Branding Colorblind Love:
New Frontiers in Interracial Dating?

"I Heart White Men."

You probably won't see that T-shirt hanging from a kiosk in the Crenshaw District or on 125th Street in Harlem, but merchandise marketing black women’s interracial relationships may be coming to a cyber store near you.

Earlier this year, I joked about creating a line of “Looking for Mr. White” tees for black women. My idea was a tongue-in-cheek response to the proliferation of black male/white female couplings, and also a nod to what I called the “Something New Movement” — an increased number of sisters choosing to date outside the race.

The blog Black Female Interracial Marriage appears to be on the verge of a similar movement – branding colorblind love. Created by Evia, a black woman married to a white man, the site recently posted information on this campaign: “Sistas, what words would scream IR interest yet be subtle enough for you as a bw to wear or have on your totebag?” Evia asks. “I will be selling gear (tote bags, caps, shirts, etc.) here that will signal to others in a subtle way that you are receptive to the possibility of an IR relationship of varied types.”

I must confess, reading Evia’s blog has become a guilty pleasure for me. The sidebar of her site features photos of famous and not-so-famous sisters happily embracing their white partners. Evia often pontificates on the beauty and desirability of black women, and encourages her readers not to limit their dating options to black men. She comes across as the Harriet Tubman of outmarriage, leading her charges to the Promised Land of Interracial Love.

In this world, black chicks rule. Her site celebrates black women – in all their hues – and provides balance to IR mainstays Heidi and Seal, Tiger and Elin that saturate the pages of US Weekly and People. Her space offers kinship and community to interracially involved black women who feel ostracized by society, or who simply want to see a loving representation of their relationships.

I get Evia’s message. I really do. But I’m uncomfortable with the idea of preference as product. Do sisters really need a discreet logo or badge to signify that they’re open-minded about relationships? And why does the insignia have to be “subtle”? Is there an unspoken fear that black women will catch a beat-down from black men for flaunting their interracial desires on designer totes, mugs and key chains? If this trend takes off, what’s next? A secret society complete with handshakes and passwords?

Just as I have issues with brothers who exclusively date non-black women, I am also suspicious of sisters who omit the color black from their kaleidoscopic courtships. People should be free to love whomever they please. But is interracial love still colorblind when you actively seek out mates based on skin tone? I would have a problem if Hakeem passed me on the sidewalk wearing an “I Heart Becky” hat. Although Evia often says black women should be open to potential suitors in a variety of races, not too long ago, she featured an “I Love Vanilla” button campaign on her site.

Here’s a suggestion: For those sisters who want to alert others that they’re open to dating out, why not purchase an orange awareness ribbon? The ribbon not only promotes cultural diversity, but also symbolizes solidarity with those fighting world hunger, lupus and Multiple Sclerosis. You can be an activist and get your interracial flirt on at the same time. Doesn’t that sound better than endorsing walking product placement?

De-Icing the Cryonic Woman:
The Journey from Abuse to Love

cryonics \kri- ä- nīks\ n. plural but usually singular in construction - the practice of freezing a dead diseased human in hopes of bringing her back to life at some future time when a cure for her disease has been developed.

I took a much needed break from composing my wedding vows to write this article.

How does a woman who hasn’t been on a date in two years leap from abstinence to the altar? I’m still working on that transition, hence the vows but no groom in sight. There is nothing wrong with being single, but the desire to be in a relationship, to be in love, has been strong as of late, as persistent as the sun piercing the smoggy Los Angeles skyline.

Why aren’t you dating?

I’ve been fielding that question for years, and lately, have been asking it of myself. Why aren’t I dating? I’m not a lipstick lesbian, and I’m not that picky, in spite of what some friends insist. I don’t buy into the “good man shortage,” and believe that yes, black women can find love in the City of Angels, despite statistics to the contrary. I don’t think I’m unattractive or undateable. The deli technician at Whole Foods calls me gorgeous each morning as he prepares my quarter pound of sesame kale. Every other day, unsolicited e-mails arrive in my inbox from strangers (complete with resumés, head shots and six-packs on display) wanting to do coffee or dinner. Random Negroes and non-Negroes alike stop me in parking lots, at supermarket checkout lines, in the stairwells of office buildings, at traffic lights, on studio lots and in department stores to get my number. There is no scarcity of potential suitors.

So why aren’t I dating?

I don’t believe all men are dogs, deadbeats, thugs, or abusive on some level. And yet, when it comes to intimacy with the opposite sex, I struggle to contain my inner ice queen. She emerges to sabotage relationships, deliberately pushing folks away and testing the limits of their loyalty, or more insidiously through cynical comments and aloof gestures. Although I can be loving and I want to be in love, my reality belies that desire. When I look around, I notice that I don’t have close relationships with my father, brother, uncle or male cousins, and my guy friends are few and far between. It’s as if the queen of ice has frozen me into indifference, and my heart has yet to thaw.

