
"Marriage is for white people" - andreyf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500029.html
======
lionhearted
> Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a
> package deal that comes with marriage.

The American legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men.
A man can try to be a good father and husband, do nothing wrong except be a
bit of a putz, then his wife divorces him, gets full custody of the kids, and
30-50% of his after-tax income. She receives more money if he doesn't get
custody of the kids, so women who don't like a man often fight for that.

So people mention prenups as a way to make sure these things are understood.
Unfortunately, prenuptial agreements "that weren't fair enough" routinely get
thrown out of court. If the prenup was "under duress", it gets thrown out.
That includes the man saying he won't get married without the prenup - that
means it was under duress and coerced, toss that sucker, split everything up.

Now most guys give it a try anyway, and say, "Well, I'm different, I'm going
to have a stronger relationship and do xyz and zyx and...." - and that's
admirable. But a lot of people look at the courts and want nothing to do with
it. Anyone who is familiar with how otherwise good and nice people act when
they're given ridiculous leverage and power gets a little scared at the court
system.

There's other factors. But black people know this. I had the radio on
yesterday, and "celebrity news" came on. A rapper named Nas - black man who
was married to a black woman - is now getting divorced. One child. He's got to
pay $150,000 _per month_ in alimony and child support.

Some teenager hears that on the radio, thinks it's crazy, and decides he's
rather uninterested in marriage. If the laws were made less brutal, I think
you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more
children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down.
Certainly, it'd be hard to make something worse than the current state of
affairs.

~~~
jacquesm
The American legal system has lots of things that are very hard to explain to
foreigners. The sheer amount of case law and the jury system make for lots of
income for lawyers and very little justice.

Child support should be limited to what it actually costs to rear a child, not
some arbitrary multiple of that.

~~~
pyre
It varies from child to child. If someone's child is in some rich boarding
school, I personally think they should be allowed to continue on at that
school unless it is financially infeasible for both parents to live apart and
still afford it.

If the 'bare minimum' of raising a child is $300/month, then I don't think
they the child should necessarily be forced out of their school and into the
public school system or something just _because_ that's the bare minimum. I
think that these factor should be taken into account.

disclaimer: I am _not_ a rich person, nor do I have any children.

{edit} That said, if the monthly child-support is determined to be really high
based on the child going to an expensive school, the child-support payment
should be reduced if the custodial parent decides to pull the child out of
that school for a cheaper one {/edit}

------
patio11
At the risk of stepping on a landmine, what if the issue isn't so much black
people aren't marrying as (a large portion of) black men are unmarriagable?
(Unemployed or underemployed, have drug problems, involved with the criminal
justice system, etc. Pick any socioeconomic system you want to look at, young
single black males do not come out looking great in aggregate.)

Combine that with a cultural norm in (a large portion of) the black community
to not get married outside of one's race, and you'd expect to see this.

You could construct other situations where marriagable women outnumber
marriagable men and see what that does to the marriage rates, too. Example:
college practically anywhere in the United States in the 2000s, compared to
college in past generations. When the population is about fifty-fifty
male/female, the equilibrium favors a lot of pairings. When it is 60/40 F/M,
at least 1/3 of women are structurally incapable of being in a traditional
monogamous relationship. (Then add in the cultural change that happens once
some portion of men realize this and act on it -- the "hookup culture".)

~~~
RK
_Combine that with a cultural norm in (a large portion of) the black community
to not get married outside of one's race, and you'd expect to see this._

You'll notice that the author never suggests that black women look to men in
the other 78% of the US population for a potential husband. I guess that would
be worse than never getting married.

~~~
RK
Edit: should be other 87% of the US population.

------
Mz
"How have we gotten here? What has shifted in African American customs, in our
community, in our consciousness, that has made marriage seem unnecessary or
unattainable?"

Well, for one thing: Welfare. Welfare was created at a time when most poor,
single moms were "the deserving poor" -- ie widowed -- and having a child out
of wedlock was a big taboo and hardly done. Welfare, while well-meaning, was
(unfortunately) designed in a manner that rewards women for becoming poor,
single moms -- and thus actively grew the population that fits this profile by
changing the social contract. Although (iirc) most people on welfare are
white, the small amount of money involved in getting food stamps and welfare
is more alluring to people who are very poor and live in neighborhoods where
the mentality is one of hopelessness, with no expectation that one can get
ahead honestly. Add in the fact that blacks are "last hired, first fired" and
the tendency for young black males to be the biggest victim of that reality,
and you have a situation ripe for developing a culture where a woman has a
baby by one man, gets on welfare, breaks up with him and then finds a
different boyfriend -- in part because a father is expected to provide for his
kids (and gets booted out the door when he cannot) but mom's new boyfriend is
seen as generous for doing anything for the kids, even if he doesn't actually
provide for them. "Gifts" are enough.

There are some books, articles and studies about such things. I've read a fair
amount of stuff like that over the years.

On the upside, I've seen some stuff that indicates that black women tend to
have more say in how the money is spent when they are part of a couple than
white women do. The paychecks of black women are more needed for a black
couple to make it at all. The paycheck of a married white woman who has kids
is more likely to be seen as "fun money" -- something the family can spend on
vacations and other extras but not really needed for basic necessities -- and
this tends to carry with it less "voting" power when financial decisions are
made.

