October 23, 2024 • 35 mins
In this week's episode, Iyanla is joined by professor and author Kris Marsh to get into the hot topics in her book The Love Jones Cohort. They talk about the importance of intersectionality, how class intersects with dating, and why you should stop asking people, "Why are they single?" Tune in next week for part 2 of the conversation!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I am Yama, your host, your guide, a teacher for
some and a soft place to fall for others. And
I was a miserable failure in my relationships until I
love myself enough to be able to share my love
with other people. Welcome to the R Spot, a production
of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome,
(00:38):
Welcome to the R Spot. I am your guide, your facilitator,
your support, your comrade in arms. Yes, we talk about relationships,
all kinds of relationships. And when we look out in
the world today, who my lord relationships are? They're all
(00:59):
I can say is pray for the people. Ah, praise
for the people. The people need help. And social relationships,
family relationships, intimate relationships, loving relationships. And you know, for me,
it's your relationship with yourself that is the foundation and
the basis of everything. I don't care who you are,
(01:19):
what you're doing, gay, straight, black, white, or young, how
you be with yourself is going to show up, and
how you be in relationships. But there's this phenomenad that
seems to be going on that's getting a lot of
conversation all over the place, and that's singleness. Singleness, being single,
(01:44):
being unhooked up, unattached, unmarried, you know, and in some
places people try to make it like it's a disease,
like there's something wrong with you. I am single by choice,
single by choice. I've been married three times, twice to
the same person. Lord, pray for the people, not be
(02:06):
a people, okay, and in two long term relationships. And
my last partner made this transition about I guess it'll
be four years in January. Wow, my goodness. And I'm
single by choice. I made that choice. That's what I
want to do right now. Get me together. My relationship
(02:28):
with myself is shifting and changing, because you know, I
crossed that seventieth decade last year. So I don't even
know how to be an old lady in relationship, you know,
because my mind is young, and I know if I
be swinging through the chandeliers and doing the stuff I
used to do when I was young, I could hurt myself.
(02:49):
So I have to figure out how you be old
in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
What you do?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
You know, I can do the basics.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I like to cook, and i'll iron, and I'll run
your bath and rub your feet and all of that.
But you know, I have some old I don't know
what you call it, prejudices. You know, I don't want
nobody on no crutch or a walker. I'm not on
no meds, so you being on your meds on you,
(03:19):
and I find not a lot of men my age
are just not in shape.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So I have to go young. I have to go younger.
But how young I haven't.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Figured any of that out yet, so I said, let
me just stay over here with me and my kooties
and don't be infected in the relationship pool. But then
there are a lot of younger women who are either
in upset or breakdown or horrification that they're single. And
then there are some who just have given up because
(03:52):
for many women, they're just done. They are done with
the shenanigations and the bad behavior. Yesterday, I think it
was my beloved sister, beloved sister Stephanie Mills, who's on
Broadway yay, did an interview on the Breakfast Club, and
(04:12):
she said that at sixty seven, she's single by choice
because she don't want to deal with knuckleheads. I didn't
know there was sixty seven year old knuckleheads, So she
too is single by choice. But a lot of women
aren't comfortable with it. A lot of women aren't happy
about it. A lot of men aren't happy about it.
(04:33):
Men come to me all the time and say, I
can't find a good woman.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Well, where are you looking?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
You can't go to the second hand store or the
Salvation army to look for no good women?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Because I know a lot of them. What age group
do you want? I'll send you some references.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
But today we are gonna talk about single hood and
I have a guest today. I have a guest today,
and then we're going live. We're gonna talk to some
single women out there and get some insight and input.
My guest today is doctor Chris Marsh, and she is
the author of a brand new book, The Love Jones Cohort,
(05:11):
The Love Jones Cohort, Remember the Love Jones, Love Jones,
I Gotta Love Jones. Welcome, Doctor Marsh. We want to
talk about The Love Jones Cohort. We want to talk
about being single. We want to talk about all of that.
And the thing about your book is it's The Love
(05:32):
Jones Cohort, but it's about being single and middle class.
So I want to talk about that because is there
a distinction between being single in the middle class, the
upper class, the lower class. I want to talk about that,
and you draw from your background in both economics and politics,
(05:52):
and what in the world is intersectionality.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But she was a post doctoral scholar at the Caroline
Population Center at the University of North Carolina before she
joined the faculty of the University of Maryland. So she
is both a woman, a single woman, a scholar, and
(06:18):
something that she do with intersectionality.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I don't know what that is. So she's gonna tell
us what that is. Okay, welcome doctor Marge. How are you,
doctor Venzan.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
It is truly a pleasure to be on the show.
Thank you for the wonderful introduction. It's just a blessing
to be here.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
So thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Well, thank you, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Now, before we start talking about singlehood, what in the
world is intersectionality?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
What is that?
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Okay, So we're gonna start there.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Okay, So I am an academic, but I'm going to
try to break this down into very basic, kind of
like terms for you. I'd like to use the analogy
kiss keep it simple, stupid. So I want to try
to keep real simple for what intersectionality means. So when
we think of it's kind of like a euretical framework.
And so what it means is that I'm not just black,
(07:04):
I'm not just a woman. So if you study racism,
you're going to miss some of some of the issues
I face as a woman.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
If you study sexism, you're going.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
To miss some of the things that I face that
it relates to rapes. So intersectionality says, you can't disconnect
my blackness from my womanness. You have to talk about
how me as a black will be those intersecting identities.
How that now how I navigate through the world and
how the world looks at me because I'm a black woman,
And one of the arguments I make in the book
(07:33):
is that it should really be I'm a black, single woman,
and how does the world look at me? And how
do I navigate the world. So that's what intersectionality means.
You can't just look at me as black, you can't
just look at me as a woman. You have to
look to those intersecting identities.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
So is that why you talk about being single and
middle class?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
That's a really great question, and class is part of it.
So it's race, of class, it's gender, it's singleness. But
one of the things, because I am an academic, one
of the things I decided early on in my academic career.
And please understand what I mean when I say this,
I said I was not going to pimp the poor
to make my academic career. There are a lot of
(08:13):
scholars who do not look like me who talk about
poor Black Americans.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
But in spite of all.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
The isms that exist in America, there is still a
thriving Black middle class. And because there is a black
middle class, all of my work looks at black middle class.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
It's a smaller subset of Black America, but they're still there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So because they're there, I really wanted to talk about them,
and I really wanted to talk about to the point
you were asking earlier, I really want to talk about
people that are single and living alone in the black
middle class because by definition air quotes, they did everything right.
They went to college, they got the big houses, the
big degrees, the big titles, but at the end of
(08:50):
the day, they're still single. Because if I don't look
at the middle class, what they could say is, oh,
they're poor, so.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
They should have done they should have gone to school,
they should have got a better job.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
No, no, no, these are people that are solid middle
class members and they're still single. So let's kind of
complicate the conversation. So that's why I really want to
look at middle class. Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Okay, wait a minute, I'm going live. I am going
live because this is too juicy and too good to
just be between.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
You and I.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, good afternoon. I am live on the
R Spot today and I've got a guest, doctor Chris Marsh,
who confesses and admits that she is an academic, but
she talks about the middle class. We're gonna talk about
middle class single people today. I want you to listen in.
