Ciara caused quite a stir with her #LevelUp post to single ladies a few days ago.

The singer, who wed husband Russell Wilson in 2016 after a series of high profile relationship failures, shared a clip of Pastor John Gray’s message of “carry yourself like a wife, a husband will find you” with the caption, “#LevelUp. Don’t settle.” (click HERE if you missed that).

While some agreed with CiCi’s statement post, a number of people who took issue with the message and the messenger, citing Ciara’s lengthy dating history as well as there being a lack of messages being shared with single men about how they need to carry themselves.

Loni Love of The Real took issue with the situation as well, and on Monday’s show she asked how Black woman can find a good Black man when so many are unavailable due to incarceration.

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In the video above, Loni Love offers her take on Ciara’s ‘Level Up’ post, stating:

Let’s tell the truth about why, I’m saying in the African-American community, why there is a shortage pool of available men. Why? Because of over incarceration, and the problem is, those are a lot of our brothers that we could be marrying.

If you’re growing up in say the projects, there are not a lot of men. And if those men are getting overly arrested, they can’t get a job, then that pool is limited. We have to fix the root problem, and the root problem is, why aren’t there enough available men so that women can get married?

People want to be happy like Ciara. When she made this comment they were like, “You lucked up because you’re a celebrity, he was able to find you and you were able to find him but I’m sitting over here in the projects or I’m working every day and I can’t find dudes. Why? Because my dude is somewhere locked up!

We need to start working on the facts, why are these brothers getting locked up so much? We need to work on this. Because if I have friends who are locked up over a $5 bag of weed, but now you got dispensaries where they can buy a $5 bag of weed, what is going on here?”

First of all, ain’t nobody tryna marry the weed man but Sheree Whitfield!!  Secondly, I think Loni was way off in her assessment of the situation.

While I would agree that there is a disproportionate amount of Black men who are incarcerated, I don’t think that’s the reason why so many Black women are single.

There are plenty of “good black men” in the dating pool but a lot of those “good Black men” are open to dating women of other races, while a lot of “good Black women” are not.  That in itself, leads to a disparity in numbers.  The men have way more success in dating because they aren’t limiting their exposure like a lot of women of color choose to.

Whatever the case, Black men aren’t our only options when it comes to marriage and marriage certainly isn’t the only option when it comes to having a good life.

I think there are a lot of variables involved that Loni chose to ignore.

What are your thoughts about Loni Love’s statements?