Singled Out

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Casting a Wider Net

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Robyn settled on a couch in a room lined with chairs where other young black women sat, munching on chips and salsa, waiting for the party to start at a girlfriend's home in Prince George's County.

"You might as well resign and be single with 50 cats," said another guest, Lasana Smith.

Robyn is nowhere near the giving-up point, but she shared a deep and knowing laugh with Lasana about the "Sex in the City" episode in which an elderly single woman dies alone. By the time her body is found, half of her face has been eaten by her cat.

The fear of such loneliness is real, and for black women interested in black men, it's a protracted one. The few men at the party were either married or dating seriously. And every uncoupled woman in the room seemed tired of waiting for that moment to breathe again.

Hostess Esther Abu strolled over carrying a platter of crab legs. She throws a few house parties a year with a deejay and catered spread, because she loves to socialize but hates nightclubs. She hates the crowds, the preening and posturing, and the way some black men treat black women.

She was at a club with Robyn one summer night on the Georgetown waterfront and got cat-called. "Say, say. Come here," the guy said.

Esther ignored him. Then he pulled on her arm.

"Who do you think you are talking to?" she demanded.

She said later, "I don't care if people think I'm stuck up. It's just degrading and demeaning to black women, and I feel that there are some things I should not be subject to."

Sheila Kennedy is not like Robyn. She's done waiting to marry a black man, she said. At 41, and more than 10 years after divorcing and hoping to remarry, she has decided to date interracially.

It can be hard, no matter who you are, to find love in an ever-isolating world, where speed dating and the Internet have become matchmaking tools. Between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; for black people, that drop was 34 percent.