
Speaker 1: What was me? Something's wrong with me? And so I'm
Speaker 1: trying to move it away from an individual conversation to
Speaker 1: a way more structural conversation to suggest that structural forces
Speaker 1: constrain our personal choices, but differently, racism constrains our dating pool.
Speaker 1: So if I, Chris Marsh, but a PhD wants to
Speaker 1: marry a heterosexual black man with another PhD, my dating
Speaker 1: pool is constrained. If I want to marry a black
Speaker 1: man with a PhD who owns a home, I'm constrained.
Speaker 1: PhD with the home and estate planning, I'm constrained. So
Speaker 1: it's a structural argument that we need to think about
Speaker 1: when we talk about singlehood, we can't just keep it
Speaker 1: at the individual level, and that's what the book really
Speaker 1: tries to do. Chris, what's the difference between black, single
Speaker 1: black individuals and single white individuals? Because I would argue
Speaker 1: that there's a fair amount of white individuals who feel
Speaker 1: the same thing that I go to a family reunion
Speaker 1: and they're like, wait, you're not married, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: Or you know what's going on? So what's the difference?
Speaker 1: And why is it important that we're you're writing about
Speaker 1: this and singling it out right. So that's a really
Speaker 1: great question. And so the point is that this book
Speaker 1: is for everybody. It's not just for people that are
Speaker 1: single and living alone in the black middle class. It's
Speaker 1: for anybody who has been single. And for the record,
Speaker 1: we've all been single at one point in time, and
Speaker 1: it's just for us to think about out single hood
Speaker 1: and more nuanced kind of ways. Now. I inserted myself
Speaker 1: into the conversation at the black middle class junction because
Speaker 1: what happens is that these are people who have quote
Speaker 1: unquote done everything right. They've they've gone to school, got
Speaker 1: big degrees, got big salaries, got big houses, or have
Speaker 1: big houses but they don't have the mrs degree in
Speaker 1: some cases for black women, and so it's important that
Speaker 1: we understand the social context. We do have a rise
Speaker 1: in single hood across the board, but I would argue
Speaker 1: that maybe some people are coming to single hood by
Speaker 1: choice and some of them are coming to single hood
Speaker 1: by force, regardless of how they're getting there. We need
Speaker 1: to have a more nuanced conversation about single hood and
Speaker 1: destigmatize singlehood. People aren't people don't want to hold the
Speaker 1: title of single that they're going to get into relationships
Speaker 1: that are oppressive, unfulfilling, toxic, abusive simply because they don't
Speaker 1: want to hold the title of single. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to destigmatize singlehood and have people stand confidently in their
Speaker 1: single hood regardless of you're black, white, and stripe or purple. Now,
Speaker 1: I feel that your book works to counter the narrative that,
Speaker 1: you know, black women need to be married and be
Speaker 1: a part of a you know too person household in
Speaker 1: order to uphold the economic stability of the black middle class.
Speaker 1: What has been the response to your book so far?
Speaker 1: What are you hearing so? Yeah, So that is really
Speaker 1: a great question, and some people and I get hate mail.
Speaker 1: Some people are like, you're bad for Black America, You're
Speaker 1: you must be a man hater, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. I explicitly say in the book that I
Speaker 1: am not anti marriage. I am all about marriage. I'm
Speaker 1: all about love. I'm all about black love. However, if
Speaker 1: it's done right, everything that we consume is cater to
Speaker 1: a marriage and a partnered market big screen, small screen,
Speaker 1: social media, and so sometimes people will just get into
Speaker 1: relationships because their conditioned to think that's what I absolutely
Speaker 1: need to be in. And I'm saying, hold on, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, these people are. There are people that are single,
Speaker 1: they're very happy in their single hood, and they're learning
Speaker 1: how to live full lives and have wonderful lifestyles. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about their lifestyles. Let's not leave the conversation
Speaker 1: at why aren't you married, why don't you have each children,
Speaker 1: because that's a very deficit model. Let's talk about what
Speaker 1: you are doing and how you're navigating single hood. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that comes up a reoccurring theme
Speaker 1: is that friends play a sensual role in how they
Speaker 1: navigate their single hood lifestyle. I just think back to
Speaker 1: some of the conversations i've had in my own family
Speaker 1: over the holidays, and you're living this, right. I have
Speaker 1: lived this the questions you know, why aren't you doing this?
Speaker 1: And you accomplish so much, you know, I went to
Speaker 1: college and obtained two masters and the bachelor's and then
Speaker 1: I still get but you're not married and you don't
Speaker 1: have any children, so you know, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: We've come so far and yet we haven't. Hey, listen,
Speaker 1: we just have about a minute left here. What do
Speaker 1: you hope people who are listening take this conversation? And
Speaker 1: what actions do you hope come out of this? And again,
Speaker 1: just kind of had a minute left. Three quick things. One,
Speaker 1: I want us to destigmatize singlehood. I want people to
Speaker 1: stand confidently in their singlehood and don't think they have
Speaker 1: to be partnered or married. Two, I want you to
Speaker 1: ask married people why are they married? And stop asking
Speaker 1: single people why they're single. If you're going to ask
Speaker 1: the people why, why are your marriage? Why? Ask the
Speaker 1: money and wait for a coherent response. And then, more importantly,
Speaker 1: I want us to think about how we define family
Speaker 1: and so if you're single and living alone, why can't
Speaker 1: you be a family of one? There's advantages to be
Speaker 1: able to labeled as a family. A benign example would
Speaker 1: be a self phone family plan. I can't get a
Speaker 1: self phone family plan. I want to discount on my
Speaker 1: one phone. A more egregious example would be the tax structure.
Speaker 1: There's a singlehood penalty that's built into the tax structure.
Speaker 1: Dorothy Roberts would a great, great book, The Whiteness of Wealth,
Speaker 1: and she argues that we should all file a single
Speaker 1: and I'm like, if we can't all file the single,
Speaker 1: we should all be able to file as family and
Speaker 1: I want to be able to file as of one.
Speaker 1: We have talked with her Dorothy Room, Yeah exactly, and
Speaker 1: talked about her book. Um, what a treat. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much doctor Chris marsh Over at the University of
Speaker 1: Maryland her book The Love Jones Cohort. Such a treat
Speaker 1: and our thanks to our Chartilla Brantley as well. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg Radio