------
nopassrecover
What is the American obsession with race? I'm sure there's a more useful
explanation behind these rates (perhaps family tradition of marriage, income,
place of living etc. etc.).

~~~
9oliYQjP
I'm not American, but Americans get a bad rap on race relations. Go to other
westernized countries and racism is far more systemic. I mean for crying out
loud, you have the gypsies all across Europe who are marginalized, Spanish
fans taunting a black F1 driver with the "N" word, Japan is a completely
xenophobic mess, etc. All otherwise comparable countries in terms of standard
of living. Except the United States is in a state where most races live side-
by-side and tolerate each other. No, things aren't perfect and people aren't
fully accepting of each other. It's 2009, but interracial marriage is still
bothersome to some folks. But honestly, the United States gets a really unfair
reputation for having poor race relations. Say what you will, but at least
Americans don't sweep their race relation problems under a rug like some other
countries.

~~~
noonespecial
As an American with lots of time abroad, I can second this. Americans _are_
extremely uptight when it comes to race, but that might be a _good thing_.
With all of the talk in America about race, you might start to expect, as I
have caught myself doing several times, that the US must be a race relations
disaster. Upon returning, I was shocked to rediscover that it wasn't any worse
than the other places I'd been, and in many cases better.

The thing I really like about Americans, is they're just don't throw up their
hands and say "oh well, that's the way its always been, can't do anything to
change it now." (The gypsies definitely come to mind here) For better or
worse, they try.

------
alanthonyc
Many of the conclusions drawn about marriage apply to many
Americans...regardless of race.

------
gcheong
"He believes that his presence and example in the home is why both his sons
decided to marry when their girlfriends became pregnant."

How about just not getting girls pregnant in the first place?

------
andreyf
I'm really torn between whether this is about those crazy black kids that
won't get off my lawn, or the future our society is heading in... ideas?

~~~
sown
Maybe it'll be like europe some how where people seem to not get married in
large numbers.

~~~
eru
And they do not get a lot of kids either. (In most parts.) Though that does
not seem to correlate. Fertility in Scandinavia is relatively high for
European standards, and they do not care too much about wedlock any longer.

------
nazgulnarsil
don't get government sanctioned contracts involved in personal relationships.
doubly so if you aren't even religious.

people used to get married out of necessity and social pressure. that
necessity is disappearing.

------
thras
I wouldn't worry. Whites are going down the crapper pretty fast too. Take a
look at this chart: <http://blog.american.com/?p=714>

Marriage is for wealth-preservers and wealth-creators. That's not the
direction that society is trending.

------
steveeq1
And how does this relate to hacker news?

~~~
kqr2
From the HN guidelines:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

~~~
asdlfj2sd33
The HN-worthiness of this article aside, I continue to be amazed just how
quickly and how far anyone who posits the question is down voted.

It's surprising how all the diverse interests here share such an extreme
intolerance for this meta discussion. It's a fascinating dynamic.

~~~
swolchok
pg says it's boring. I'm increasingly inclined to agree.

------
skwaddar
Blacks and their slavery shoulder chip, GET OVER IT

Newsflash : "more Irish were sold as slaves to the American colonies and
plantations from 1651 to 1660 than the total existing “free” population of the
Americas"

<http://www.ewtn.com/library/HUMANITY/SLAVES.TXT>

<http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm>

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another
300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland's population fell from about 1,500,000 to
600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did
not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the
Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children.
Britain's solution was to auction them off as well.

During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14
were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia
and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were
sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also
transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that
2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English
settlers.

[http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-
the-...](http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-
hercules/the-irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white-slaves/)

~~~
emmett
First - great collection of links. The history of slavery deserves a more
thorough understanding than what's normally taught in high school.

And yet, it was not the Irish who couldn't vote as late as the 60s, nor were
the Irish the ones in segregated schools through the 70s, nor were there Irish
divisions of the armed forces in World War II sent on the most dangerous
missions. There were not masses of Irishmen enslaved in the south (de jure,
and then defacto) through the 1800s and 1900s.

Are black people the only people to be oppressed and discriminated against in
history? Clearly not. But as late as 4 decades ago, well within the lifetime
of people _still alive_ , black people have suffered a far greater weight of
discrimination than any other ethnic group in America.

The after-effects of recent black slavery and segregation continue to be felt
today. Saying "get over it" suggests a lack of understanding of the ways that
those effects still persist.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
The problem is that using the criteria of "well within the lifetime of people
alive" is arbitrary. Nazis killed six million Jews -- an evil much worse than
slavery -- well within the lifetime of people alive. All sorts of people
having been doing all sorts of mean things to other people well within the
lifetime of people alive.

I'm in my 40s, which means that I never knew a society that wouldn't allow
blacks to vote. I certainly had nothing to do with slavery. I used to find
this identity politics justified, then amusing (as I thought through it some
more), and now it's just feeble.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those that start each day looking
for opportunities and those that start each day looking to the past. I'd
rather be the second kind of person. So I don't discriminate based on color,
won't put up with others who do, and am finished with considering race an
interesting or important issue.

As an aside, there's a serious issue with segregating population based on skin
color (as opposed to any other random collection of genes)for purposes of
commentary -- it actually reinforces the idea that somehow people of one color
are different than another. Of course we all know that patterns appear in the
genetic pool, but using skin color as a predominant discriminating factor is,
as best, misguided. At worst, it can cause the exact types of behavior we all
agree is so bad.

~~~
plinkplonk
" those that start each day looking for opportunities and those that start
each day looking to the past. I'd rather be the second kind of person."

Did you mean "I'd rather be the _first_ kind of person." ? The sentence seems
to shift in meaning when you change that word, to one that fits the paragraph
more.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Brain fart. Doh!

Yes. You're right.