I don’t hate men, but I have been conditioned not to trust them. At 17, I lost my virginity to a man I both detested and feared. Jeff was one of the neighborhood drug dealers, an underling to his cousin, the kingpin. He used to cruise the streets of our small town in his mud-colored Pontiac, a giant beetle in search of other invertebrates. I knew he was trouble the minute he lowered his tinted window, and in another world, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance. Instead, I gave him my phone number.

My descent into apathy didn’t begin at 17 between the fists of a minor hustler. Years before, I had learned to be uncomfortable around men, so I made myself invisible in their presence. At 10, someone I loved, revered and was related to told me I had “a nice ass,” and fondled me between my legs. Fast forward four years, and I’m sitting on the staircase of my rowhouse wearing a Hershey Park tee shirt and jeans. Alone. An older male friend of the family drops by to chat about homework and grades, while glibly extolling the wonders of prostitution, or being a “skeezer” as it was called back then. I had recently developed breasts, and was conscious of how tightly the tee hugged my bosom during his “recruitment” speech. Those experiences, among others, taught me that men were both nice and nefarious, and I had to insulate myself against any emotional intrusion. I learned that I wasn’t worthy of love or respect, so at 17, by the time Jeff spun into my life in a brown haze, I was waiting for him.

I “dated” Jeff for one year, and God only knows what would have happened had I not escaped to college. Only a few friends were aware that I was being abused because I was too ashamed to ask for help. I was too frightened to dump a guy who slapped me publicly, attempted to smother me, yanked my hair, tried to break my arm, and who tortured me in his bedroom for three hours one winter night until I fled down three flights of stairs, out the front door, and down the street with no coat or shoes on.

Jeff never left black-and-blue marks on my skin, but not all scars are on the surface. Many women walk around wounded, like cosmopolitan Hester Prynnes, scarlet letters of Abuse embroidered into their Coach bags, Prada blouses and Victoria’s Secret bras. The summer of my junior year at Hampton, I hung out with three such sisters from my hometown, girls I had not associated with in high school. Our coming together seemed strange since we didn’t have the same interests or friends. I later learned the one thing we all had in common was abuse. We shared tales of mistreatment over dinner at Dennys, or while giggling nervously into drinks at the club. Stephanie’s* man beat her while she was pregnant, and she later lost the baby. China’s boyfriend used to perch on the roof of the building across the street from her rowhouse, like some thugged out, Kangol-wearing Spiderman, and watch her every move. Natalia, as short and cute as she was, used to get slammed against the wall by her lover at house parties. In some warped way, we were relishing our pain. For us, abuse was so normalized that we traded dating horror stories with all the gusto of old vets crowing over their Purple Hearts.

My first boyfriend was the only man who physically abused me, but after I left him, I kept attracting others who were violent on some level – emotionally, verbally, and psychically. I’m not a victim. I’m just trying to deconstruct the attitudes that enslaved me to dysfunctional relationships, and prevented me from believing I was worthy to give or receive love. Despite my past, abuse is not my identity. I have forgiven Jeff. I am told the man who choked me until I nearly passed out is now a police officer in a suburb of our small town. I have forgiven him, which is an ongoing process, and I have extended that same pardon to all the men whose names are tattooed on my inner thighs.

After years of hating men, fearing men, not trusting men, blaming men, it’s as if my heart is slowly defrosting, an ice floe sliced from a larger berg by a shaft of sunlight. I want to be in love! I want to do all the clichéd couple things: taking romantic walks on Venice Beach; chatting on the phone for hours; visiting museums; pretending to be all absorbed as I listen to jazz in Leimert Park and going restaurant hopping, Zagat guide tucked firmly into my purse. I contributed my share of toxins to relationships -- the oppressed rising up to become the oppressor – but I’m working hard not to contaminate future friendships. Despite my wounds (and those I have caused), there is no lack of love in my life, no lack of intimacy. Armed with this knowledge, I have begun reaching out to the men in my circle in an attempt at recovery. Real healing takes place in knowing that I may have nicks and bruises, but I’m not damaged goods, not damaged for good.

So pardon me as I resume my wedding vows. I hope to recite them one day soon … and not just to my own face in the mirror. I can’t divulge all the silliness I’ve penned so far, but this quote from Mari Evans’ poem “Celebration” sums up my covenant: “I will bring you a whole person/and you will bring me a whole person/and we will have us twice as much/of love and everything …”


* names changed to protect privacy

Looking for Mr. White:
Black Women and the “Something New” Movement

Bossip, an urban entertainment blog, recently posted pictures of actress Kerry Washington, a black woman, with her fiancé David Moscow, a white man. Beneath the image of Kerry gazing lovingly at her betrothed is the caption: “You have saved me from all these trifling niggas, David!”

