Introduction

Summary

This sociological study reveals the ways in which the Love Jones Cohort live their lives. The Love Jones Cohort exposes community members, researchers, policy makers, and businesspeople to the Love Jones Cohort, in the hope that they substantively incorporate this demographic group into their conversations, researches, policies, and business plans. The Love Jones Cohort pushes people into considering how structural racism plays a role in individual dating and marriage outcomes, and challenges people into thinking twice before asking the Love Jones Cohort why they are not married and instead consider asking people why they are married. The Love Jones Cohort highlights the distinctiveness of the Love Jones Cohort relative to other Black middle-class families. The Love Jones Cohort improves our understanding of singlehood in general and Black middle-class SALAs in particular; provides a more nuanced picture of the Black middle class that includes the large and growing demographic of never-married individuals; and offers insight on how these experiences can influence social policy and future narratives about the Black middle class and Black America more broadly.