(09:41):
I'm gonna take your questions. We're gonna this is so juicy.
We were doing the interview and just her first line
to me was so delicious until I said, I have
to share this meal with my community.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
We need to.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Understand the black middle class. Now define middle class. If
you're just joining in, this is the R Spot. We
are live, me and doctor Chris Marsh talking about being
single and middle class. She's the author of a brand
new book, The Love Jones co Hoart. The Love Jones Cohort.
And remember that movie The Love Jones, okay, with Neil
(10:18):
Small and the little cutie I can't remember his name,
but anyway.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And Lorenz Tate, Lorenz tape.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, how Lorenz forgive me because you know I love you,
but I'm old. I can't remember. My brain takes frequent naps. Okay,
How are you defining middle class, doctor marsh.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
That's a really, really, really great question.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So, being a sociologist and a dermographer, I looked like
the literature and I had to see what the literature
said about middle class. And typically there's four measures. There's income, occupation, wealth,
and education. Those are typically the four measures that are
used to define middle class income.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Wait a minute, income, wealth, education.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And education, income, occupation and well.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
So many women today are single, and some of them
are single by choice, and some of them are single
by happenstance. Some of them are upset at they're single.
And we want to talk about what that means. What
does it mean to be single today? And how can
you choose to be single today? And why would you
(11:25):
choose to be single today?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So we want to talk about all of that.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And doctor Martin talks about this thing called intersectionality, where
all of who you are, if you're a woman, if
you're black, if you're forty, if you're single, all of
that message together. So you can't look at one thing,
you got to look at it all. Oh somebody said,
(11:50):
many are married but single. Yeah, baby, that's a whole
nother conversation. I'm alone but not lonely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then there are so many men out they're saying
to me, to me, I hear it all the time.
I can't find a good woman. I'm like, well, where
are you looking? Where are you looking that you can't
(12:11):
find a good woman?
Speaker 3 (12:12):
All right? Let me see if doctor Marsh got back
in here. All right, here she is everybody to doctor
Chris with A. K.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Marsh a professor at the University of Maryland. She's a sociologist.
And we're here today to talk about single, being single,
single and middle class. And we've defined middle class. Everybody,
stay tuned, will be right back right after this. Why
(12:45):
do we have to have those distinctions? Why do we
have to have that? Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So, as I was saying earlier, one of the things
that was really important to me as a scholar and
as an academic is that I did not want to
and please understand what I mean when I say that
I did not want to pamph the poor to make
my academic career. There are a lot of scholars who
do not look like me to spend their entire time
talking about poor Black Americans, and the Bible even talks
(13:10):
about how the poor will be with us for all time.
But I decided that I was not going to pamp
the poor to make my academic career. I wanted to
look at the black metal class. Those two air quotes
have done everything that they were supposed to do. They
had the big houses, the big degrees, the big salaries,
the big occupations, but at the end of the day,
they live different lives than other racial ethnic groups in
(13:31):
particular like white folks. And so I wanted to study
the black middle class. But people often ask like, how
do you define black middle class? And I was trying
to say, like, if we look at the social science literature,
there's usually four measures that are used to define middle class.
It's income, it's education, it's occupation, and it is I
(13:51):
know we couldn't rebollw that well, and I studied the stuff, right,
I shouldn't elements so, but I also think people use
a line of objective measures, but I also think we're
talking about the black middle class, it can be some
subjective measures like, for example, where you go to church,
what kind of social organization do you do, how involved
(14:13):
are you with your community? So I do think if
we use just objective measures where it's just numbered, youmit them,
you hit the market, you don't, it can be short sighted.
So I try to offer more of a more contextual
understanding of how we think of no middle class. But
to the point that one of the listeners said earlier,
it does come off as classes and the leaders. When
you have to have a certain education, you have to
(14:35):
have a certain kind of occupation, you have to make
a certain amount of money, and you have to have
some kind of wealth, that can be a very immendous perspective.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Now, Now, do middle class people make differently? Do they
date differently?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Maybe don't necessarily make differently, and they don't date differently.
I'm going to give you a big academic word and
explain what it means. One of the things I talk
about in the book is this idea of educational homogomy
and what that means. In very Layman's terms. It means
like we typically are going to marry somebody that looks
like us, whether or not that needings education, whether or
(15:13):
not that needs income. So when we're talking about a
lot of educated black women, are they able to date
educated black men? Please do not leave this conversation saying
that doctor marsh is saying everybody's got to have a
a bachelor's degree or a PhD to get married. That
is not what I'm saying. What I'm suggesting is that
we typically marry people that look like us. So I
(15:33):
really want to know, like what the middle class black
middle class does about marriage and dating and so on
and so forth, because if we look at the numbers,
I'm a demographer. If we look at the numbers, especially
when we start talking about professional black women, there aren't
comparable professional black men numerically, So what are black women
going to do? So that's part of the conversation I
have in the.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Book Wow Wow Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That is I don't know. That's troubling to me, and
it is. It's troubling to me because I never ask
a person about their education. I guess I look at
their heart and their soul first. Because my husband, he
went to college during our marriage, and I had already
(16:19):
been to college. Right, all right, Well, anyway, you said,
stop asking why you're single?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Why do you say that? So here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
There's two things.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
One, I'm like, I don't know why everybody thinks it's
okay to ask single people why are you single? Why
are you worried about our daily practices of what we're doing?
And so after reading the book, I tell the readers,
I hope, after reading this book, you are just as
likely to ask somebody why are you married as you
are to.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Ask somebody why are you single?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
We always ask single folks, but we don't ask married folks.
If we keep asking the single folks, it suggests that
the priority is that you have to be married. Not
a good marriage and not a healthy marriage. You just
have to be married. So either we should be asking
everybody or we should be asking nobody. But what you're
not gonna do is just ask single quolts. So that's
(17:10):
why I blew up people to take away from the books.
Stop asking. But if you're gonna ask, be consistent, don't discriminate,
ask married folks, and ask single folks.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Well, I'm gonna start asking people, why are you married right,
and wait for.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Our culture and wait for coherent response, because come on,
I responded. In the book, they talked about how they
have to get their narrative together for like the holidays.
The holidays are coming up, so they have to get
their narrative together for why they're single. And I'm like,
if we're gonna be asking people about maritals, fasts were
asking everybody, So everybody has to come to the holiday
holiday party or dinner with their narratives and explaining why,
(17:46):
justifying why they're single or why they're married.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Really, well, I'm single by choice, but you know what,
everybody's coming to my house, so ain't nobody gonna ask
me that question?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
What single folks do get it are quite often. And
one of the things in the book I talk about
is I talk about how single folks can actually deal
with that because they get it quite often. And a
little piece of advice that I'm gonna give single folks
is that when someone asks you why are you single?
It's a very benign response that you can give, but
it'll get them to think about the error and their statement.
You can just say, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah? Okay, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Okay, well, okay, there's a couple of things you can do.
You can cuss them out from I may even grace
the house sweet they how dare you ask me? Blah
blah blah blah. Or you can just say in a
very benign the way, what do you mean by that? Now?
Typically what's gonna happen is they're gonna stutter, They're gonna stammer,
and they're gonna say, oh, you know what I mean?
Like you know, like no, no, no, no, no, what do you
mean by that? Because all of my accolades, all of
that pedigree that I bring with me does not matter
(18:46):
as long as I don't have an mrs degree. You
gonna go home thinking about the question that you just
asked me. I'm not gonna go home think about it.
I'm gonna leave that back on you, and the allness
is on you to understand the error in your way
when you ask a question, why are you single?
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Well, we can't ignore the fact that there really is this,
uh I guess social consciousness that if you're single, there's
something wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Oh, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Even if you're single with children, either through divorce or
choice not to be married, you then look at you
like you got cooties.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, you're like right, yes, yeah. They think something's wrong
with you. And that's that's one of the main reasons
why I wrote the book. I was really trying to
be stigmatize singlehood because what we have to understand is
that there's people that will be in relationships that are abusive, toxic, unfulfilling,
and underwarding simply because they don't want to hold the
title of single. They'll either stay in something or get
(19:43):
in something because societal pressures and the way in which
society is built, it's it caters to be a partnered,
it caters to be married, and so single folks are
just like, oh my gosh, I've got to get part
I got to be partner, I gotta be married. I'm like,
absolutely not. So I'm really trying to be stigmat singlehood
and have people know that there's nothing wrong with you
(20:03):
being single. You can stand very comfortably and confidently in
your singleness. And I think as we start to continue
to have these kinds of conversations, we start to be
sympathizing in and people feel more comfortable scanning in their singleness.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Well, now not only are you single, but you a
childless cat lady.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
In that part.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, but it's also not only just being single. It's
the choice now that many women are making not to
have children, and that seems to be a whole nother
disease that we carry. What do you mean by the
Love Jones? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Well, there's two reasons why if fy to call the
book Love Jones Cohort. One reason is that if you
get at a really cool title for a book, people
will die just by the book. It because of the title.
Thank God for that right. But the other is why
I really wanted to call it the Love Jones Cohort.
So it's based on the movie Love Jones. And it's
based on a demographic term, which is cohort. Cohort just
means a band of people. So when I started write
(21:00):
to school way back in the Stone Ages, I noticed
that I was being trained at the demographer, and I've
noticed that marriage rates were changing for all racial and
ethnic groups, but way more pronounced for Black Americans. And
so my sisters and I we bought a house on
this in Lamart Park in Love Angeles, California, and two
other people, single people bought houses on mar Street and
I was like, you know what, I really think that
(21:20):
there's this demographic shipt in married couple. I mean in
middle class couple that married couples to young black professionals
who aren't married and don't have children, like the characters
in Love Jones. So pop culture kind of saw what
was happening, but the academics were slow to get on
the board with what was happening. So I wanted to
pay respect to the movie Love Jones because that's where
(21:42):
you start to see this demographic shift from this traditional
kind of middle class family like we think about the
Huxtables on the Kywsky Show. Two are like, you know,
middle class or upper middle class, we have two point
five children and the black picket fence. We now start
to see this demographic and the Love Jones where they're single,
they're trying to drop their lives and so on and
so forth. So I put the two terms together, an
(22:03):
academic term and a pop culture term, and I can
help with the term the Love Jones cohort and its
subtitle is Signal and Living ap blone in the black
meddle class.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Oh that's good, that's good.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I want you to give me a better explanation about that,
and we're going to do that right after this break. Alrighty,
if you're just joining us here on the R Spot
today we're talking about being single and being middle class.
My guest today is doctor Chris Marsh and we are
(22:34):
glad to have her. Start thinking out there. How do
you feel about being single? Or what are your questions
about being single? What are your challenges being single? Whether
you have children or not. Do you talk about being
single and a parent in your book?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No, I actually don't talk about single parents in my book.
I left a lot of questions for my graduate student
is to pick up and carry the conversation forward. I'm
actually looking at people that have single, have never been married,
and don't have any children. And one of the reasons
why I use a very strict measure for the book
is because I wanted to think about, like, these are
(23:16):
middle class folks, they have assets, they have wealth. How
are they going to transfer their wealth? Because there's a
subtle argument in the social science literature that's say, the
black middle class is not going to be able to
reproduce it self because we don't have a lot of
black married couples. I think what's going to happen is
that the black middle class is going to reproduce itself
in different kind of ways. Because if you look at
(23:37):
the numbers, the second largest household type and the Black
middle class are people that are single and living alone.
The second largest household type BETWY behind married couples. So
the question becomes, how are they going to transfer their
wealth if they own a house. Typically you transfer your
wealth from parent to child. It's bequeathed to the child
or to the partner. So I really wanted to talk
to people who didn't have children, had never been married,
(23:58):
and who were they going to transfer their wealth too.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And I don't want to.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Give away all the juicing nuggets in the book, because
I really want you to buy the book. But they
used innovative ways to transfer their wealth. They transferred it
to nieces, to nephews, to god children, to friends, to
the children of friends, which I think comes back to
a really important conversation we were having earlier about this
idea of childless cat lady and how just because you
(24:25):
didn't biologically have a child, that you may not have
this nurturing or you don't mother, and that's one of
the things we kind of talk about in the book
is that even though we didn't these people did not
biologically have children, they were very nurturing, they were mothering,
and in a lot of ways they decided to give
their assets to their god children, nieces and nephews and
so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Now, now can we talk about the fact that, going
back to what you said earlier, that you're going to
marry somebody that looks like you or matches you. So
you have a lot of black women I guess they're
middle class professional maybe high income earners who are looking
for a partner can find a partner that looks like
(25:09):
them just in terms of race, and then they go
outside of their race, where do they fit in the cohort?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, so there's a whole section that's a really great question.
There's a whole section that talks about interracial dating and
interracial marriage, and so one of the things that's really important.
I was like, I don't I'm not going to value
you judge about whether or not you want to interracially
date or not. But there's a really great book that
talks about the digital dating divide, and it talks about
(25:40):
how racism and sexism plays out in the online dating
process and black women are the least likely to get
winked at or to get approached on online dating sources.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And really we are.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
There's a whole it's a wonderful book by the colleague
that read it, it's called The Dating Divide. And when
we are looked at her with that, it's usually for
these stereotypical ideas that were the hyper sexual, hot and
top or something like that. So I think it's really
important to think about interracial daty and how sometimes some
of these stereotypical ideas can play out in any kind
of relationships, but they also can play out dating relationships
(26:17):
as well.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Now, now let me ask you a question, because are
you looking primarily at women because there's a lot of
single middle class men who aren't married.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Are men in the cohort?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Also, men are actually in the cohort? They are And
that was really important to me because I wanted to
make sure that men were not excluded from the conversation.
