RELATIONSHIPS

Black singles with college education embrace life without marriage. Why is it seemingly OK to ask single people “Why are you single?” when married people are rarely asked “Why are you married?” Sociologist Kris Marsh hopes to break this double-standard with her new book “The Love Jones Cohort: Single and Living Alone in the Black Middle Class.” In it, she examines the lifestyles of single people and explores the stigma that can come with their decision to not marry. What’s the story behind the title? My mentor and I coined the expression “The Love Jones Cohort” over coffee on a hot and humid summer day in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We were discussing how my idea to study Black middle class men and women who are single and living alone came from both media and my own life experiences. ...

One night, after five days of smoking meth, Misty* heard a voice. It just said ‘BOOM! Get up’ and I got up and was like, ‘where’s my son?’ and I run to the bathroom and my little girl’s standing at the sink and I could see the water running and coming down the hallway and he was already blue at the bottom of the tub. So I grabbed him up and was like, I mean, panic – I couldn’t do nothing but sing ‘Amazing Grace.’ It’s the only thing I knew to do. Misty’s son, one of her five children, survived – he was saved by a neighbour who worked for the ambulance service in their Alabama community. At first glance, Misty’s story is a cautionary tale against drug use, not unlike those portrayed in campaigns like the Faces of Meth and the Meth Project in the US. Media depictions of people who use meth...