Black women, black love : America's war on African American marriage

Title:

Author:

Stewart, Dianne M., author.

Personal Author:

Stewart, Dianne M., author.

ISBN:

9781580058186

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

vii, 326 pages ; 25 cm

Abstract:

"According to the 2010 US Census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried today. Sweeping in scope and expansively researched, Black Women, Black Love reveals how four hundred years of the laws, policies, and customs have createdthat crisis for Black women in America today. Stewart begins her investigative analysis in the earliest years of the slave state, showing that American slavery could only flourish if its stakeholders strategically disrupted and even extinguished Black love. A new wave of violence split up couples once again as millions embarked on the Great Migration to northern cities. There, they found that the welfare system of the twentieth century continued to suppress Black marriage, mandating that women remain single in order to receive government support. Yet no institution has perfected America's project of forbidding Black love with as much methodical precision as the contemporary prison industrial complex. Mass incarceration removed Black men en masse from thepool of marriageable partners, forcing Black women to forge whatever intimacy they could through prison bars, on collect phone calls, and during visiting hours. Revealing these continued assaults on the most precious and powerful of liberties, Black Women, Black Love is a cri de coeur that draws a straight line from generations of oppression to today's crisis of Black companionship. It is at once a compelling accounting of the lasting damage done to black wealth and selfhood, and a stirring call for thecultural and policy changes necessary to unshackle Black love at last"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

African Americans -- Marriage.

African American women.

African American families.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

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Summary

In this analysis of social history, examine the complex lineage of America's oppression of Black companionship.
According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis.
Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system mandated that women remain single in order to receive government support. And no institution has forbidden Black love as effectively as the prison-industrial complex, which removes Black men en masse from the pool of marriageable partners.
Prodigiously researched and deeply felt, Black Women, Black Love reveals how white supremacy has systematically broken the heart of Black America, and it proposes strategies for dismantling the structural forces that have plagued Black love and marriage for centuries.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

A professor of religion and African American studies offers a compelling look at Black women's love relationships through a historical lens. As Stewart notes, 70% of Black American women are unmarried, largely due to circumstance rather than by choice. The author examines the social, economic, and cultural conditions for heterosexual Black women who want to fall in love and get married but have few prospects as a result of historical, systemic problems that have plagued their love relationships and marriage outcomes since slavery. Love, coupling, and marriage among enslaved people were burdened by "expectations of fracture" due to the sale of a loved one or other separations. In painstaking and painful detail, Stewart chronicles how even after Emancipation, the likelihood of domestic terror in the form of lynchings, torture, and the wholesale massacre of thriving Black communities "haunted Black couples and families well into the twentieth century." Those who did survive bore the burdens and restrictions inherent in the systems of patriarchal marriage and unrelenting poverty. Further, abusive federal and state "man-in-the-house" policies targeted Black women, stripping their families of public assistance benefits if boyfriends or husbands were present in the home. Such policies essentially punished Black women for seeking companionship and romantic love, denying them vital sources of "financial and emotional support." Not surprisingly, Black marriage rates declined significantly in the 1960s and '70s. But the most pernicious impact on Black love and marriage has been wrought by mass incarceration. More than twice as many Black men were under correctional control in 2013 than were enslaved in 1850. Stewart interweaves such eye-opening statistics with engrossing personal narratives of contemporary and enslaved women whose lives (and deaths) are a testament to the complexity of Black women's quests for love and a celebration of their resilience in the face of daunting odds. A beautiful, strikingly original work that is both scholarly and deeply moving. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.