It's no wonder...

...why many black men have the "plenty of other fish in the sea" mentality.
...why many black women stay in crazy situations and relationships just for the sake of "having somebody".

"Black gender gap hits nearly 2 million: Early deaths of men boost imbalance"

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Jonathan Tilove

Newhouse News Service

Black adult women outnumber black men by nearly 2 million in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time.Worse yet, with nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the reality in most black communities across the country is of an even greater imbalance - a gap of 2.8 million, or 26 percent,according to Census Bureau figures for 2002. The comparable disparity for whites was 8 percent. Perhaps no statistic so precisely measures the fateful, often fatal price of being an American black man, or so powerfully conveys how beset black communities are by the violence and disease that leave them bereft of brothers, fathers, husbands and sons. And because the number of black males plummets as they move from their teens to 20s, the gap first appears with the suddenness of a natural disaster.

"It just distorts the fabric of African-American life," says RolandAnglin, executive director of the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, which studies how to improve the quality of life in communities of color.

"If white men were falling off the grid as rapidly as black men, it would be considered a national crisis," says Raymond Winbush, author of "The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Black Boys." Winbush, a Cleveland native, heads the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore.In the March/April issue of Health Affairs, Dr. David Satcher, surgeon general under President Clinton and now the interim president of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, exposes the core of the problem: Between 1960 and 2000, the disparity between mortality rates for black and white women narrowed while the disparity between the rates for black and white men grew wider. Exponentially higher homicide and AIDS rates play their part, especially among younger black men. Even more deadly through middle age and beyond are higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer.Death rates for black men in 2002, the most recent year available, exceeded those for white in every state with a sizeable black community, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records show. In Ohio, the death rate for black men was nearly 32 percent higher than that of their white counterparts. And the picture in other parts of the Midwest, throughout most of thesouth into Texas and California was equally grim.

"The degree of loss and death that people in those communities areexperiencing at a young age is just unfathomable," says Arline Geronimus of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. A few years ago, Geronimus led a team of researchers who calculated that in Harlem and on Chicago's South Side, two-thirds of the black boys and one-third of the black girls who reached their 15th birthday would not make 65.

"We live in a society right now where if you turn 25, you're an old head," says Stanley Edwards, 45, a program developer with the Recreation Department in East Orange, N.J., a small city edging Newark where all the problem's manifestations are etched in sharp relief and where three years ago Edwards started Teens Against Violence Everywhere (TAVE)."When I was growing up, 25, you just started."Chilling stuff. But, says Satcher, "The real question is, does the nation really care to solve this problem? "The imbalance between the numbers of black men and women does not exist everywhere. There is no gap to speak of in places with relatively small black populations like Minneapolis, Minn., Portland, Ore., San Francisco and San Diego, and Seattle actually has more black men than women. But it is the rule in those communities with large, concentrated black populations that are the hub of African- American life, and it is as good an indicator as any of things gone wrong.There are more than 30 percent more black women than men in Cleveland, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Chicago and in smaller cities like Harrisburg, Pa., Syracuse, N.Y., Flint, Mich., and Mobile and Birmingham, Ala. There are 36 percent more black women than men in New York City, and 37 percent more in Saginaw, Mich., in Philadelphia, and in East Orange. Darryl Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange, calls his city "the most densely populated community of color in the United States." Not four square miles, it holds more than 70,000 people. Mostly black. Some Hispanics. A few whites. In 2000, there were more black males under 18 than females in EastOrange. And yet, there were 29 percent more black women than men in their 20s. How can that be?

Ask Eric Perryman, 23, a first-year teacher at Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts in East Orange, from which he graduated in 2000.

