Patterson's Analysis Fuels "The Blame Game"

This article presents a critical analysis of Broken Bloodlines: Gender Relations and the Crisis of Marriages and Families Among Afro-Americans, one of the essays that comprised the book, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries by Orlando Patterson. Patterson, a sociologist, argues that the most persistent problems of African Americans are centered around issues of gender and gender relations, and he criticizes sociologists for being conspicuously absent from public debates on these issues. He goes on to say that not only has there been censorship and denial of these problems, but there has also been a great deal of hype that has asserted the opposite of realities. One of the first claims challenged by Patterson is the notion of the double burden many black feminists have argued that black women bear. The author relied primarily on census data and other governmental data sources to document earning differences for black and white women at every educational level. He then argues that using mean, rather than median earnings, one can show that there is no gap in the incomes between black and white women. Using this analysis, he asserts that although black women continue to suffer serious gender biases in the economy, there is no double burden of race and gender in economic matters for black women.