"An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage"

WSJ featured an article—by a black man, one Ralph Richard Banks—on the difficulties black women face in finding a spouse, and proposed that rather than looking within their race exclusively to consider marrying outside their race to broaden the base of eligible males in the near-term, but to ease the difficulties of finding in-race mates in the long-term.

From the article:

If many black women remain unmarried because they think they have too few options, some black men stay single because they think they have so many. The same numbers imbalance that makes life difficult for black women may be a source of power for black men. Why cash in, they reason, when it is so easy to continue to play?

...which perhaps describes the situation of a guy I know.

Others prefer black men because they don't think a relationship with a non-black man would work. They worry about rejection by a would-be spouse's family or the awkwardness of having to explain oneself to a non-black partner.

As one 31-year-old schoolteacher in D.C. told me, "It's easy to date a black man because he knows about my hair. He knows I don't wash it every day. He knows I'm going to put the scarf on [to keep it in place at night]." Discussions about hair may seem trivial, but for many black women, just the thought of having the "hair talk" makes them tired. It's emblematic of so much else they'd have to teach.

Interracial relationships aren't easy, since the downside is certain things you can't take for granted. But the plus side is that you can avoid the miscommunications that result from taking for granted things that weren't safe to assume.

By opening themselves to relationships with men of other races, black women would also lessen the power disparity that depresses the African-American marriage rate. As more black women expanded their options, black women as a group would have more leverage with black men. Even black women who remained unwilling to love across the color line would benefit from other black women's willingness to do so.

Interesting thesis, one that I as a "minority", if not a vested one, think valid.