"The street where I grew up in East Orange there were about 12 of us.Five of them are dead now," says Perryman, who coordinates TAVE with Edwards and Christina White, a Portland, Ore., native who works at East Orange General Hospital while pursuing her master's degree in publichealth.Of the five, Perryman says one was a suicide, the other four homicides. And of the surviving members of his crew of 12, he says, "most are in jail." According to The Sentencing Project in Washington, on any given day in America, one in eight black males age 25 to 29 is incarcerated, and nearly a third of all black men in their 20s are behind bars, on probation or parole. "It's worse than the Wild West," says Rochelle D. Evans, a former police commissioner in East Orange and now the city's interim director for Health and Human Services. But the teens and 20s are but the first gantlet black males must run. Evans knows. She was 5 when her father, 42, was killed on the job at Tappan Range Gas Stoves in Newark when a machine fell on him, fracturing his skull. Of her four brothers, two died of heart attacks in their 40s, a third, suffering from diabetes and kidney failure, just lost a leg, and the fourth has gastrointestinal problems. By the time you get to people in their 60s in East Orange, there are 47 percent more black women than men, and with every succeeding year, the innowing continues. ost obviously, there are simply not enough black men to go around, specially as matches for the numbers of successful black women.It was Geronimus, the University of Michigan researcher, who developed the analytical framework she called "weathering" to describe the lifetime of stresses black people face at every turn that wears them down and wears them out, that can compromise their health and contribute to their dying young. "It can just beat you down," says Haki Madhubuti, the Chicago poet, publisher, educator and author of such books as "Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?" and "Tough Notes: A Healing Call for Creating Exceptional Black Men." He says it's why he became a vegan and tries to bike 20 to 25 miles a day. Morgan State's Winbush feels lucky. He survived a heart attack and bypass surgery. He has never been in prison, unlike his brother, a convicted murderer. But with the approach of his 40th reunion at Cleveland's John Adams High School, his alumni news is coming via the obituaries.
"Every week I hear of people shot, drugged out, HIV, just anything, and most of the people who have died are black males," he says.

After reading that article... man... i just shook my head. I mean, it's really no wonder why women act a darn fool when a brutha who has his stuff halfway together comes along. I mean, with the mountainous competition, women have to up their game...which usually requires that we lower our standards, morals, and inhibitions. *smh* It's sad. It's rough out here. I mean, we're experiencing a classic case of supply and demand. The amount of quality black men are steadily decreasing and the amount of women who desire to be with a brutha is steadily increasing. The supply is low... the demand is high. Is it really a wonder why so many of our bruthas opt to live the bachelor life for as long as possible? Is it really a wonder why they seem to easily move through women and relationships effortlessly? Is it really a wonder why when you don't do almost everything he asks of you...you're dismissed without so much of a goodbye? Friends w/benefits are so easy to obtain these days. Women are so desperate to find a brutha that's not in jail, not gay, not on the DL, not a mama's boy, and not ugly...that.. when they find a half decent man, they pretty much do whatever it will take to get him. Whether he's with someone or not. Whether he's committed to them or not. Whether he treats her like he should or not. Choices here...choices there... why settle for just one? I'm not justifying it...but i sure as heck can understand it. Men know that they have a good deal right now. As I've heard so many of my male associates say "shoot, if she won't do it...someone else will". As sad as that is... there is MUCH validity to that. With the shortage we're experiencing... woman will do just about ANYTHING to get and keep a man. And men are eating it up! Becoming less and less interested in serious committed relationships and more into what they can get...and get AWAY with. Not to say that as some men age and mature...many DO want to find a good woman that they will be their "Isha". But... on a whole... they have the upper hand right about now. They seem to not be in as big of a rush to get married. My has the tables turned. Looking at old movies has ruined me. lol. Seeing all of these gentleman callers...and suitors declaring their undying love and longing for a seemingly unphased damsel's hand in marriage has really got me to wishing that it was still that way....

*sigh*

All i'm saying is...with all the black men who like men, who are dying from heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes, homocides, & HIV, who are incarcerated, and who just ain't about ish... I'm very fortunate to have someone that i can honestly say i didn't "settle" for.