Delores P. Aldridge
Our Last Hope: Black Male-Female Relationships in Change is designed to provide information that has been carefully researched and written about a critical topic for those who would seek to understand the future of Black families-- the foundation of the Black community. While the book sets forth a theoretical model –Lens Model—for examining interpersonal and institutional factors shaping these relationships which ultimately determine the existence of Black families, it illuminates important topical areas. Among the topics included are: demographic issues, sex and gender issues, marital relations, economic issues, religious issues, psycho-social issues, Afrocentric cultural issues, and sexuality and the Hip Hop generation. Our Last Hope: Black Male-Female Relationships in Change concludes with recommendations for building and sustaining healthy relationships and questions for reflection.
Dr. Delores P. Aldridge is the Grace Towns Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Emory University where she was the founding director of the first degree granting Black Studies Program at a major university in the South. Recipient of more than 100 awards and prizes, the international social scientist, pioneering black female sociologist and pioneer in the modern black studies movement is renowned for two groundbreaking books on black male-female relationships: Black Male-Female Relationship: A Resource Book of Selected Materials (Kendall Hunt) and Focusing: Black Male-Female Relationships (Third World Press). She is also the co-editor of two other definitive volumes : Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies (Lexington Books) and Africana Theoretical and Philosophical Paradigms (Washington State University Press).
An earlier version of this book, Black Male-Female Relationships: A Resource Book of Selected Materials was first published in 1989 by Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company. There was a perceived need for a book of readings about Black males and Black females for the serious student, the scholar and the general reader. In 2007, the need continues to be there. While there has been much sound and fury concerning, first, the Black male, next, the Black female, and finally, Black male-female relationships, the search for serious literature that pulls together a variety of scholarly-generated readings upon the latter subject continues to be difficult to locate. In fact, such volumes for explaining the nature of Black male-female relationships may well be the last hope for understanding the development of these relationships with movement toward their survival.
The earlier text grew out of the editor's research needs in pulling together materials for a companion text Focusing: Institutional and Interpersonal Perspectives on Black Male-Female Relationships which was published by Third World Press. Nowhere was there to found a single source that covered the areas necessary to generate a macro systemic theory by which one could analyze Black male-female relationships. While it can not be claimed that the previous volume, nor this present work, is exhaustive in its coverage of pertinent topics, it does attempt to expand upon the earlier volume by including additions to old chapters as well as a new chapter on Afrocentric cultural issues with some focus on the hip hop. Finally, it provides a conclusion chapter which points to strategies which accompany understanding so that full advantage can be taken of our last hope for healthy black male-female relationships.
In selecting the eight topic areas for this work, a deliberate choice was made of those areas which seemed to most accurately reflect the results of the situational inequities and sustained oppression that have continued to define the lives of black people in the USA.