And like I said earlier, I also wanted to make
sure that I could send the book to everybody. So
this is not just a book about black women, because
there are black men that are single as well, And
(26:50):
it's important that we don't get lost in the conversation.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
What also is important, though, is that women do dominate
the category, but there are men in that group.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I wonder, if you divorced or widowed, are you still
considered single? Because when I check off the boxes on applications,
I don't put divorced, I don't, I don't put widowed.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I put single.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The other day I had what was that feeling out
I can't remember what it was, and it said married
sing I put single, and then I wrote right next
to it, by choice because I don't want because people
really do think there's something wrong with you. So I
guess I'm a single middle I'm in a single middle
(27:35):
class cohort. Okay, And I met a guy who let
me go back to my bus driver. I met a
guy who was a bus driver, very very nice to
his mother, had great relationships with his siblings, and made
(27:57):
probably two thirds less than I do. And we're having
a wonderful time. If we were to get married, does
he become middle class by choice? I mean by association?
Does he become or do I become working class by association?
(28:19):
Because in our culture, you become what the husband is.
If he's Jewish, you become Jewish. If he's Christian, you
become Christian. Most people don't live culturally, but I do.
So does he become middle class by marriage?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
That's a really great question, and I don't necessarily have
a really great answer, but what I will that's really
something really interesting to think about, right, But what I
will say is, like what we have to understand is
that I want to go on record saying that I
am pro marriage.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I believe marriage is a good thing.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I get people that email me, call me, send me
hate mail all the time saying I'm bad for Black America,
I'm bringing Black America down because I'm not promoting marriage.
I get it all the time, Like you clearly have
not read my book. But I want to go on
record saying that I'm all about marriage when it's done
right and it's a healthy marriage. Now, one of the
things that we do know is that before marriage was
almost like a vehicle to get into middle class status,
(29:15):
especially for Black women. Marriage doesn't serve the same utility
and the same purpose that it served before because you
have a lot of black women who are now middle
class and did not need marriage to get there.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
So because they did not need marriage or partnering to
get there.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
It's a conversation of like, do they now want to
partner or be married, and what's utility? What does marriage
mean for them? And so it really becomes an interesting conversation.
But I also think that people automatically assume just because
two people get married, that's automatically go a catapulture and
in middle class status. If two broke folks would high
debt get married, that's just two broke folks married.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
What a whole lot of debt.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
People think marriage is a panacea, which I think becomes
a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
But I want to take the law route to get
to this comment real quick. I have a dear friend
of mine who.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Always used to say, like, I like leiskinned woman, I
like leiskined woman, I like light skined woman. Though he
used to be a friend, and so one day I
just said to him, no, you don't. And I gave
a real long, pregnant pause, and then I said, you know,
I really respect you. If you would say I've been
conditioned from a very young age to think white is
right and closer to white.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Is right, i'd respect you. But if you're sitting here
saying that this is just your preference structure. That's just
not the case. In a similar way, I admonish.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
People to ask themselves, why do you want to be married?
It's a simple question, but it has some deep implications.
We have been taught from a very young age we're
supposed to have the white wedding, and I mean the
white dress, and so on and so forth. Why do
you want to be married? Ask yourself that question, and
sit with that uncomfortable question and see what your answer is.
Because we have a and I love the podcast because
(30:54):
it's all about relationship. We put a lot of emphasis
in the romantic relationship, but there are a ton of
non romantic nurturing relationships and give us so much pleasure
and are so rewarding to us that we're putting all
of our eggs in the romantic basket and sometimes forsaken
our non romantic nurturing relationships also known as friends.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Listen, why do I want to be married? I don't.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I don't, And even now when I do choose to
be partnered a couple, we're going.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
To each have to have our own house.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I don't want to live with anybody, you know, my
closets are already full. I don't want to have to
move closets. And another thing that I notice about women,
they say they want to be in relationship, but there's
no room in their life for a partner, you know,
whether it's man or woman, whatever, fruit nuts, berries, whatever
it is you're choosing, there's no room.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You don't have a.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Dresser drawer for them, you don't have closet space for them. Ah,
but maybe that means that you'll have to get a
house together. Let me ask you, qu Let me ask
you a question about these middle class people. Okay, here's
a question for you. So you middle class and he
middle class? Does he move in your house? Do you
move in his house? Or do y'all get a house together?
(32:13):
This is let me get let me get ready. Okay,
what do you do? Because when you pour chances off,
whoever got the best house, the other person moves in.
Unfortunately most of the time that's the woman. The woman
has the better house and he moves in there. But
when you middle class and both of y'all he got
a condo, you got a house where y'all go?
Speaker 3 (32:33):
What you do?
Speaker 4 (32:33):
I want to answer that in two ways.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
One I want to say whatever works best for them, right,
I was like, don't worry about what nobody else says,
like that's your house while you have person whatever works
best for you.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
But the other way I want to answer that question
two is I want to say, so.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Often we police black women and what they do, what
they say, how we talk how our hair is.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
How big our butt is or how big our butt ain't.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
How our hair is natural, how our ain't natural, How
you coming for our eyelashes, how you ain't coming for
our eyelashes. At the end of the day, that is exhausting.
Let black women be and let them do what they
want to do. If you and your bood decided you
want to move into his house, fine, If you want
to move into her house, that is perfectly fine.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
But just let black women be.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Why are we constantly policing black women and tell them
what they should and should not do. Well.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I don't want to tell nobody what they should and
should not do, But I want to be with somebody
I know can pay the mortgage or at least contribute half.
I'm good with the half. I'm good with the half.
Can you pay half the mortgage, I'll split it with
you okay.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
And see for some people it's like, you know, I
just want a warm body. You ain't got to worry
about the financers. Some people like, we come into this
thing fifty to fifty whatever they want to do.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
I don't think what we shouldn't do is we shouldn't
just judge them.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
And I'm not saying that anybody is doing that or
people will do that, but just let people do whatever
works best for them.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Oh, people do do it.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
People do do it, and we dismiss people, the middle
class people. We will dismiss people because they don't meet it.
