Hallmark cards, Fatherless Father's Day, and Black Females: Why Ralph Richard Bank's Suggestion of Marrying a White Guy won't Fly

Dream On: Books suggests Black chicks go for white guys

Hallmark is a company, like soap giant Dove, which is in trouble as of late with Black people. Despite going 365Black, a hoax – digitally created - announcement at McDonald’s has forced that company to apologize to the one demographic they strive to keep happy.
 

But Hallmark made the grave mistake of designing cards for Father’s Day exclusively for those Mahogany moms whose child’s lack of a father figure (nearly 3/4s of all Black children) in their life was worth mentioning:

Ask anyone who has been raised by a single mother, and they will tell you that their moms played many roles in their lives, including teacher, cook, accountant, housekeeper, driver, CEO and psychologist, and often times, they even served as a father figure for their household. While it's important to celebrate these mothers and all that they do every day of the year, Hallmark found it necessary to commemorate their contributions to their families with a series of Father’s Day greeting cards created to specifically for single mothers.

While Hallmark offered more than 700 card styles for Father's Day, the majority of the nontraditional greeting cards for single moms were part of the company's Mahogany brand, which is their line specifically designed for African-American consumers. The Mahogany Father's Day collection included 66 culturally-relevant designs and sentiments that honor dad and other special men and women in a person's life, and two of these celebrate black single mothers.

With 2 out 3 African-American children living in homes where a father is not present, compared to 1 out of 3 nationally, is Hallmark simply making a good business decision or should people of color be offended by their choice? And what effect are these greeting card offerings and the celebration of single motherhood on a day dedicated to honor dads having on the value of fatherhood across all communities?

For a corporation to admit the truth and market cards that correctly laud the person raising the Black child (perhaps it should be a Mahogany card geared to the US tax payer?) instead of mythologizing a non-existent father figure is not a smart business move. Remembering how Black people turned on Bill Cosby for daring to air dirty Black laundry, is obvious that Mahogany cards failing to honor the Black sperm donor will be poorly received. 
 

Remembering that Hallmark is constantly at odds with the Black community, one can expect a lawsuit to be filed on behalf of the nearly 75 percent of absent Black fathers who weren’t celebrated correctly on the Mahogany card. 
 

It should be noted that Theroot.com conducted a Father’s Day poll for its readers (hardly scientific) but it produced some astonishing results:

In a new survey conducted and released by TheRoot.com, Black fathers overwhelmingly responded that they are viewed in a “negative manner” in society.
Close to 80 percent of Black men believe they get a bad rap.

Sixty-four percent blame the media — TV, film, newspapers and magazines — primarily for the ways in which black men are perceived, with another 21 percent placing responsibility with black men themselves.

Here’s an excerpt from the piece:
Those African Americans who primarily blame black men are perhaps being too hard on themselves, said Fredrick C. Harris, director of Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies. “There’s too much focus or overemphasis, when we think about fathers, on individual failings than on institutional failings,” Harris said Thursday. “Even though there is a tendency to blame ourselves, blame black people, there’s something happening in the broader society.” Harris pointed to the struggling economy and failures within the public school and criminal justice systems.

Dr. Harris is to be forgiven for his ignorance. Black-Run America (BRA) does everything legally possible to ensure that Black people succeed: more money is spent per Black pupil in school then on white children; lowering of standards for Black people to pass firefighter and police entrance tests across the nation that they can’t without court injunctions; special opportunities for entrepreneurial assistance not available to white applicants; and organizations dedicated to stemming the tide of Black criminality and the high rates of Black people in jail, most notably through the “no snitching” campaign. 
 

Not sure what Dr. Harris means by the failure of the criminal justice system, but it’s the failure of Black people to comply with the laws of the United States of America that require their admittance to the various prisons scattered throughout the land. 
 

 In academics, Black students can’t compete in Advancement Classes at the rate of every other racial group and are lagging behind severely in obtaining college degrees, plagued with high dropout rates. 
 

Just like the plague of fatherless (absent) Black children sweeping America; the results of such a plague are discussed here in the uptick in Mahogany Mobs occurring across the land, though the article only calls them “Flash Mobs.”
 

Funny that the incredibly high failure rate of Black males to care for their progeny merely being recognized by Hallmark in their greeting cards is cause for consternation when Black males have disproportionately high failure rates of not paying child support. 
 

College Educated Black Females (CEBFs) are beginning to look elsewhere for marriage opportunities, with Black males tendency to ‘hit it and quit it’ upon successful insemination and, of course, their inability to stay out of jail a detriment to suitable prospects. And their inability to graduate… the list could go on and on.
 

Some new book suggests that CEBFs should go for the white guy instead of another disinterested brother:

When titles for this book were being considered, perhaps Why Middle Class Black Women Can't Find a Man and How the Whole Problem Could Be Solved if They Would Just Marry White Guys didn't have quite the ring the publisher was after.
But that's pretty much what Stanford Law professor Ralph Richard Banks' Is Marriage for White People? How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone (in stores this September) is all about. The provocative, headline-grabbing big question (inspired by a journalist's 2006 account of her conversation with an African-American sixth-grader) turns out to be there mostly to signal, "Attention, black bloggers, hosts of urban radio shows and white people, too: This is about to be a controversial analysis of marriage and race. Get ready for a lively debate with lots of interrupting."

Black women are sick to death of this topic, and understandably so. It's been rehashed unsatisfyingly and, at times, infuriatingly, in recent years, peaking with a Nightline special, "Why Can't a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?" It was co-hosted by Steve Harvey. In the words of Melissa Harris Perry, "The serious, interesting and sensitive social and personal issues ... were hijacked by superficial, cartoonish dialogue that relied heavily on personal anecdotes and baseless personal impressions while perpetuating damaging sexism."

Is Marriage for White People? will have to answer to some of the same critiques, starting with the initial choice to dramatize the dilemma facing African-American women for whom "unmarried has become the new normal, single the new black," and blaming the "problem" on simple individual choices, instead of a complex set of issues with many causes, effects and stakeholders.

Unfortunately data compiled from dating Web sites shows that white guys prefer white girls 9-out-of-10 of the times and an Asian girl or light-skinned Hispanic chick occasionally. Right off the bat Banks is in trouble, as OKcupid showed Black women get very few replies from their e-mails they sen to would be dates.

Newsweek discussed the perils facing CEBFs here.

If Satoshi Kanazawa’s data and research findings are to true – and it is obviously true – then the prospects for CEBFs to score a white dude are incredibly low.

That, if trends continue unabated, in 30 years all Black women in America (including CEBFs) will be considered morbidly obese is probably another reason why Black chicks have such few suitors and such a fun time alone at The Golden Corral.
 

So it looks like CEBFs and single Black women – whose median wealth is $5 – are going to be shopping more and more for Father’s Day cards from the Mahogany line at Hallmark that fail to celebrate the father at all. 
 

Damn that Kanazawa!