I realize that most of what Bossip and many other black entertainment blogs write is tongue-in-cheek, especially when it comes to interracial couples. But hidden beneath the humor is the notion that the white man is the sister’s savior when it comes to relationships, a white knight redeeming the dark diva in distress.

Lately, I’ve noticed that many black women applaud (if not downright encourage) their sisters’ decisions to date interracially, a move that would have been labeled as selling out just ten years ago. “Sisters can do it too!” seems to be the battle cry of this dating revolution, what I call the “Something New” movement. When Halle Berry started making the rounds with blonde hottie Gabriel Aubry, the response from black women seemed to be: “Go for yours!” As one gleeful female blogger put it, “All the brothas are just mad ‘cause her main man right now is white. She gave negroes a chance, and they screwed up!”

Part of this paradigm shift is in direct response to the growing number of black men/white women relationships. I’ll admit that I’m not immune to being reactionary. I live in Los Angeles, which has been dubbed the “Jungle Fever” capitol of the West Coast, and I often grow weary of seeing Heidi on Hakeem’s arm. For a few months, I was actively seeking a white man to date, even crushing on several white male friends. I was seriously contemplating creating tee shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Looking for Mr. White,” and passing them out to all my black girlfriends in defiance of these clichéd “brothers with others” couplings.

I realize that I’m embracing a double standard. I am loath to watch anything featuring Taye Diggs or Cuba Gooding, Jr. because of the “white wife” factor, yet I give props to Grey’s Anatomy cutie Justin Chambers for having a spouse named Keisha, and to green-eyed soul singer Robin Thicke for flaunting his black wife, Paula Patton, in his videos. I avert my eyes when I see Heidi-Hakeem hookups in the malls, restaurants or streets of L.A. – projecting onto these couples the same invisibility and marginality that I experience on a regular basis – yet I give a fist-in-the-air smile when I see Rasheeda hugged up with Biff. It’s as if these white men are affirming the beauty, value and self-worth of black women in a culture that relegates them to video hos, emasculators, corporate shrews or gold diggers. These couplings are also a slap in the face to a society that places a premium on white womanhood.

Yes, I know that love is – and should be – colorblind, but many black women are crossing the color line in relationships out of necessity. According to a 2005 U.S. Census report, 43.4 percent of all black women have never been married. We are confronted daily with statistics about the shortage of eligible brothers, in addition to the academic and professional disparities that exist between the sexes. In an MSNBC article, Sanaa Latham, star of the movie Something New, shares her own dating quandary. “It has to happen, if we don't want to be alone,” she says regarding the rise of black women’s interracial relationships. Yet she admits that black men can be the harshest critics of said relationships – even those brothers who have white women hiding in their sexual repertoires.

Sanaa recalls the backlash she felt for being with a “white, liberal, educated” man. She says, “There was moments with him where like we would be in Harlem. There would be five brothers on the corner, and this is an awful feeling but you're holding his hand and you want to pull your hand away ‘cause you don't want the judgment. And you're gonna get the judgment even if it's just in looks.”

Why are black women held to a more stringent standard when it comes to dating outside the race? Why are black men allowed to experience color-blind love every time they step out with a non-black woman, while sisters are accused of being race traitors, constantly reminded of our antebellum past when black women were objectified, infantilized and raped by their slave masters? This lack of balance and fairness further serves to marginalize us and reinforces the notion that we aren’t being heard or taken seriously by our male counterparts.

Except for one relationship, my preference has always been black men, and I never imagined being with anyone but a brother. But as I grow older, I’m learning to keep my options open. Sisters have to demystify deeply-rooted beliefs we have concerning our interracial relationships. This will challenge us to rethink the long-held notions of “loyalty” we have regarding black men. I don’t want to go on a quest for “Mr. White” simply to combat the black men/white women pairings I see on the regular. I know society tries to ascribe fear on our hearts based on statistics and the threat of spinsterhood, but I refuse to engage in an inauthentic relationship for fear of growing old alone. I’m not averse to trying “something new,” as long as I do it based on mutual attraction, not redemption.

Tired Black Men, Angry Black Women
and the BAPSploitation Phenomenon

I recently attended a Blackweekly.com event to discuss Tim Alexander’s upcoming movie, Diary of a Tired Black Man. A filmmaker friend living in Japan sent me a clip from the movie two months ago. At the time, I dismissed it as dated and derivative, something an eager first-year film student might promote on MySpace. Then last week, a white female friend forwarded me an NPR article on the controversy Alexander’s project is generating. Judging from the buzz around the ‘Net, old attitudes about the sass-spittin' Black American Princess (BAP) are resurfacing under the guise of serious dialogue about black relationships.

