Book
Black women, Black love : America's war on African American marriage
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
New York, NY : Seal Press, Hachette Book Group, 2020.
Physical Description
vii, 326 pages ; 25 cm
Summary
"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 created that 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 the pool 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 the cultural and policy changes necessary to unshackle Black love at last"--
Contents
- Jumping the broom : racial slavery and America's roots of forbidden black love
- Slow violence and white America's reign of terror
- Love and welfare : Johnnie Tillmon and the struggle to preserve poor black families
- Black love in captivity : mass incarceration and the depletion of the African American marriage market
- Will black women ever have it all? Michelle Obama, Kheris Rogers, and African Americans' shifting landscapes of love
- Being Mary Jane ... or not.