They may have the education and not the salary, or
they may have the salary and not the education. I'm
saying both ways. Men do it to women, women do
it to men. Thank you so much, doctor Marsh. Thank
(34:23):
you so much for tuning in for listening today. I
hope you got something here today. Go get the book
The Love Jones Cohort. It's about being single, being middle
class and living alone and how to make the best
of that. Remember, doctor Marsh said, flip through them first
two chapters. She's an academician. She is you know, she's
(34:44):
an educator. So get through those first two chapters, get
in the rest of them, Get to the home depot,
go to the airport.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
No, I'm just season. Enjoy, Enjoy, enjoy.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Thank you, doctor marsh, thank you for joining the community today,
and y'all out there, I'm going to see you all
next time. I hope that you know something now that
you didn't know when you tuned in. And until we
meet again, stay in peace and not pieces. I'll see
you next time. Bye. The R Spot is a production
(35:24):
of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
I am Yama, your host, your guide, a teacher for
some and a soft place to fall for others. And
I was a miserable failure in my relationships until I
love myself enough to be able to share my love
with other people. Welcome to the R Spot, a production
of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome,
(00:38):
Welcome to the R Spot. I am your guide, your facilitator,
your support, your comrade in arms. Yes, we talk about relationships,
all kinds of relationships. And when we look out in
the world today, who my lord relationships are? They're all
(00:59):
I can say is pray for the people. Ah, praise
for the people. The people need help. And social relationships,
family relationships, intimate relationships, loving relationships. And you know, for me,
it's your relationship with yourself that is the foundation and
the basis of everything. I don't care who you are,
(01:19):
what you're doing, gay, straight, black, white, or young, how
you be with yourself is going to show up, and
how you be in relationships. But there's this phenomenad that
seems to be going on that's getting a lot of
conversation all over the place, and that's singleness. Singleness, being single,
(01:44):
being unhooked up, unattached, unmarried, you know, and in some
places people try to make it like it's a disease,
like there's something wrong with you. I am single by choice,
single by choice. I've been married three times, twice to
the same person. Lord, pray for the people, not be
(02:06):
a people, okay, and in two long term relationships. And
my last partner made this transition about I guess it'll
be four years in January. Wow, my goodness. And I'm
single by choice. I made that choice. That's what I
want to do right now. Get me together. My relationship
(02:28):
with myself is shifting and changing, because you know, I
crossed that seventieth decade last year. So I don't even
know how to be an old lady in relationship, you know,
because my mind is young, and I know if I
be swinging through the chandeliers and doing the stuff I
used to do when I was young, I could hurt myself.
(02:49):
So I have to figure out how you be old
in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
What you do?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
You know, I can do the basics.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
I like to cook, and i'll iron, and I'll run
your bath and rub your feet and all of that.
But you know, I have some old I don't know
what you call it, prejudices. You know, I don't want
nobody on no crutch or a walker. I'm not on
no meds, so you being on your meds on you,
(03:19):
and I find not a lot of men my age
are just not in shape.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So I have to go young. I have to go younger.
But how young I haven't.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Figured any of that out yet, so I said, let
me just stay over here with me and my kooties
and don't be infected in the relationship pool. But then
there are a lot of younger women who are either
in upset or breakdown or horrification that they're single. And
then there are some who just have given up because
(03:52):
for many women, they're just done. They are done with
the shenanigations and the bad behavior. Yesterday, I think it
was my beloved sister, beloved sister Stephanie Mills, who's on
Broadway yay, did an interview on the Breakfast Club, and
(04:12):
she said that at sixty seven, she's single by choice
because she don't want to deal with knuckleheads. I didn't
know there was sixty seven year old knuckleheads, So she
too is single by choice. But a lot of women
aren't comfortable with it. A lot of women aren't happy
about it. A lot of men aren't happy about it.
(04:33):
Men come to me all the time and say, I
can't find a good woman.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Well, where are you looking?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
You can't go to the second hand store or the
Salvation army to look for no good women?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Because I know a lot of them. What age group
do you want? I'll send you some references.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
But today we are gonna talk about single hood and
I have a guest today. I have a guest today,
and then we're going live. We're gonna talk to some
single women out there and get some insight and input.
My guest today is doctor Chris Marsh, and she is
the author of a brand new book, The Love Jones Cohort,
(05:11):
The Love Jones Cohort, Remember the Love Jones, Love Jones,
I Gotta Love Jones. Welcome, Doctor Marsh. We want to
talk about The Love Jones Cohort. We want to talk
about being single. We want to talk about all of that.
And the thing about your book is it's The Love
(05:32):
Jones Cohort, but it's about being single and middle class.
So I want to talk about that because is there
a distinction between being single in the middle class, the
upper class, the lower class. I want to talk about that,
and you draw from your background in both economics and politics,
(05:52):
and what in the world is intersectionality.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
But she was a post doctoral scholar at the Caroline
Population Center at the University of North Carolina before she
joined the faculty of the University of Maryland. So she
is both a woman, a single woman, a scholar, and
(06:18):
something that she do with intersectionality.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
I don't know what that is. So she's gonna tell
us what that is. Okay, welcome doctor Marge. How are you,
doctor Venzan.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
It is truly a pleasure to be on the show.
Thank you for the wonderful introduction. It's just a blessing
to be here.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
So thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Well, thank you, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Now, before we start talking about singlehood, what in the
world is intersectionality?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
What is that?
Speaker 4 (06:42):
Okay, So we're gonna start there.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Okay, So I am an academic, but I'm going to
try to break this down into very basic, kind of
like terms for you. I'd like to use the analogy
kiss keep it simple, stupid. So I want to try
to keep real simple for what intersectionality means. So when
we think of it's kind of like a euretical framework.
And so what it means is that I'm not just black,
(07:04):
I'm not just a woman. So if you study racism,
you're going to miss some of some of the issues
I face as a woman.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
If you study sexism, you're going.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
To miss some of the things that I face that
it relates to rapes. So intersectionality says, you can't disconnect
my blackness from my womanness. You have to talk about
how me as a black will be those intersecting identities.
How that now how I navigate through the world and
how the world looks at me because I'm a black woman,
And one of the arguments I make in the book
(07:33):
is that it should really be I'm a black, single woman,
and how does the world look at me? And how
do I navigate the world. So that's what intersectionality means.
You can't just look at me as black, you can't
just look at me as a woman. You have to
look to those intersecting identities.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
So is that why you talk about being single and
middle class?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
That's a really great question, and class is part of it.
So it's race, of class, it's gender, it's singleness. But
one of the things, because I am an academic, one
of the things I decided early on in my academic career.
And please understand what I mean when I say this,
I said I was not going to pimp the poor
to make my academic career. There are a lot of
(08:13):
scholars who do not look like me who talk about
poor Black Americans.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
But in spite of all.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
The isms that exist in America, there is still a
thriving Black middle class. And because there is a black
middle class, all of my work looks at black middle class.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
It's a smaller subset of Black America, but they're still there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So because they're there, I really wanted to talk about them,
and I really wanted to talk about to the point
you were asking earlier, I really want to talk about
people that are single and living alone in the black
middle class because by definition air quotes, they did everything right.
They went to college, they got the big houses, the
big degrees, the big titles, but at the end of
(08:50):
the day, they're still single. Because if I don't look
at the middle class, what they could say is, oh,
they're poor, so.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
They should have done they should have gone to school,
they should have got a better job.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
No, no, no, these are people that are solid middle
class members and they're still single. So let's kind of
complicate the conversation. So that's why I really want to
look at middle class. Wow.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Okay, wait a minute, I'm going live. I am going
live because this is too juicy and too good to
just be between.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
You and I.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, good afternoon. I am live on the
R Spot today and I've got a guest, doctor Chris Marsh,
who confesses and admits that she is an academic, but
she talks about the middle class. We're gonna talk about
middle class single people today. I want you to listen in.
