Black teenagers defy pop culture portrayals - CNN.com: If you got your ideas about young black people just from the entertainment industry, you'd think they were all players and baby mamas -- and you'd be sorely mistaken.
In fact, the pregnancy rate of black teenage girls has dropped 44% over the last two decades, the teen birth rate 47%. Over that same period, both pregnancy and birth rates declined among all youth, but black youth had the largest declines.
And those black Casanovas? Also a stereotype. Young black men, as well as young black women, value relationships over sex.
These are some of the findings reported in Essence magazine. Essence, in partnership with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, hired an independent research firm to survey 1,500 African-Americans ages 13 to 21 about their attitudes toward sex, relationships and media.
