Dr. Chris Marsh (52:12)
And I'm. I'm pushing back against that. And I'm just like. And see, I don't. So sometimes there are people. There's people that look like me that actually have hate mail, but sometimes you don't know who the person kind of is. But I think I'm supposed to be out here saying, y' all need to work this out. You know, that struggle, love. I'm not doing that struggle, love, love thing. I'm not doing that. You married for. You married for 25 years, and two of those are good. Come on, now. I'm not. I'm never going to promote something like that, but I am promoting black family. And one of the things that I talk about in the book, two Things about Family, I talk about two different perspectives. One, I'm saying, why can't we Be a family of one. And this is important because I am, as a single person, I'm considered a household by definition. Using the Census Bureau definition. The Census Bureau defines the irs. I'm gonna get there. One second. So the Census Bureau defines family by someone that you're related to by blood, adoption, or marriage. That's what a family is. Since I'm not related to anybody in my household, I'm considered a household, not a family. I am arguing that single people and single who are living alone should be considered a family of one because they are being discriminated against in so many different ways. I'm gonna give you, you a benign example and a more egregious example. If I want to go to get a cell phone plan, the family plan, I can't. You know, it's just me. I want the family plan rate with my one phone. If I want to go on vacation, I got to pay single occupancy rate versus double occupancy rate. I want the single family plan rate. An egregious example. Tax structures. Tax structures benefit certain kind of married couples, and it disadvantages single folks. There's a lady who's doing some work, I think her name is Dorothy Brown, and she wrote a book called the Whiteness of Wealth. And her argument is it is we either all file a single, which I think is good, or I think we should all be able to follow some kind of family, and we need to be able to consider. Be considered. Be considered a family of one. I'm not big on trying to change topics and terms and stuff like that, but you are discriminating an open sight about a family of one. I want to come back to that. I want to put a pin there because the other family I want to talk about is augmented families. The other argument that I make in the book is that to the point I made earlier about how black women are developing these really nurturing relationships with other women, why can't we get together, become considered an augmented family, and we develop a family and be considered a family? I'm drawing from Andrew Billings, another sociologist that said, hello, older sociologists, sociologist from time, way back, who was arguing about these augmented families. They're not. They're not related by blood, but they're true families. We have some girlfriends that we're closer to than some of our family members. Why can't we develop a family? Especially if you're talking about middle class folks and we talk about people who have assets, how are you going to disseminate your assets? Assets I'M not getting ready to get booed up with some dude to make sure I know where my assets is going to go. But my girl gonna make sure my assets are taken care of. So why can't we be an augmented family? One more point I want to make and I'm gonna turn it back over. Getting back to the first point I made about family of one. Now here's what I think is an interesting conversation. One of the things I'm arguing in the book is that we need to look at singlehood from an intersectional approach. The reason why we have to is because if we just say, oh, you got all these people that are out here being single. I do believe, like people that don't look, look like me are choosing single. They're like, okay, we're gonna do singlehood. I think when we start having a conversation about black women in particular, it's a slightly different kind of conversation. And we have to understand how structural forces constrain personal period, full stop. But you're not gonna do is we cannot leave it at the individual level. We cannot. So when we say, oh, maybe it's something about black women, you not gonna have this conversation and put it on, put the onus on me and not bring in the structural conversation, the structural train on personal choices. So when someone asks you why you single, you could say, Dr. Marsh said, and I quote, page 75 of her book, strain my personal choices. But here's, but here's why I think this is really an interesting conversation. If we think about intersectionality and we think about race, class, and to some race, gender to some degree, class. I am making an argument that one, we need to look at singlehood from an intersectional perspective. I'm also arguing, feeling that if we think about the matrix of domination, we think about race, class, gender. We need to include singleism in that conversation. So let me get this straight. So let me get this straight. Structural forces constrain my personal choices and then you discriminate against me. That is what I would call insidious. Now, some days I buy my argument, some days I don't. I'm just real honest. One of the things, one of the things I don't want people to think, I'm saying that singlehood is as oppressive as racism. But I do want you to think about is how we live in a partnered and married market. If we think about how racism and anti blackness permeates every social institution. I would argue being married and partner and the discrimination against singles permeates every social institution too. I'm not having. I'm not putting on the same plane, but we gotta have a conversation about it.