(09:41):
I'm gonna take your questions. We're gonna this is so juicy.
We were doing the interview and just her first line
to me was so delicious until I said, I have
to share this meal with my community.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
We need to.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Understand the black middle class. Now define middle class. If
you're just joining in, this is the R Spot. We
are live, me and doctor Chris Marsh talking about being
single and middle class. She's the author of a brand
new book, The Love Jones co Hoart. The Love Jones Cohort.
And remember that movie The Love Jones, okay, with Neil
(10:18):
Small and the little cutie I can't remember his name,
but anyway.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
And Lorenz Tate, Lorenz tape.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yes, how Lorenz forgive me because you know I love you,
but I'm old. I can't remember. My brain takes frequent naps. Okay,
How are you defining middle class, doctor marsh.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
That's a really, really, really great question.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
So, being a sociologist and a dermographer, I looked like
the literature and I had to see what the literature
said about middle class. And typically there's four measures. There's income, occupation, wealth,
and education. Those are typically the four measures that are
used to define middle class income.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Wait a minute, income, wealth, education.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And education, income, occupation and well.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
So many women today are single, and some of them
are single by choice, and some of them are single
by happenstance. Some of them are upset at they're single.
And we want to talk about what that means. What
does it mean to be single today? And how can
you choose to be single today? And why would you
(11:25):
choose to be single today?
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So we want to talk about all of that.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And doctor Martin talks about this thing called intersectionality, where
all of who you are, if you're a woman, if
you're black, if you're forty, if you're single, all of
that message together. So you can't look at one thing,
you got to look at it all. Oh somebody said,
(11:50):
many are married but single. Yeah, baby, that's a whole
nother conversation. I'm alone but not lonely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then there are so many men out they're saying
to me, to me, I hear it all the time.
I can't find a good woman. I'm like, well, where
are you looking? Where are you looking that you can't
(12:11):
find a good woman?
Speaker 3 (12:12):
All right? Let me see if doctor Marsh got back
in here. All right, here she is everybody to doctor
Chris with A. K.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Marsh a professor at the University of Maryland. She's a sociologist.
And we're here today to talk about single, being single,
single and middle class. And we've defined middle class. Everybody,
stay tuned, will be right back right after this. Why
(12:45):
do we have to have those distinctions? Why do we
have to have that? Oh?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
So, as I was saying earlier, one of the things
that was really important to me as a scholar and
as an academic is that I did not want to
and please understand what I mean when I say that
I did not want to pamph the poor to make
my academic career. There are a lot of scholars who
do not look like me to spend their entire time
talking about poor Black Americans, and the Bible even talks
(13:10):
about how the poor will be with us for all time.
But I decided that I was not going to pamp
the poor to make my academic career. I wanted to
look at the black metal class. Those two air quotes
have done everything that they were supposed to do. They
had the big houses, the big degrees, the big salaries,
the big occupations, but at the end of the day,
they live different lives than other racial ethnic groups in
(13:31):
particular like white folks. And so I wanted to study
the black middle class. But people often ask like, how
do you define black middle class? And I was trying
to say, like, if we look at the social science literature,
there's usually four measures that are used to define middle class.
It's income, it's education, it's occupation, and it is I
(13:51):
know we couldn't rebollw that well, and I studied the stuff, right,
I shouldn't elements so, but I also think people use
a line of objective measures, but I also think we're
talking about the black middle class, it can be some
subjective measures like, for example, where you go to church,
what kind of social organization do you do, how involved
(14:13):
are you with your community? So I do think if
we use just objective measures where it's just numbered, youmit them,
you hit the market, you don't, it can be short sighted.
So I try to offer more of a more contextual
understanding of how we think of no middle class. But
to the point that one of the listeners said earlier,
it does come off as classes and the leaders. When
you have to have a certain education, you have to
(14:35):
have a certain kind of occupation, you have to make
a certain amount of money, and you have to have
some kind of wealth, that can be a very immendous perspective.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Now, Now, do middle class people make differently? Do they
date differently?
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Maybe don't necessarily make differently, and they don't date differently.
I'm going to give you a big academic word and
explain what it means. One of the things I talk
about in the book is this idea of educational homogomy
and what that means. In very Layman's terms. It means
like we typically are going to marry somebody that looks
like us, whether or not that needings education, whether or
(15:13):
not that needs income. So when we're talking about a
lot of educated black women, are they able to date
educated black men? Please do not leave this conversation saying
that doctor marsh is saying everybody's got to have a
a bachelor's degree or a PhD to get married. That
is not what I'm saying. What I'm suggesting is that
we typically marry people that look like us. So I
(15:33):
really want to know, like what the middle class black
middle class does about marriage and dating and so on
and so forth, because if we look at the numbers,
I'm a demographer. If we look at the numbers, especially
when we start talking about professional black women, there aren't
comparable professional black men numerically, So what are black women
going to do? So that's part of the conversation I
have in the.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Book Wow Wow Wow.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That is I don't know. That's troubling to me, and
it is. It's troubling to me because I never ask
a person about their education. I guess I look at
their heart and their soul first. Because my husband, he
went to college during our marriage, and I had already
(16:19):
been to college. Right, all right, Well, anyway, you said,
stop asking why you're single?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Why do you say that? So here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
There's two things.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
One, I'm like, I don't know why everybody thinks it's
okay to ask single people why are you single? Why
are you worried about our daily practices of what we're doing?
And so after reading the book, I tell the readers,
I hope, after reading this book, you are just as
likely to ask somebody why are you married as you
are to.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Ask somebody why are you single?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
We always ask single folks, but we don't ask married folks.
If we keep asking the single folks, it suggests that
the priority is that you have to be married. Not
a good marriage and not a healthy marriage. You just
have to be married. So either we should be asking
everybody or we should be asking nobody. But what you're
not gonna do is just ask single quolts. So that's
(17:10):
why I blew up people to take away from the books.
Stop asking. But if you're gonna ask, be consistent, don't discriminate,
ask married folks, and ask single folks.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Well, I'm gonna start asking people, why are you married right,
and wait for.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Our culture and wait for coherent response, because come on,
I responded. In the book, they talked about how they
have to get their narrative together for like the holidays.
The holidays are coming up, so they have to get
their narrative together for why they're single. And I'm like,
if we're gonna be asking people about maritals, fasts were
asking everybody, So everybody has to come to the holiday
holiday party or dinner with their narratives and explaining why,
(17:46):
justifying why they're single or why they're married.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Really, well, I'm single by choice, but you know what,
everybody's coming to my house, so ain't nobody gonna ask
me that question?
Speaker 2 (18:00):
What single folks do get it are quite often. And
one of the things in the book I talk about
is I talk about how single folks can actually deal
with that because they get it quite often. And a
little piece of advice that I'm gonna give single folks
is that when someone asks you why are you single?
It's a very benign response that you can give, but
it'll get them to think about the error and their statement.
You can just say, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah? Okay, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Okay, well, okay, there's a couple of things you can do.
