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