Black Male Becoming an Endangered Species

By

Sherman N. Miller

 7/22/2006

When I watch the Philadelphia, PA Evening News, I find that the murder report is as commonplace as the weather report. I have come to expect at least one murder everyday and it is often African Americans getting killed. If we step back from murders and look at the fallout of African American males finding themselves incarcerated over crimes, we may start to make a case for a redefinition of Black American culture in the next one hundred years.  

            In yesteryear, the American cowboy was an idol of being free and macho. The old western gunfight was the ultimate resolution for two men resolving a conflict. We still marvel at Marshall Wyatt Earp in the infamous Shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. However, today one might argue that the image of yesterday’s infamous gunfighter has morphed into today’s gang banger.

            The gang banger comes replete with head-rags, baseball hats, baggy pants, prison boots, showing their underwear, and so on, comparable to yesterday’s cowboy hats, scarves, boots, and so on.  The gang banger displays a serious attitude problem and has a haughty mannerism to complete his persona.

            While I was chatting with a Black Baby Boomer father in Western Alabama in July 2006, he highlighted the deleterious impact of this gang banger persona on the black family evolving in small towns in the south. He said that many young black males are spending their time on street corners getting into trouble and they were not fit candidates that a black woman might consider as spouses.

This Black Baby Boomer father really grabbed my attention as he argued that Black females could no longer accept endogamy as their mindset in looking for a husband. He feels that Black women will have to look to husbands from other races and cultures. I got the impression that this Black Baby Boomer was arguing a case for black women marrying illegal alien males who are quite willing to work and still have strong family values.

            The US Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that in 2004 there were 551,300 sentenced black males in prison and 32,100 black females in prison. What is worse is the statistics show that for the marrying ages of 20 – 44 there are 14.1 black males in prison for every black female in prison.  Clearly this Black Baby Boomer father is highlighting a dearth of marrying-aged black males as fallout of their bad lifestyle choices.   

            The Black Baby Boomer father also called attention to a growing number of interracial marriages and relationships in areas of the nation where lynching black males would be customary punishment once such relationships became public. Hence, white females are now competing for available black males, further decreasing the black male marriage aged pool.

            Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, offers a prospectus on today’s growing white female pursuit of interracial marriage with black males. “African American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to a white spouse and 3.3 times more likely to be cohabitating with a white person, as compared to their African American female counterparts. Research yields that 7% of married African American men are with white wives and 15% of African American men cohabit with white women.”

            If we are to believe the report in Wikipedia, it is clear that Black America is slowly being amalgamated into America’s melting pot. Furthermore, endogamous relationships may be evolving into relics of a bygone era when white nativism was king.

The above data on black males’ marital availability for black females suggest that today’s black males are evolving into an endangered species. Will the biracial movie stars, such as Halle Berry, become tomorrow’s Black American? Will claiming African American heritage become tomorrow’s mainstream American assertion as a part of their heritage on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as we now do with being Irish on Saint Patrick’s Day?   

   Return