On Occupy Wall Street/ Black Women being Racist

Letters: On Guatemala, Myanmar, Occupy Wall Street, black women, investments, Cyprus, Iran | The Economist

"SIR - The people camping out in Zuccotti Park are not downtrodden workers or hard-pressed homeowners (who might actually have genuine gripes). Douglas Schoen, a pollster who worked for Bill Clinton, surveyed 200 protesters at the site. He found that half of them are politically active and nearly a third would engage in violence to achieve their aims. A large majority are bound together by a deep opposition to capitalism and want protectionist trade policies. A recent article in Mother Jones on the roots of Occupy Wall Street says “credit” is often given to Adbusters, a “Canadian anti-capitalist magazine”, for calling for America’s “Tahrir moment”.

Roger Kimball, in a forthcoming essay, lists the similarities between the Zuccotti Park crowd and the 1960s generation, Jerry Rubin’s “permanent adolescents”. Now, as then, we are witness to, “incoherent childlessness and pathetic exhibitionism” from activists.

These are the same old agitators pushing the same old agenda that they can never attain through the ballot box: destroy capitalism...


SIR - Your article about the rising number of black unmarried women in America illustrates society’s prevailing double standard regarding race. It informs us that “fewer than one in ten black women intermarries” with other races because it is their “greatest taboo”. We are told that some black women “find non-black men unattractive” and that others fear the children of such marriages might not be “black enough”, but that the most common reason for not intermarrying is that black women regard it “as tantamount to betraying the race”. One black woman explained that if she were to marry a man from another race it would be akin to turning in her “black heart”.

If The Economist had reported that racial intermarriage was white women’s greatest taboo, that some white women find non-white men unattractive, that others fear their children would not be white enough and that it was common for them to view intermarriage as a betrayal of their race, such views would be utterly condemned. If a white woman said that she would have to turn in her white heart to marry out of her race, she would be called a racist. But isn’t this double standard itself racist?"


Addendum: This is in response to:

Unmarried black women: Down or out | The Economist

"abuse is what you get for suggesting, as Mr Banks does, that black women—not only the “most unmarried” group in American society but also the one that least intermarries with other races—should look to white, Latino or Asian men as potential mates. After all, the alternative is often no marriage or relationship at all...

As [black] women rise into the middle class, the men stay in the lower class, becoming less compatible. Many black women respond by “marrying down, but not out,” as Mr Banks puts it. But that makes bad marriages. Two out of every three black marriages fail, about twice the rate of white marriages...

The most obvious solution, he discovered, also runs into the greatest taboo: intermarriage. This is ironic, because black men are statistically very open to marrying outside their race—more than one in five does. But fewer than one in ten black women intermarries. For some black women, a white husband brings bad memories of slavery and Jim Crow. Others have conditioned themselves to find non-black men unattractive (lacking “swag”, in the argot). Still others fear that men of other races find black women unattractive, or that their children might be “not black enough”. But by far the most common reason seems to be that black women still regard intermarriage as tantamount to betraying the race. “My black heart,” says one black woman as she contemplates marrying out, “I would need to turn it in.” “We know it's a struggle,” says another, “but we women got to stand by the black man. If we don't, who will?”"