This is a complicated and contentious topic. I agree with you that Congressman Donalds' reference to Jim Crow while making a point about black marriage rates was unnecessarily provocative and probably not helpful. That said, the way he was treated during long interviews with CNN's Abby Phillip and MSNBC's Joy Reid and Al Sharpton was shameful. They did all they could to make it seem as if Donalds was nostalgic for Jim Crow instead of lamenting the sharp drop in black marriage rates that began after 1950.
Here's a link to a 2012 paper ("Historical Marriage Trends from 1890-2010: A Focus on Race Differences") that outlines the trend:
It was developed by researchers at the US Census Bureau and Pew Research. Here's the Abstract:
Public rhetoric often decries a societal retreat from marriage – that it is an increasingly obsolete institution (Time Magazine/Pew Research Center 2010). The 1950s have been described as the “golden age” of marriage in the United States and marriage has declined since the 1960s (Coontz 2000/1992; Cherlin 2009/2004). In this paper, we take a longer view of the history of marriage by sex and race, describing trends among those never married at age 35 and age 45 and older, and historical median ages at first marriage using Decennial Census data. We find that the 1950s and 1960s were an anomaly for men and women given the high proportions married at young ages. Race differences are particularly interesting, as black women were more often married than white women prior to World War II, yet since the 1980s, have been increasingly less likely to be married.
There's no consensus about why black marriage rates fell.
Potential explanations fall into two basic categories - cultural and structural. A combination of cultural and structural factors is probably the key driver of the sharp drop in black marriage rates that began in the 1950's and continued through 2020 according to the US Census Bureau:
U.S. marriage rates have been on the decline since the latter half of the 20th century and both men and women are marrying at a later age, but the decline and delay are even more dramatic among Black adults.
The median age at first marriage has risen for both men and women. In 1970, the median age at first marriage was 23.2 years for men, and 20.8 years for women. Fifty years later, those figures climbed to 30.5 years and 28.1 years, respectively.
Although there have been drastic changes in marriage patterns for all race and Hispanic origin groups, differences have been especially pronounced for non-Hispanic Black adults (throughout this story, Black is used interchangeably with non-Hispanic Black).
For all groups, the percentage of never married men in 1970 was 28.1%, compared to 22.1% of women. By 2020, these figures rose to 35.8% and 30.0%, respectively. However, in 1970, 35.6% of Black men and 27.7% of Black women were never married, but by 2020, these percentages had jumped to 51.4% for Black men and 47.5% for Black women.
While the percentage of all adults who were never married increased by 7.6 percentage points for men and 7.9 percentage points for women, the corresponding change for Black adults was more than double that, at 15.8 percentage points for men and 19.8 for women.
Similarly, the median age at first marriage for Black adults increased more dramatically than it did for the overall population.
Donalds' argument that falling black marriage rates coincided with the creation of LBJ's Great Society programs and his suggestion that the trend is starting to reverse itself as more black people re-embrace conservative values got lost in a storm of demagoguery. That's unfortunate because black progress stalled out many years ago. The National Urban League's Marc Morial says it will take another 180 years, at the current rate of progress, for black people to achieve "true equality" with whites in America:
Who among the civil rights leaders who fought for the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision would have thought it would take 250 years (70 years post-Brown, plus another 180 years according to the National Urban League) for black people to achieve equality with whites? Melissa Kearney's book, "The Two-Parent Privilege" suggests that more progress would have been made if black marriage rates had stayed somewhere near 1950's levels. That's the point that Congressman Donalds should have made.
I agree with you about the media's treatment of Donalds. There's nothing more disingenuous than putting words in someone's mouth.
As far as the marriage stats, I get it. But to be honest, I wonder about the quality of those marriages. I, too, remember when divorce was a lot less common, but too often that meant couples sticking it out for some rather toxic reasons (i.e., "the sake of the kids", "society", etc.)
Safe to say, there were a lot of unhappy marriages--dare I say, abusive?--back in the day. They made for some distinctly dysfunctional environments for kids--no doubt about it. We just don't know all of the details (and apparently, would rather gloss over them than dig too deep).
But miserable marriages were not rare. Thus, I hesitate to romanticize the state of the Black family yesterday versus today. It is not a cut-and-dried conversation.
