Back in October of 2011, an article was written and published in The Economist called Down or Out (you may read it here). Based primarily on Ralph Richard Banks new book, Is Marriage For White People, it addressed the issue of the decline in black marriage. Showing that the number of single black women in America has reached 70%, Mr. Banks wanted to know why so many educated, professional black women were not getting married?

I too was curious as to why this number was so high and, being a black woman who recently entered in her thirties, if I was destined to always be a single black woman. I spoke with some classmates about the article and they were shock at the high rate of singleness among African American females. Together we formed the Love Black Project as a way of talking about this issue with members of the African American community who is directly effects, young black singles.

We interviewed twelve single African Americans, ten women and two men. The answers we received ran the gambit and all of them were the unadulterated truth.