Further Evidence That The Adage, "Nice Guys Finish Last" Might Possess A Kernel Of Truth-Wife Divorces Husband For Being "Too Nice!"

I really do not know what to believe when it comes to "reality" television. Based on the research that I have done, Divorce Court, which dates back more than fifty years, does appear to adjudicate on real life marital disputes. But I am also not naive to the fact that reality series oftentimes do rely on scripts, false premises and audience manipulation. In the case above, it's almost hard to believe that a woman would leave her husband for being too nice. After viewing this episode, I also came across an Afro.com op-ed that laments about the general state of marriage in the African-American community. The stats are abysmal and unless a cultural shift takes place, Black folks may be falling deeper into the precipice of failure and irrelevancy. Hopefully, the Obama marriage might serve as the catalyst that's needed to jump start the importance of promoting a cohesive and functional family structure in communities of color. Take a look at an excerpt from the Afro.com article for more evidentiary fodder:

Having a substantive conversation on the matter has been difficult, the longtime lawmaker said.

“Ever since the Moynihan Report, people didn’t want to talk about single-parent households,” Norton said. “That’s because, first of all, the Moynihan Report didn’t come out of us. And it came out just after the civil rights bills had passed and it made people angry because White America hadn’t taken responsibility for its huge part of what had torn the African-American community apart. So nobody wanted to hear it.”

The Moynihan Report, officially called, “The Negro Family: The Case For National Action” was a paper published in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who would go on to become a U.S. senator.

“At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family,” Moynihan said in the report.

According to Moynihan, an increasing number of single-mother, welfare-dependent homes and the matriarchal design of Black families diminished the male’s authority, one sign of a crumbling family structure. He predicted that “so long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.”

Despite criticism of the report as racist and unfounded, Norton said Moynihan was “prescient.”

Rates of incarceration, drug use and trade, high school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, poor health outcomes and other social ills have increased, it seems, with the breakdown of Black families.

Statistics show that in 2008 only 34 percent of Black children lived in homes with two married parents and 3.7 million Black children live in single-mother homes with mothers who have never been married, more than any other demographic.

“If you think the Black nation can survive whole if only Black women are raising their children, I want you to show me how ,” Norton said.

For the Afro.com piece in its entirety, click on the link below:


CBC Examines State of Black Marriage


And for Part 2 of this Divorce Court episode, click here.