Hey CHARLES,
This is a complicated and contentious topic. I agree with you that Congressman Donalds' reference to Jim Crow while making a point about black marriage rates was unnecessarily provocative and probably not helpful. That said, the way he was treated during long interviews with CNN's Abby Phillip and MSNBC's Joy Reid and Al Sharpton was shameful. They did all they could to make it seem as if Donalds was nostalgic for Jim Crow instead of lamenting the sharp drop in black marriage rates that began after 1950.
Here's a link to a 2012 paper ("Historical Marriage Trends from 1890-2010: A Focus on Race Differences") that outlines the trend:
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2012/demo/SEHSD-WP2012-12.pdf
It was developed by researchers at the US Census Bureau and Pew Research. Here's the Abstract:
Public rhetoric often decries a societal retreat from marriage – that it is an increasingly obsolete institution (Time Magazine/Pew Research Center 2010). The 1950s have been described as the “golden age” of marriage in the United States and marriage has declined since the 1960s (Coontz 2000/1992; Cherlin 2009/2004). In this paper, we take a longer view of the history of marriage by sex and race, describing trends among those never married at age 35 and age 45 and older, and historical median ages at first marriage using Decennial Census data. We find that the 1950s and 1960s were an anomaly for men and women given the high proportions married at young ages. Race differences are particularly interesting, as black women were more often married than white women prior to World War II, yet since the 1980s, have been increasingly less likely to be married.
There's no consensus about why black marriage rates fell.
Here are links to other takes:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4850739/
https://scholars.org/brief/why-has-marriage-declined-among-black-americans
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12111-008-9062-5
Potential explanations fall into two basic categories - cultural and structural. A combination of cultural and structural factors is probably the key driver of the sharp drop in black marriage rates that began in the 1950's and continued through 2020 according to the US Census Bureau:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/07/marriage-prevalence-for-black-adults-varies-by-state.html
Here's an excerpt:
U.S. marriage rates have been on the decline since the latter half of the 20th century and both men and women are marrying at a later age, but the decline and delay are even more dramatic among Black adults.
The median age at first marriage has risen for both men and women. In 1970, the median age at first marriage was 23.2 years for men, and 20.8 years for women. Fifty years later, those figures climbed to 30.5 years and 28.1 years, respectively.
Although there have been drastic changes in marriage patterns for all race and Hispanic origin groups, differences have been especially pronounced for non-Hispanic Black adults (throughout this story, Black is used interchangeably with non-Hispanic Black).
For all groups, the percentage of never married men in 1970 was 28.1%, compared to 22.1% of women. By 2020, these figures rose to 35.8% and 30.0%, respectively. However, in 1970, 35.6% of Black men and 27.7% of Black women were never married, but by 2020, these percentages had jumped to 51.4% for Black men and 47.5% for Black women.
While the percentage of all adults who were never married increased by 7.6 percentage points for men and 7.9 percentage points for women, the corresponding change for Black adults was more than double that, at 15.8 percentage points for men and 19.8 for women.
Similarly, the median age at first marriage for Black adults increased more dramatically than it did for the overall population.
Donalds' argument that falling black marriage rates coincided with the creation of LBJ's Great Society programs and his suggestion that the trend is starting to reverse itself as more black people re-embrace conservative values got lost in a storm of demagoguery. That's unfortunate because black progress stalled out many years ago. The National Urban League's Marc Morial says it will take another 180 years, at the current rate of progress, for black people to achieve "true equality" with whites in America:
https://thegrio.com/2024/03/01/urban-league-state-of-black-america/
Who among the civil rights leaders who fought for the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision would have thought it would take 250 years (70 years post-Brown, plus another 180 years according to the National Urban League) for black people to achieve equality with whites? Melissa Kearney's book, "The Two-Parent Privilege" suggests that more progress would have been made if black marriage rates had stayed somewhere near 1950's levels. That's the point that Congressman Donalds should have made.
I agree with you about the media's treatment of Donalds. There's nothing more disingenuous than putting words in someone's mouth.
As far as the marriage stats, I get it. But to be honest, I wonder about the quality of those marriages. I, too, remember when divorce was a lot less common, but too often that meant couples sticking it out for some rather toxic reasons (i.e., "the sake of the kids", "society", etc.)
Safe to say, there were a lot of unhappy marriages--dare I say, abusive?--back in the day. They made for some distinctly dysfunctional environments for kids--no doubt about it. We just don't know all of the details (and apparently, would rather gloss over them than dig too deep).
But miserable marriages were not rare. Thus, I hesitate to romanticize the state of the Black family yesterday versus today. It is not a cut-and-dried conversation.