Babymama Mayhem

So in reading an old Creative Loafing issue and I came across an article (editorial???) called "Re-examing 'baby mamas' " by Nsenga Burton. Not only did I feel like Ms. Burton pointed out very important statical fact about Blacks (I don't care for the term "African-American") and births our of wedlock, but I also felt that she made very valid points about racial bias made by mere choices of words alone. 

When referencing an interaction w a young white preggers she pointed out, "this young woman was a sweetheart, extremely mannerable, and we had a great conversation. She refered to her unplanned baby as a 'surprise' and the father of the child as a "significant other'. As we talked, I thought to myself that with white women, an unplanned baby is often a "surprise" -- but with black women, situations like this present us as lazy, trifling, irresponsible chicks who just lye around and make babies." 

She goes on to say, "what's interesting is that when she walked in, I didn't make any judgements based on get appearance because it's not my business. Even though she wasn't wearing a wedding band, I didn't assume that she wasn't married. I didn't immediately jump to the worst-case scenario; I made room for the best-case scenario." how many of us can say that? How many of us can say that we don't assume the worst when we see these situations. We see a woman who is preggers do we automatically assume she isn't married? Or if she young, preggers, and married then it MUST be becuz she got knocked up? Or that if she's not married then she was a slut, or dumb? Or both?? That she couldn't possibly intelligent? Responsible? That she fucked up her whole life? How many of make that assumption automatically when we see a young pregnant black girl? *raises hand* now y is that?

In the beginning of this article aye addresses responses to a previous article that was the catalyst for this topic. She states that one of her readers said that "black women have most of the out-of-wedlock babies in the U.S." don't u hate when ppl talk abt shit they don't really kno??? She later corrects her reader's (and most ppls) misconception by saying, "first of all, black women do not have more babies out of wedlock than other populations. Proportionally we do --- meaning more black women in the black community have babies out of wedlock... ... More Latino and white women have babies out of wedlock than we do in terms of overall population. Though honestly, it doesn't matter who's having more babies out of wedlock. The question, however, is: why assume that blacks are having more babies out of wedlock?" 

She goes on to hit u w more math like, "blacks only make up 12 percent of the total U.S. population, so in order for us to be having ALL (or most) of the out-of-wedlock babies in the nation, ALL black women would need to have multiple births". 

I'm not gonna quote u to death, so if u wanna get hear the rest of her thoughts and some facts google (or pick up) the July 21-27, 2010 vol. 24 number 21 issue of Creative Loafing. (clclt.com) And if u wanna take it one step further, her email is nsenga.burton@creativeloafing.com