Synopses & Reviews
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BLACK MEN AND WOMEN IN AMERICA ARE IN CRISIS. IT'S TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GONE WRONG AND START THE HEALING PROCESS. The current divorce rates for black couples has quadrupled since 1960 and is now double that of the general population, rates of domestic violence in black marriages are skyrocketing, and nearly half of married black men admit to having been unfaithful. In What's Love Got to Do with It? Donna Franklin, one of the country's leading African-American sociologists, speaks out on these painful, complex issues, providing an incisive and riveting analysis of the gender tensions that are the legacy of slavery and its aftermath.
Franklin breaks new ground in explaining why black men and women have trouble relating to each other and examines their profoundly different starting points, which are influenced by generations of racism and injustice. She shows how black women's strength and self-sufficiency can be used to nurture relationships. Likewise, she teaches black men how to support one another and their relationships with women without excluding women, as has happened with the Million Man March.
The challenge of mending the rift between black men and women is formidable, but can be made easier. Understanding is the first step on the path to healing.
Synopsis
Relationships between black men and women in America are in crisis--it's time to figure out what's gone wrong and start the healing process. The current divorce rates for black couples have quadrupled since 1960 and is now double that of the general population; rates of domestic violence in black marriages are skyrocketing; and nearly half of married black men admit to having been unfaithful. In What's Love Got to Do with It? Donna Franklin, one of the country's leading African American sociologists, speaks out on these painful, complex issues, providing an incisive and riveting analysis of the gender tensions that are the legacy of slavery and its aftermath.
Franklin breaks new ground in explaining why black men and women have trouble relating to each other, and examines their profoundly different starting points, which are influenced by generations of racism and injustice. She shows how black women's strength and self-sufficiency can be used to nurture relationships. Likewise, she teaches black men how to support one another and their relationships with women without excluding women, as has happened with the Million Man March.
The challenge of mending the rift between black men and women is formidable but can be made easier. Understanding is the first step on the path to healing.
Synopsis
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BLACK MEN AND WOMEN IN AMERICA ARE IN CRISIS. IT'S TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GONE WRONG AND START THE HEALING PROCESS.
The current divorce rates for black couples has quadrupled since 1960 and is now double that of the general population, rates of domestic violence in black marriages are skyrocketing, and nearly half of married black men admit to having been unfaithful. In What's Love Got to Do with It? Donna Franklin, one of the country's leading African-American sociologists, speaks out on these painful, complex issues, providing an incisive and riveting analysis of the gender tensions that are the legacy of slavery and its aftermath.
Franklin breaks new ground in explaining why black men and women have trouble relating to each other and examines their profoundly different starting points, which are influenced by generations of racism and injustice. She shows how black women's strength and self-sufficiency can be used to nurture relationships. Likewise, she teaches black men how to support one another and their relationships with women without excluding women, as has happened with the Million Man March.
The challenge of mending the rift between black men and women is formidable, but can be made easier. Understanding is the first step on the path to healing.
Synopsis
The African-American community is facing a serious crisis: the divorce rate is four times that of any other ethnic group; married men are twice as likely to be unfaithful to their spouses; and single African Americans are less eager to marry than their white counterparts.
In What's Love Got to Do with It? Donna Franklin examines these troubling issues in a riveting analysis of gender tensions rooted in slavery and its aftermath. Challenging the contention that men are solely responsible for these problems, she argues that women, strong and self-sufficient in other areas of their lives, must learn to use these skills to nurture relationships. She asserts that men, too, must play an active role in the healing process by supporting each other and avoiding exclusionary social actions like the Million Man March. What's Love Got to Do with It? is a strikingly original landmark study of the African-American community and a valuable contribution to solving one of its most urgent problems.
About the Author
Donna L. Franklin is the author of Ensuring Inequality: The Structural Transformation of the African-American Family, which won the American Sociological Association's Goode Distinguished Book Award for "outstanding contribution to family scholarship." She has held faculty appointments at the University of Chicago, Howard University, Smith College, and the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Table of Contents
Contents1 Breaking the Silence
2 The Past Is Prologue: Slavery and Its Aftermath
3 The Cult of True Womanhood
4 A Shifting Landscape: The "New Manhood" Movement
5 The Allure of Miss Anne
6 Does Race Trump Gender?
7 The Path of Healing
Appendix
Notes
Index