This is the number of abortions in America by race, going back to 1973, through 2004:
Abortions for Black and White Women, 1973-2004
Source: Black Americans: A Statistical Sourcebook 2009. Based on information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
These numbers raise the question: why do black women have abortions at such a higher rate than white women?
The answer seems to be twofold: black women are more likely to have unintended pregnancies; and back women are more likely to feel they lack the maturity or resources to raise a child.
One comment I’ve heard on this subject is that, unfortunately, many pregnant black women use abortion as a kind of birth control. They never intended to have a child. But because they didn’t take effective steps to prevent the pregnancy on the “front end,” they wind up having to terminate the pregnancy on the back end.
The abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level ($9,570 for a single woman with no children) is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level (44 vs. 10 abortions per 1,000 women). This is partly because the rate of unintended pregnancies among poor women (below 100% of poverty) is nearly four times that of women above 200% of poverty* (112 vs. 29 per 1,000 women).
Most people know of slavery, but we don’t know about slavery. Specifically, we don’t know how dehumanizing it was to be a slave.
We might understand what it’s like to be denied freedom or dignity at an intellectual level. But for many of us, we don’t have a grasp on how horrible the institution was, in the day to day life of an enslaved person. Most of us don’t “get” what it was about inhuman bondage that made it so inhuman.
For example: what was it like to be slave mother?
Some insights on this are given in the book Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South, by Marie Jenkins Schwartz. The book tells the history of a somewhat esoteric subject: the need of slaveholders, and the doctors they hired, to control and manage the bodies and reproductive lives of slave women.
But while the subject is esoteric, the details of how this played out in plantation life are chilling and disturbing.
Cover of Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South by Marie Jenkins Schwartz.
The first chapter of the book, titled “Procreation,” has a gripping account of the stakes involved in the reproductive ability of slave women. I’ve provided some excerpts from that chapter below. Upon reading this, you will understand how lacking in humanity and dignity this peculiar institution was:
…an important aspect of slavery… has been all too often ignored: slaveholders expected to appropriate and exploit the reproductive lives of enslaved women. Control of one’s body was not a fundamental right of slaves. Emboldened by law and custom to do with human chattels as they wished, (slave) owners felt entitled to intervene in even the most intimate of matters. Women’s childbearing capacity became a commodity that could be traded on the open market.
During the antebellum era the expectation increased among members of the owning class that enslaved women would contribute to the economic success of the plantation not only through productive labor but also through procreation. The idea was at once both powerful and seductive and shaped the way women experienced enslavement, the way owners thought about the future of slavery, and the way doctors practiced medicine.
As of 1808, when Congress ended the nation’s participation in the international slave trade… the only practical way of increasing the number of slave laborers was through new births. If enslaved mothers did not bear sufficient numbers of children to take the place of aged and dying workers, the South could not continue as a slave society.
***
Women entering their childbearing years-especially those who had proven their fertility through the birth of a baby-sold easily and for a high price. Former slave Boston Blackwell, who witnessed the sale of two women in Memphis, Tennessee, reported that a girl of fifteen who had no children sold for $800, but a breeding woman sold for $1,500.
Human reproduction was so important to the continuation of slavery that members of the South’s ruling class willed their heirs the unborn children of slaves as well as living people. Anna Matilda King of Georgia assured her daughter that she would inherit not only the slave Christiann but also “her child and future children.” This wish to benefit future generations of slaveholding families pressed owners to look for ways of ensuring that enslaved mothers bore plenty of children. “If it was not for my children I would not care what became of the negroes,” Elizabeth Scott Neblett wrote her absent husband during the Civil War… Neblett maintained that she would gladly do without slaves to save the bother of managing them, but for her children’s sake she could not let them go. Continue reading →
How do you measure the quality of life in broad terms for nations, or large groups within nations?
Most quantitative measures of quality of life are based on standard of living statistics, which in turn are based mostly on income or other purely economic factors.
A group called the Human Development Project (the Project) finds fault with that approach, saying that other measures are needed to truly understand how well people are living:
The indicators most frequently deployed in evaluating public welfare-GDP, the Dow Jones and NASDAQ, consumer spending and the like-only address one aspect of the American experience.
The human development model emphasizes the broader, everyday experience of ordinary people, including the economic, social, legal, psychological, cultural, environmental processes that shape the range of options available to us.
This approach has gained support around the world as a valuable tool in analyzing the well-being of large population groups.
The Project has developed a rating system called the Human Development Index which measures achievement in three basic categories:
• long and healthy life (as indicated by life expectancy at birth)
• access to knowledge (indicated by al degree attainment and school enrollment)
• decent standard of living (indicated by median earnings)
By applying these measures, the Project has developed the following Human Development Index scores for the United States, by race and gender:
American Human Development Index (HD) Rankings by Race and Gender, 2005
* Enrollment can exceed 100% if persons 25 years old or more are enrolled in school. Source:The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009
Most of us are familiar with the “shortage of eligible black males issue” in the black community. It’s been talked about on Oprah and in other places; check out this video from Oprah, which says that 70% of African American women are single:
James Flynn, who has written extensively on issues of race, class, and IQ, has recently published the book Where Have all the Liberals Gone?: Race, Class and Ideals in America. Among numerous topics, the book offers several insights on the social conditions of African Americans. This table on the “Marriage Market” for American women is especially noteworthy:
Table: Marriage Prospects of Women (Ages 25-40)
For every 100 White Women there are…
86 promising potential spouses (shortfall = 14)
• 80 in adequate civilian employment
• 2 in the military
• 4 men who have married in from another race
20 unpromising potential spouses
• 16 not in adequate civilian employment
• 1 in jail/prison
• 3 white men married someone of another race
For every 100 Black Women there are…
57 promising potential spouses (shortfall = 43)
• 53 in adequate civilian employment
• 2 in the military
• 2 men who have married in from another race
39 unpromising potential spouses
• 24 not in adequate civilian employment
• 10 in jail/prison
• 5 black men married someone of another race
4 unavailable potential spouses
• 4 either deceased or missing
For every 100 Hispanic Women there are…
99 promising spouses (Actually 96) (shortfall = 4) • 89 in adequate civilian employment
• 1 in the military
• 9 men who have married in from another race
30 unpromising spouses
• 18 not in adequate civilian employment
• 3 in jail/prison
• 9 Hispanic married someone of another race
…
This slightly edited excerpt from the book explains the numbers:
The above table sets out the plight of black women in contemporary America. For every 100 black women in the peak ages of marriage, there are only 57 men who promise to be permanent and supporting partners.