For those who haven’t seen the three-and-a-half minute clip that’s been circulating the blogosphere, it goes a little something like this: Four upscale black women are lounging around the house having girl talk. Through the window, they spy ex-husband, James, the titular character, pulling up in the driveway with his new lady – a white woman. The typical reactionary, combative dialogue that many sisters engage in whenever they peep Heidi on Hakeem’s arm ensues. When our weary hero hits the doorstep to pick up his daughter, his ex-wife lambastes him for dating a white woman, calling him a “weak punk.” Nay, our protagonist retorts, this isn’t the case. He’s footing the bill for his ex’s house and car, taking care of his kid, and if he’s now dating a white chick, it’s because the new relationship has finally brought him peace. “I am not a weak black man. I am a tired black man,” James says with fervor. “Tired of dealing with angry black women like you.”

Granted, I haven’t seen Diary of a Tired Black Man in its entirety – the movie doesn’t hit theaters until later this year -- but from the snippet I viewed, something feels exploitative about the project. It seems to profit from and prey on the fears of the BAP who can’t find a mate. There is a culture of hysteria built on the plight of the single, successful black shrew headed for spinsterhood and the diminishing “good black man” resource pool. Are black women with their fabled ‘tudes chasing all the eligible brothers away?

According to Tim Alexander, Angry Black Woman syndrome is at the heart of the conflict. The director graced the Blackweekly.com gathering to expound on this “disease.” He likened sisters to “child molesters” who keep going back for their fix of the forbidden – in this case, thugs and bad boys. These women are mistreated for so long that they become hardened, and when a respectable black man comes along, he’s dismissed as weak and irrelevant. In his talk at the Blackweekly fest and in interviews that I’ve read, he also maintains that sisters are embittered, hostile and defensive due to a lack of positive black male role models in their childhood, and this negativity is reinforced as they grow older. Alexander comes off as a ’hood psychologist not only attempting to diagnose black women’s pathology, but reframing it as an epidemic in need of immediate treatment. Enter Diary – his way of sparking a discussion and remedying Angry Black Woman syndrome.

I believe some of the filmmaker’s observations about black women are valid; however, I question the sincerity of his attempts to bridge the gap. Did his protagonist James have to roll up to his ex-wife’s crib with a white woman, or is it just a marketing ploy to fill seats in the theater? What would have happened if our weary hero had brought along another black woman? Would the sisters in the house have been so neck-swiveling and eye-rolling then? And, for a black man to finally achieve some “peace” in his household, is Alexander suggesting that non-black women are the answer? If so, doesn't this play into the stereotype of white women as accommodating and subservient?

During the discussion, participants were asked to come up with possible solutions to the dilemmas posed in Alexander’s film. I came up with a suggestion just as controversial as the premise in Diary: black women should consider dating outside of our race. Not simply to be reactionary to the growing number of Heidi-Hakeem hookups, but to demystify deeply-rooted beliefs we have about interracial relationships. It would also challenge us to keep our options open, and rethink the long-held notions of “loyalty” we have regarding black men.

After I made those comments, I was about as popular as Naomi Campbell at a housekeeper’s convention. One extremely agitated brother accused me of high treason, of attempting to destroy the foundation of the black family. A few other black men approached me at the close of the festivities, questioning my “allegiance” to the race, and wondering how long I had been dating white men. Upon cross-examination, I discovered that these brothers had “others” hiding in their sexual repertoires, but for a black woman to consider kickin’ it with Biff or Beltran is unthinkable. Why are we held to such a stringent double standard? If a black man is in love with a non-black woman – and I say to each, his own – he’s colorblind. But if sisters fall in love with someone outside of their race, they’re sellouts or gold-diggers. This lack of balance and fairness further serves to marginalize us and reinforce the notion that we aren’t being heard by black men. Our rather, we’re not hearing each other.

As much as I dislike Alexander’s exploitation of successful, single black women’s woes – or BAPSploitation – I have to give him credit for inciting dialogue. As evident at the Blackweekly.com gathering, regardless of whether you loved or hated the movie’s premise, it has people talking. What I’m hoping that the director can achieve with his new film is balance. Diary has been touted as the black man’s Waiting to Exhale, and I hope it can resuscitate a genuine discussion about the dilemmas that really plague our relationships, instead of ascribing blame for the failure of said relationships on the loud-mouthed, conflict-driven, gold-digging Angry Black Woman. Neither sex is flawless, and we need to take accountability for our shortcomings instead of pointing the finger. A movie that seeks to liberate a brother by shutting down his sister will be just plain Tired.