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?

Loving across Color Lines

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1998, KKBT The Beat was heavily promoting its “No Color Lines” campaign. At the time, I thought the movement's mantra was clichéd and overly simplistic.

That is until I heard Theo, the leader of the revolution.

Theo was a honey-throated DJ who figured prominently in my fantasies — and this was on the strength of his voice alone. Sexy, thuggish and effortlessly popular with the ladies and the homies, he was the golden boy of the city's hip-hop radio station. If the brother was promoting tolerance, I was all over it! So it was a major shock to come face-to-face with him at a club and discover that, for all of his 'hood markers, my future baby daddy was Asian. I quickly recovered from that bombshell, however, and decided that Theo Mizuhara was too alluring to exclude from my daydreams.

Fantasies fade, but even those interracial imaginings of mine wouldn't have been possible without landmark legislation that took place 40 years ago today. In the Loving v. Virginia ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a Virginia statute that prohibited whites from marrying nonwhites. At the heart of the case was a black woman, Mildred Jeter, who smacked down segregated society to marry Richard Loving, a white man.

June 12 marks a day of remembrance, a mixed-race lovefest. Although I appreciate the Lovings' struggle to desegregate relationships four decades ago, I'm still trying to emanicpate my inner interracial-dater hater. I don't suffer from Angry Black Woman Syndrome, yet I still feel a tad apprehensive when I spy mixed-raced couplings, particularly of the black male/white female variety.

Ironically, this nation's path to color-blind love was paved in part by a sister. Yet, according to the 2002 Census, black women are less likely to marry outside their race than black men. In 2002, there were 279,000 white female-black male marriages compared with 116,000 black female-white male marriages. Black men stroll down the aisle with non-black women at a greater rate — nearly 10 percent — than any other racial or gender group except Asian women.

A Korean writer reached out to me recently for my thoughts on interracial relationships. He read my article "Black Men, White Women, Mixed Emotions," and could relate to my ambivalence: a belief that love conquers all, and yet feeling that many, many brothers are jumping ship in search of it. Because I live in Los Angeles, the "Jungle Fever" capitol of the West Coast, one is hard pressed to find Heidi/Hakeem-free zones. I explained to this writer that even in the midst of my dating dilemmas, I didn't want to become that hostile chick who sucks her teeth and gives the side eye to Kobe, Tiger, Seal, Taye and other brothers (and yes, I include Tiger in that category) for loving non-black women. That stems from a belief that my relationship options are limited, that white women have the dating game on lockdown, or that I have a lease on the love life of black men. None of the above are true.

The swirl of racial politics surrounding dating and marriage is often hard to unravel. I joke about black women starting a "Something New" movement, but I realize I'm being reactionary ... and hypocritical. There are several blogs and Web sites that wholeheartedly encourage sisters to expand their dating options, particularly with white men. With statistics showing that 43.4 percent of black women between the ages of 30 to 34 have never experienced matrimonial bliss, "Looking for Mr. White" looks more and more like a viable option.

Misgivings aside, there is a part of me that wants to embrace the "No Color Lines" credo. Even though I haven't realized it fully, I am indebted to the Lovings for their sacrifice, and for reminding us that love is, and should be, colorblind. On this Remembrance Day, I pledge to keep my apprehension in check should I see Bilal cruising down the 101 freeway with Becky. I will not avert my eyes and act like these couples don't exist. Although I probably won't hug them and sell them a "Remembrance Day '07" tee shirt, I am going to remind myself that, ultimately, people have the right to love who they want to love. Theo would be proud of me.

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.