Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage

by Dianne M Stewart

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580058186
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	97,848
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Dianne Stewart is an associate professor of religion and African American studies at Emory University, where she created the course Black Love. She earned her MDiv from Harvard Divinity School and her PhD in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Jumping the Broom: Racial Slavery and America's Roots of Forbidden Black Love 15

Chapter 2 Slow Violence and White America's Reign of Terror 59

Chapter 3 Love and Welfare: Johnnie Tillmon and the Struggle to Preserve Poor Black Families 107

Chapter 4 Black Love in Captivity: Mass Incarceration and the Depletion of the African American Marriage Market 139

Chapter 5 Will Black Women Ever Have It All? Michelle Obama, Kheris Rogers, and African Americans' Shifting Landscapes of Love 181

Afterword: Being Mary Jane … or Not 233

Acknowledgments 239

Notes 245

Index 311

Editorial Reviews

08/17/2020

Stewart (Three Eyes for the Journey), a professor of religion and African American studies at Emory University, examines the “structural forces” that have led to disproportionately low marriage and high divorce rates among heterosexual African Americans in this thought-provoking account. She characterizes “Black women’s lack of options for suitable love and partnership with Black men” as “America’s most hidden civil rights issue,” and traces the root causes back to slave laws that deprived African American women of the right to control their romantic and reproductive lives. After the Civil War, Stewart writes, federal and state authorities established parameters for “legitimate” marriage that didn’t necessarily reflect Black experiences or desires, and racially motivated violence undermined marital and family stability. Stewart also reveals how allegations of “welfare fraud” have been used to shape Black women’s behavior to a white patriarchal model, notes the devastating effects of racial bias in the justice system, and critiques self-help solutions to Black women’s romantic challenges offered by TV shows like Being Mary Jane. Though she writes in an academic register, Stewart folds in intriguing personal reflections and pop culture analysis. The result is a well-documented and persuasive case that supporting Black love and marriage is a key step in unwinding racial inequality in America. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Stewart marshals substantial evidence to back up her thesis—proof of a centuries-long assault on Black love and marriage that in her hands takes the form of persuasive case histories of women, past and present.... It offers a fresh and surprising look at the economic, spiritual, structural and emotional constraints on the hundreds of thousands of Black women for whom love and marriage are neither blithely expected nor easy. In that, it feels not so much necessary as needed.”—New York Times

"Powerful, persuasive, and devastatingly haunting. Dianne M. Stewart has placed a historical and structural lens on the most personal, intimate areas of our lives and brought them into clear focus."—Carol Anderson, New York Times-bestselling author of White Rage

"Black Women, Black Love is profoundly necessary and long overdue. Dianne M. Stewart decimates popular myths about Black love and marriage. She reveals through data, history, and compelling storytelling that structural racism and patriarchy — beginning with slavery and continuing through racist welfare policies, mass incarceration, and more — have consistently thwarted the efforts of Black women to marry and sustain healthy, loving relationships."—Michelle Alexander, New York Times-bestselling author of The New Jim Crow

"Dianne M. Stewart's compelling Black Women, Black Love is the first Black feminist/womanist analysis of the structural barriers that make marriage for heterosexual African American women elusive, even impossible, within a racist, sexist America. In painstaking detail, she makes the provocative case that our persistent marital dilemmas over four centuries should be seen as a hidden civil rights issue. Her exploration of the concept of 'forbidden Black love' is nuanced, moving, and attentive to a broad range of variables. Personal narratives enhance her solid, though unsettling, arguments about America's persistent war on Black marriage, as well as 'undesired singlehood' for generations of women who love Black men."—Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies, Spelman College, and coauthor of Gender Talk

From the Publisher

★ 10/01/2020

Based on her "Black Love" seminar at Emory University, this latest book by Stewart (Three Eyes for the Journey) is an incisive history of Black companionship, beginning with the separation of families during slavery. As Stewart states, family ties were severed in Africa, with husbands and wives on separate slave ships, and, later, on auction blocks in colonial America. Using extensive primary sources, the author shows how slavery made marriage unworkable as spouses, or children, could be separated at any time, with many never known each other's fate. This isn't an easy read, and it shouldn't be—Stewart skillfully relates Black women's lack of autonomy during slavery and how they have been blamed for their own victimization. Later chapters describe the lasting impact of lynchings during Jim Crow, leading to an increase in widows, followed by migrant marriages during the Great Migration and, ultimately, racist welfare policies and mass incarceration in the late 20th century. Noting that Black women are least likely to marry than other races, Stewart contends that we must address oppressive ideologies that paint Black women as undesirable, as well as colorism within our own community. VERDICT Filling a need for research on Black love and marriage, this seminal social history will enlighten a variety of readers.—Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Library Journal

★ 2020-07-22
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.

Kirkus Reviews

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