MEDIA MIX: The JET Pedigree
the magazine’s wedding pages are proof that we’ve arrived
2007-08-23
By Eric Easter

In a recent post on the website blackprof.com, public intellectual Paul Butler wrote several humorous random musings on JET magazine. In it, he questioned why he found the newlyweds in Love and Happiness [Jet’s venerable wedding announcements section] “so compelling”.

He’s not the only one.  For most of Jet’s 56 year history, wedding and engagement announcements were only an occasional part of its broader Society World column, which over the years has covered everything from diplomatic parties to cocktail chatter to which single lady had suspiciously shown up in public with a new mink coat. But in the end, weddings won out, gradually becoming weekly and then gaining its own space in the magazine.

Someone once called wedding sections “the sports page for women”. But readers of both sexes peruse the listings to catch up on old friends, keep score on who’s marrying up (or down), compare their pedigrees to the bios of others and take bets on who will or won’t survive their first year.

For these and other reasons the wedding announcements are hugely popular, both for readers and the couples being announced. But under the surface these announcements have provided tangible affirmation of the progression of fortunes, and the impact of greater opportunity and education on Black America.

A sample of successive years in the JET library shows a clear pattern of growth in educational attainment and career advancement. But even the casual observer of any two issues spanning a 20-year period will detect remarkable differences.

To be sure there have always been Black high achievers. From Gerri Major’s Society World column in 1953:

It was love at first sight for Carol Jean Lewis, NY School of Social Work freshman and Dr. Thomas M. Matthews, whose engagement…has been announced by her parents, executive secretary Edward S. Lewis of the New York urban League and Mrs. Lewis. The bridegroom is chief resident in neurosurgery at Boston Veterans Hospital and a Meharry graduate. 

But it is fair to say that level of achievement was often viewed as an anomaly as opposed to the norm. What’s striking about today’s dynamic is how very common such high achievement seems to be.

One pattern that stands out is the degree to which the children of Black American families have surpassed the generations before them in wealth, status and achievement – the dream of every parent.  In earlier, the listing of parents’ professions was only done when parents were in the legal and medical professions. But today when the listing of occupations has become commonplace, it is not unusual to see young, advanced-degreed marrieds entering the workforce in positions as high or higher than their parents’ most recent rank.

The increasing role of Black women in the workforce is very clear, with descriptions of brides’ jobs running from homemaker through most of the 50s, clerk and “schoolmarm” during the 60s, a preponderance of social workers and government administrators in the 70s, and then incredible leaps to corporate senior management, law firms and private medical practices in the 80s and beyond.

In the last decade, it has also become fairly common for brides to be more accomplished professionally and educationally than their grooms, an anecdotal trend that matches the statistical facts in a number of studies.
  
The couple met at Harvard, from which they graduated, she magna cum laude and he cum laude. – New York Times Aug 9, 2007

Horizons have also expanded along with education levels. In the 50s and 60s, Jet wedding announcements, when they listed honeymoons at all, tilted decidedly toward the stateside and predictable Europe – London, Paris. Madrid. For most of the 70s, 80s and 90s, the Caribbean and Hawaii predominated. Since 2000, couples have shown a greater taste for the exotic – Eastern Europe, East Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, locations that require not only financial means but a degree of cultural confidence and comfort with the unexpected not always prevalent in past years.

“The couple is honeymooning in Tahiti and Bora Bora” – Jet (2007)

To be completely fair, the increase in dramatically successful Black couples listed in JET and other popular announcement pages such as the New York Times and Town and Country is not a completely organic phenomenon. Over the years the “high society” nature of the listings have been somewhat self-fulfilling.  Specifically, as more dual career, dual Ivy League, dual PhD couples make the listings, other prospective listees assume that those qualifications are necessary to be accepted in the pages. As a result, those with more modest credentials may have shied away for fear of rejection.

For Jet’s part at least, editors have developed a system they hope prevents that high society effect. Margena Christian, the editor who oversees “Love and Happiness,” said she tries to “intentionally choose a mix” of couples with varied educational levels, diverse backgrounds and geographic origins outside of the standard urban centers of Black wealth and power. The New York Times and Town and Country listings also have moved toward greater class diversity.

Still, even counting for democratic social engineering, the overall quality of Black achievement reflected in these otherwise simple announcements is no less than stunning.

In 2010, another census will show the degree to which Black people have deftly navigated opportunity in America, even amid lingering barriers. And once again, Black folk will already have long been in on the secret. We read “the Jet”.

Eric Easter is Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing Company. He writes on media, tech and politics for ebonyjet.com. He can be reached at eeaster@ebony.com