The criterion for “promising spouse” for black women is that a male is black and worked more than 26 weeks in the previous year or was in the armed forces; those few non-blacks who have a black wife are also assumed to qualify. Those who do not qualify are black males in prison, those who worked 26 weeks or less, and those who have a non-black wife.
Notice that promising + unpromising spouses do not add up to zero. This is because, in the case of black women, there are far fewer black males than black females because many black males are dead or missing. My survey shows that about 94 black men exist for every 100 black women aged 25 to 40.
The Hispanic surplus of males is huge because there are so many more male immigrants.
Note that, only 2.19% of black women today are living with a non-black husband. Indeed, black women are losers from whatever interracial marriage exits: five black men leave the pool of potential spouses to partner with non-black women, while only two black women find a long-term spouse outside their race.
I hope to provide additional passages from the book in the next few weeks.
Update: This is how some black women are coping with this problem:
Thousands of people, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of people, were part of the Civil Rights Movement. Some, like Martin Luther King, Jr., have a national holiday to honor their memory. Some are folks whose heroism has been lost to time. But they should all be cited and celebrated as often as possible.
That’s why it’s been a joy for me to read DAISY BATES: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas, by Grif Stockley. Who was Daisy Bates? Consider this description of her from the book:
As a college-educated white Arkansan remembered in 2002, “Daisy Bates was our Osama Bin Ladin.” As outrageous and grimly ludicrous as this comparison is, it captures the emotions of the white community at the time.
And what did Bates do that made her comparable to a mass-murdering terrorist? She wanted to make it possible for black children and white children to go to school together in the 1950s. Such was the insanity of her times.
Daisy Bates, Arkansas Civil Rights Activist
Bates’s main notoriety is from her role as the “advisor” to the Little Rock Nine. A history of Bates is here and here; there are many others on the Internet. But I want to share a passage from the book by Stockley that tells a great story.
The NAACP will hold its 99th Annual Convention on July 12-17 in Cincinnati. The theme of the Convention is “Power, Justice, Freedom, Vote.” More than 8,000 NAACP members, delegates and visitors are expected to attend.
Although there are many who doubt the relevance and effectiveness of the NAACP, it still has enough pull to attract two prominent guests: Sen Barack Obama will speak to the convention on July 14, and Sen John McCain will speak on July 16. More information on the Convention is here; but be aware that some of the information at that link is outdated (as of July 8, it incorrectly showed that Obama will speak on July 17… it’s hard to understand why nobody’s updated that web page yet).
Two black Democrats are big-time dark horses in their races for political office-pun intended.
It is great to see so many in the Afrosphere/Afrospear stand up for Michelle Obama. She has been the subject of many attacks that seem to be uniquely based on her ethnic origin.
Look at the image of angry black women on television. Politically you have Maxine Waters of California, liberal Democrat. She’s always angry every time she gets on television. Cynthia McKinney, another angry black woman. And who are the black women you see on the local news at night in cities all over the country. They’re usually angry about something. They’ve had a son who has been shot in a drive-by shooting. They are angry at Bush. So you don’t really have a profile of non-angry black women. — Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas on Michelle Obama being an “angry black woman,” FOX News Watch, June 14.
Black people have long had to live with the stigma that we’re rougher and more horrifying than other people. That somehow we’re more violent and scary and immoral, stereotypes that have existed since wealthy white landowners had to come up with excuses why it was OK to enslave an entire group of people. Black men are menacing and black women are vulgar harridans, screaming obscenities while engaging ball busting.
Many were appalled at Cal Thomas for bringing up the “angry black woman” meme, viewing it as both racist and sexist, and it is. When other women speak their mind, they’re just talking. When a black woman says why she’s proud of America after seeing the results of her husband’s historical campaign she’s an awful witch who wants to destroy all white people. The complete 360 degree turn of hyperbole is attempted over and over again. And with so few images of black women in the media it’s easy to fall back on old stereotypes — the whore, the mammy and the bitch.
Michelle Obama is too chaste and married to be a whore, too independent and smart to be a mammy, so all that’s left is the bitch. And that is the category all educated, independent minded, straight-no-chaser women, black or white, are put in.
The Jack and Jill web site asks, where are the feminists who defended Hillary Clinton against sexists attacks, and why aren’t they defending Michelle Obama? It’s a good question, and there hasn’t been a good answer that I’ve seen.
Heck, even Laura Bush has defended Michelle Obama.
Meanwhile, the Michelle Obama Watch site has been created to, in the site’s words, to be “a repository of all of the criticism, praise, and general chicanery thrown at Michelle Obama between now and November.” It’s worth a quick look.
All Other Persons 