Conversely, it would seem likely, then, that African-American men who ascribe to pro-Black viewpoints and who are less acculturated will select heavier ideal figures due to a rejection of Caucasian culture, however this has not been successfully investigated to date. Additionally, one’s level of acculturation may impact an individual’s beliefs about what a member of the other ethnic group would choose as ideal. For example, a Caucasian man living in an integrated community might begin to become aware of differences between what he and what African-American men find attractive about women’s bodies.

For WHR, approximately half of the African-American subsample believed that Caucasian men would choose a moderate WHR as ideal, while the other half was split between a low and a high WHR. Caucasian men, did in fact, choose a moderate WHR as ideal for both Caucasian figures and African-American figures. Similarly, more than half of the Caucasian men believed that African-American men would choose a low WHR as ideal, consistent with cultural stereotypes. Most African-American men in this study chose a moderate WHR as ideal while some chose a low WHR as ideal.

Of course, knowing the rate at which students are hooking up does not tell us how much they have casual intercourse, because not all hookups involve intercourse. As students define the term “hookup,” a hookup may involve little or even nothing more than making out, and these data show that about 40% of hookups involve intercourse. To get at whether students had had casual intercourse, the survey asked if they had ever had sex outside of an exclusive relationship. The question didn’t clarify what was meant by “sex.” However, there is lots of qualitative evidence that heterosexual students usually take the term to mean intercourse, whereas a majority of what they call hookups do not involve intercourse. Racial groups also differ little in their ideas of the best age to do these things, with the average age seen as ideal for marriage between 25 and 28 for all groups and the average ideal age for having a first child between 27 and 29.

First, African-American men were expected to prefer a heavier body size and a lower WHR than their Caucasian counterparts. Furthermore, African-American men who were more acculturated to Caucasian culture were expected to show preferences more aligned with those of Caucasian men. Second, men who date inter-racially were expected to hold all women to standards of beauty similar to those of their ethnic group.

Meanwhile, everywhere we look, women like me see successful black men coupled with fair-skinned female partners who pass the paper bag test – a remnant of the Reconstruction era, where the only Comment black people worthy of attention had to be lighter than a paper bag. This “test” was even instituted in places such as historically black colleges and universities as an informal part of the admissions process. Culturally, Black Americans have long highly valued romantic partnerships, marriage, and children. The percentage of Black women ever married, however, is lower than those who have cohabitated, at 37 percent. Importantly, each of these theories—implicitly, and sometimes explicitly—acknowledges the potential role of systemic racism and its impact on the marriage rate of Black Americans. Because of the angry black woman stereotype, black women tend to become desensitized about their own feelings to avoid judgment.

Between the last recession and 2016, the wealth gap between Black families with children under age 18 and both White and Hispanic families with children under age 18 widened, despite the income gap remaining relatively constant. In 2019, median household income for Black households was $45,438, compared to $56,113 for Hispanic households, $76,057 for non-Hispanic White households, and $98,174 for Asian households. Black women are having children at the same ages at which they may be enrolled in school or entering the workforce. Three decades after Cooper published “A Voice from the South,” fellow Black feminist Amy Jacques Garvey shed light on the role of Black women in advancing equity and prosperity for Black people and all people of color.