Loving Beyond Violence and Poverty
Loving Beyond Violence and Poverty is an essay series that explores the intersecting violences faced by Black single mothers, illuminating the systemic mechanisms that perpetuate their struggles and the narratives that vilify their existence. This essay series seeks not only to educate but also to illuminate pathways for change, ensuring that Black mothers have the support, resources, and autonomy to thrive beyond violence and poverty. A Note On The Compilation Of This Learning Series: Loving Black Single Mothers is nurtured by various collaborators and co-conspirators. We are grateful to Chimene Jackson for writing Loving Beyond Violence and Poverty. 
When Black mothers face the decision between staying with a violent partner or embarking into single motherhood, they are choosing between two grim realities: violence or poverty.
If you’ve seen any of the SAW films in the 10-part franchise, you’re familiar with the disturbingly morbid death traps devised by the main character, a twisted-mind perhaps-vigilante John Kramer, aka Jigsaw. After being captured and fastened to grotesque contraptions, his victims are forced to make impossible choices: gruesome loss of a limb or motor function, or an even more horrifying death. All the while, a timer counts down their fate, offering no reprieve.
Audiences, gripped by the morbid tension of gory horror, watch in suspense, waiting to see what the imprisoned will decide – or if their fate is decided for them. Either way, torture is guaranteed unless someone steps in to stop the machine and end the violence.
As vulgar as this analogy may seem, it mirrors the morbid, time-sensitive choice faced by many Black mothers experiencing violence at home—whether domestic, financial, verbal, social, or psychological. For those contemplating leaving, the alternative looms as another form of violence: poverty. Black mothers are forced to navigate the gray purgatory between these two horrors, each demanding immense mental and emotional endurance. This purgatory is not a conspiracy but a certainty, shaped by dismal support systems, berating societal narratives, and disproportionate experiences.
Sisters of a Constellation by Kesha Bruce
Beyond this purgatory lies a society conditioned to view the hardships of Black single mothers as normalized, if not deserved. A 2022 PEW Research Center found that 47% of Americans hold the opinion that ALL single mothers are a portent for a declining society, with 46% of surveyed Black adults agreeing. Meanwhile, Black single mothers are cast as the unofficial and convenient faces of single motherhood, vilified as symbols of a lower-class, more violent archetype among single mothers at large. Their very existence is punished.
In a country where feminist slogans like “well-behaved women rarely make history“ abound, one must ask: Why is it that women strong enough to leave violence at home only end up facing the more sinister violence of poverty?
