This is a word, a podcast from Slate.

I'm your host, Jason Johnson.

Our society often views lifelong single people, especially women, as miserable, defective

and doomed to solitude, a stereotype that plagues black single women.

But it's a time to accept that marriage isn't everyone's destiny and that some people are happier living alone.

I hope that you're just as likely to ask somebody why you are single as you ask somebody why you are married.

Black, middle class, single, and thriving coming up on a Word with me, Jason Johnson.

Stay with us.

Welcome to a Word, a podcast about race and politics and everything else.

I'm your host, Jason Johnson.

In the late 1990s,

we had a golden age for black films. For many African Americans, it was the first chance

to see black love and relationships on the screen in movies like love and basketball, the best

man, and of course Love Jones. The film that starred Lorenz Tate and Neil Long as a pair of

young aspiring

creatives whose lives are playing out in the world of Chicago's black artistic middle class.

After a few bumps in the road, our couple finds their way to a Hollywood ending, a lifetime

of poetry slams and jazz clubs and coofy hats as they walk off into the sunset or the rainy romantic bohemian night.

I never stop thinking about you.

I want us to be together again for as long as we can be.

As usual, your timing couldn't be worse.

You always want what you want when you want it.

...