You can cuss them out from I may even grace
the house sweet they how dare you ask me? Blah
blah blah blah. Or you can just say in a
very benign the way, what do you mean by that? Now?
Typically what's gonna happen is they're gonna stutter, They're gonna stammer,
and they're gonna say, oh, you know what I mean?
Like you know, like no, no, no, no, no, what do you
mean by that? Because all of my accolades, all of
that pedigree that I bring with me does not matter
(18:46):
as long as I don't have an mrs degree. You
gonna go home thinking about the question that you just
asked me. I'm not gonna go home think about it.
I'm gonna leave that back on you, and the allness
is on you to understand the error in your way
when you ask a question, why are you single?
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Well, we can't ignore the fact that there really is this,
uh I guess social consciousness that if you're single, there's
something wrong with you.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Oh, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Even if you're single with children, either through divorce or
choice not to be married, you then look at you
like you got cooties.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, you're like right, yes, yeah. They think something's wrong
with you. And that's that's one of the main reasons
why I wrote the book. I was really trying to
be stigmatize singlehood because what we have to understand is
that there's people that will be in relationships that are abusive, toxic, unfulfilling,
and underwarding simply because they don't want to hold the
title of single. They'll either stay in something or get
(19:43):
in something because societal pressures and the way in which
society is built, it's it caters to be a partnered,
it caters to be married, and so single folks are
just like, oh my gosh, I've got to get part
I got to be partner, I gotta be married. I'm like,
absolutely not. So I'm really trying to be stigmat singlehood
and have people know that there's nothing wrong with you
(20:03):
being single. You can stand very comfortably and confidently in
your singleness. And I think as we start to continue
to have these kinds of conversations, we start to be
sympathizing in and people feel more comfortable scanning in their singleness.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Well, now not only are you single, but you a
childless cat lady.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
In that part.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, but it's also not only just being single. It's
the choice now that many women are making not to
have children, and that seems to be a whole nother
disease that we carry. What do you mean by the
Love Jones? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Well, there's two reasons why if fy to call the
book Love Jones Cohort. One reason is that if you
get at a really cool title for a book, people
will die just by the book. It because of the title.
Thank God for that right. But the other is why
I really wanted to call it the Love Jones Cohort.
So it's based on the movie Love Jones. And it's
based on a demographic term, which is cohort. Cohort just
means a band of people. So when I started write
(21:00):
to school way back in the Stone Ages, I noticed
that I was being trained at the demographer, and I've
noticed that marriage rates were changing for all racial and
ethnic groups, but way more pronounced for Black Americans. And
so my sisters and I we bought a house on
this in Lamart Park in Love Angeles, California, and two
other people, single people bought houses on mar Street and
I was like, you know what, I really think that
(21:20):
there's this demographic shipt in married couple. I mean in
middle class couple that married couples to young black professionals
who aren't married and don't have children, like the characters
in Love Jones. So pop culture kind of saw what
was happening, but the academics were slow to get on
the board with what was happening. So I wanted to
pay respect to the movie Love Jones because that's where
(21:42):
you start to see this demographic shift from this traditional
kind of middle class family like we think about the
Huxtables on the Kywsky Show. Two are like, you know,
middle class or upper middle class, we have two point
five children and the black picket fence. We now start
to see this demographic and the Love Jones where they're single,
they're trying to drop their lives and so on and
so forth. So I put the two terms together, an
(22:03):
academic term and a pop culture term, and I can
help with the term the Love Jones cohort and its
subtitle is Signal and Living ap blone in the black
meddle class.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Oh that's good, that's good.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
I want you to give me a better explanation about that,
and we're going to do that right after this break. Alrighty,
if you're just joining us here on the R Spot
today we're talking about being single and being middle class.
My guest today is doctor Chris Marsh and we are
(22:34):
glad to have her. Start thinking out there. How do
you feel about being single? Or what are your questions
about being single? What are your challenges being single? Whether
you have children or not. Do you talk about being
single and a parent in your book?
Speaker 2 (22:54):
No, I actually don't talk about single parents in my book.
I left a lot of questions for my graduate student
is to pick up and carry the conversation forward. I'm
actually looking at people that have single, have never been married,
and don't have any children. And one of the reasons
why I use a very strict measure for the book
is because I wanted to think about, like, these are
(23:16):
middle class folks, they have assets, they have wealth. How
are they going to transfer their wealth? Because there's a
subtle argument in the social science literature that's say, the
black middle class is not going to be able to
reproduce it self because we don't have a lot of
black married couples. I think what's going to happen is
that the black middle class is going to reproduce itself
in different kind of ways. Because if you look at
(23:37):
the numbers, the second largest household type and the Black
middle class are people that are single and living alone.
The second largest household type BETWY behind married couples. So
the question becomes, how are they going to transfer their
wealth if they own a house. Typically you transfer your
wealth from parent to child. It's bequeathed to the child
or to the partner. So I really wanted to talk
to people who didn't have children, had never been married,
(23:58):
and who were they going to transfer their wealth too.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
And I don't want to.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
Give away all the juicing nuggets in the book, because
I really want you to buy the book. But they
used innovative ways to transfer their wealth. They transferred it
to nieces, to nephews, to god children, to friends, to
the children of friends, which I think comes back to
a really important conversation we were having earlier about this
idea of childless cat lady and how just because you
(24:25):
didn't biologically have a child, that you may not have
this nurturing or you don't mother, and that's one of
the things we kind of talk about in the book
is that even though we didn't these people did not
biologically have children, they were very nurturing, they were mothering,
and in a lot of ways they decided to give
their assets to their god children, nieces and nephews and
so on and so forth.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Now, now can we talk about the fact that, going
back to what you said earlier, that you're going to
marry somebody that looks like you or matches you. So
you have a lot of black women I guess they're
middle class professional maybe high income earners who are looking
for a partner can find a partner that looks like
(25:09):
them just in terms of race, and then they go
outside of their race, where do they fit in the cohort?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, so there's a whole section that's a really great question.
There's a whole section that talks about interracial dating and
interracial marriage, and so one of the things that's really important.
I was like, I don't I'm not going to value
you judge about whether or not you want to interracially
date or not. But there's a really great book that
talks about the digital dating divide, and it talks about
(25:40):
how racism and sexism plays out in the online dating
process and black women are the least likely to get
winked at or to get approached on online dating sources.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And really we are.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
There's a whole it's a wonderful book by the colleague
that read it, it's called The Dating Divide. And when
we are looked at her with that, it's usually for
these stereotypical ideas that were the hyper sexual, hot and
top or something like that. So I think it's really
important to think about interracial daty and how sometimes some
of these stereotypical ideas can play out in any kind
of relationships, but they also can play out dating relationships
(26:17):
as well.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Now, now let me ask you a question, because are
you looking primarily at women because there's a lot of
single middle class men who aren't married.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Are men in the cohort?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Also, men are actually in the cohort? They are And
that was really important to me because I wanted to
make sure that men were not excluded from the conversation.
