The War at Home (Paperback)

Paperback. Half of Black adults in America have never married. Everyone has a theory. Almost everyone is wrong. Somewhere right now, a Black woman is recording a video about why she is done. Somewhere else, a Black man is recording his response. Both will be watched. Both will be monetized. Neither will produce a single marriage. African Americans have become the least married people in the United States. The loudest explanation on offer is that Black men and Black women have simply failed each other. THE WAR AT HOME takes that explanation apart. Drawing on Census data, Pew research, and four hundred years of documented history, this book shows that the collapse of African American marriage was engineered in stages: by slave law that made marriage legally impossible, by welfare rules that paid women to live without a man in the house, by the disappearance of the jobs that made men marriageable, and by an incarceration boom that removed hundreds of thousands of men of marriageable age. None of it was chosen by the people now blaming each other for it. But history is only half the story, and the other half is happening right now. THE WAR AT HOME examines what occurred when money and credential became the measure of a human being. It traces the twelve-point degree gap between young Black women and young Black men, the largest of any group in America. It examines the provider test that reduced men to a single number, the career clock that collides with the family clock, the two-income economy that leaves no adult tending the household, and the dating apps engineered so that you never stop searching. It devotes an entire section to the two instructors nobody credits: the music that taught a generation what to expect from each other, and the algorithm that has quietly issued two people at the same table two different sets of facts. Then it does what almost no book on this subject does. It offers a way out. The final section is not dating advice. It is a reordering. It argues for taking money off the throne, for putting character in first position and provision in third, for the difference between a contract and a covenant, for authority understood as accountability rather than privilege, for forgiveness as infrastructure rather than sentiment, and for setting a table where the next generation can watch a marriage actually work. Nothing in it requires money, permission, or the other side to concede first. INSIDE: - Why Black Americans married at higher rates than white Americans from 1890 until the 1960s, and what changed- The statistics both sides quote and both sides get wrong- The strongest case Black men make, stated without caricature, followed by the strongest case Black women make- What a household actually does, and what happens to children when there is not one- How to assess a person's character in ninety days without a single question about income Written for the ordinary majority who are not fighting anyone, and for anyone tired of an argument that has produced millions of hours of content and not one additional marriage. Includes a full timeline, glossary, twenty-question discussion guide for book clubs and small groups, and complete Chicago-style endnotes and bibliography. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …