so for the past month i’ve been bombarded with all these articles and interviews about how highly educated black women are least likely to get married and how if they do they’re gonna get divorced and how there aren’t enough Black men to go around and I have to wonder if this is a stereotype threat.  Basically stereotype threat is the fear that you’re going to fulfill stereotypes of your demographic (but only after you’ve heard about it). An example: Black kids do poorly on a standardized test after a researcher mentions that Black kids typically don’t do well on this type of test, another group of black kids does better on the same test – these kids don’t get the lecture about how Black kids do bad on the test.  Google scholar it.

Anywhoo, I’m wondering if all this talk about Black women not getting married is becoming a self fulfilling prophecy and if we wouldn’t have been better off it other people weren’t making such a big deal about it.  I wonder if the knowledge of and belief in the “threat” of us not getting married ever is (part of) the reason why so few of us are.

Blah.

peace,
e.