And like I said earlier, I also wanted to make
sure that I could send the book to everybody. So
this is not just a book about black women, because
there are black men that are single as well, And
(26:50):
it's important that we don't get lost in the conversation.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Now.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
What also is important, though, is that women do dominate
the category, but there are men in that group.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
I wonder, if you divorced or widowed, are you still
considered single? Because when I check off the boxes on applications,
I don't put divorced, I don't, I don't put widowed.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
I put single.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The other day I had what was that feeling out
I can't remember what it was, and it said married
sing I put single, and then I wrote right next
to it, by choice because I don't want because people
really do think there's something wrong with you. So I
guess I'm a single middle I'm in a single middle
(27:35):
class cohort. Okay, And I met a guy who let
me go back to my bus driver. I met a
guy who was a bus driver, very very nice to
his mother, had great relationships with his siblings, and made
(27:57):
probably two thirds less than I do. And we're having
a wonderful time. If we were to get married, does
he become middle class by choice? I mean by association?
Does he become or do I become working class by association?
(28:19):
Because in our culture, you become what the husband is.
If he's Jewish, you become Jewish. If he's Christian, you
become Christian. Most people don't live culturally, but I do.
So does he become middle class by marriage?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
That's a really great question, and I don't necessarily have
a really great answer, but what I will that's really
something really interesting to think about, right, But what I
will say is, like what we have to understand is
that I want to go on record saying that I
am pro marriage.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
I believe marriage is a good thing.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I get people that email me, call me, send me
hate mail all the time saying I'm bad for Black America,
I'm bringing Black America down because I'm not promoting marriage.
I get it all the time, Like you clearly have
not read my book. But I want to go on
record saying that I'm all about marriage when it's done
right and it's a healthy marriage. Now, one of the
things that we do know is that before marriage was
almost like a vehicle to get into middle class status,
(29:15):
especially for Black women. Marriage doesn't serve the same utility
and the same purpose that it served before because you
have a lot of black women who are now middle
class and did not need marriage to get there.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
So because they did not need marriage or partnering to
get there.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
It's a conversation of like, do they now want to
partner or be married, and what's utility? What does marriage
mean for them? And so it really becomes an interesting conversation.
But I also think that people automatically assume just because
two people get married, that's automatically go a catapulture and
in middle class status. If two broke folks would high
debt get married, that's just two broke folks married.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
What a whole lot of debt.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
People think marriage is a panacea, which I think becomes
a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
But I want to take the law route to get
to this comment real quick. I have a dear friend
of mine who.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Always used to say, like, I like leiskinned woman, I
like leiskined woman, I like light skined woman. Though he
used to be a friend, and so one day I
just said to him, no, you don't. And I gave
a real long, pregnant pause, and then I said, you know,
I really respect you. If you would say I've been
conditioned from a very young age to think white is
right and closer to white.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Is right, i'd respect you. But if you're sitting here
saying that this is just your preference structure. That's just
not the case. In a similar way, I admonish.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
People to ask themselves, why do you want to be married?
It's a simple question, but it has some deep implications.
We have been taught from a very young age we're
supposed to have the white wedding, and I mean the
white dress, and so on and so forth. Why do
you want to be married? Ask yourself that question, and
sit with that uncomfortable question and see what your answer is.
Because we have a and I love the podcast because
(30:54):
it's all about relationship. We put a lot of emphasis
in the romantic relationship, but there are a ton of
non romantic nurturing relationships and give us so much pleasure
and are so rewarding to us that we're putting all
of our eggs in the romantic basket and sometimes forsaken
our non romantic nurturing relationships also known as friends.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Listen, why do I want to be married? I don't.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I don't, And even now when I do choose to
be partnered a couple, we're going.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
To each have to have our own house.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I don't want to live with anybody, you know, my
closets are already full. I don't want to have to
move closets. And another thing that I notice about women,
they say they want to be in relationship, but there's
no room in their life for a partner, you know,
whether it's man or woman, whatever, fruit nuts, berries, whatever
it is you're choosing, there's no room.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You don't have a.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Dresser drawer for them, you don't have closet space for them. Ah,
but maybe that means that you'll have to get a
house together. Let me ask you, qu Let me ask
you a question about these middle class people. Okay, here's
a question for you. So you middle class and he
middle class? Does he move in your house? Do you
move in his house? Or do y'all get a house together?
(32:13):
This is let me get let me get ready. Okay,
what do you do? Because when you pour chances off,
whoever got the best house, the other person moves in.
Unfortunately most of the time that's the woman. The woman
has the better house and he moves in there. But
when you middle class and both of y'all he got
a condo, you got a house where y'all go?
Speaker 3 (32:33):
What you do?
Speaker 4 (32:33):
I want to answer that in two ways.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
One I want to say whatever works best for them, right,
I was like, don't worry about what nobody else says,
like that's your house while you have person whatever works
best for you.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
But the other way I want to answer that question
two is I want to say, so.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Often we police black women and what they do, what
they say, how we talk how our hair is.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
How big our butt is or how big our butt ain't.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
How our hair is natural, how our ain't natural, How
you coming for our eyelashes, how you ain't coming for
our eyelashes. At the end of the day, that is exhausting.
Let black women be and let them do what they
want to do. If you and your bood decided you
want to move into his house, fine, If you want
to move into her house, that is perfectly fine.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
But just let black women be.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Why are we constantly policing black women and tell them
what they should and should not do. Well.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
I don't want to tell nobody what they should and
should not do, But I want to be with somebody
I know can pay the mortgage or at least contribute half.
I'm good with the half. I'm good with the half.
Can you pay half the mortgage, I'll split it with
you okay.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
And see for some people it's like, you know, I
just want a warm body. You ain't got to worry
about the financers. Some people like, we come into this
thing fifty to fifty whatever they want to do.
Speaker 4 (33:51):
I don't think what we shouldn't do is we shouldn't
just judge them.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
And I'm not saying that anybody is doing that or
people will do that, but just let people do whatever
works best for them.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Oh, people do do it.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
People do do it, and we dismiss people, the middle
class people. We will dismiss people because they don't meet it.
They may have the education and not the salary, or
they may have the salary and not the education. I'm
saying both ways. Men do it to women, women do
it to men. Thank you so much, doctor Marsh. Thank
(34:23):
you so much for tuning in for listening today. I
hope you got something here today. Go get the book
The Love Jones Cohort. It's about being single, being middle
class and living alone and how to make the best
of that. Remember, doctor Marsh said, flip through them first
two chapters. She's an academician. She is you know, she's
(34:44):
an educator. So get through those first two chapters, get
in the rest of them, Get to the home depot,
go to the airport.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
No, I'm just season. Enjoy, Enjoy, enjoy.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Thank you, doctor marsh, thank you for joining the community today,
and y'all out there, I'm going to see you all
next time. I hope that you know something now that
you didn't know when you tuned in. And until we
meet again, stay in peace and not pieces. I'll see
you next time. Bye. The R Spot is a production
(35:24):
of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Iyanla Vanzant
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