But Supposin’ She Say She Loves Me?

Black men and women should institute a “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” rule when it comes to interracial relationships.  Black women shouldn’t care about who black men are dating, but they do.  If the black male is not dating you then it shouldn’t matter who they are with and why they are with them.  I don’t think I have ever known a black woman to question a black an about the black woman they are dating.  If she’s black (light, medium, or dark) and with a cute guy other women may mean mugg her or try to stare her down because women can be petty but rarely will the guy get the inquisition about his choice of mate.

Why is this?  Its because in the black community dating can be political.  For a long time black women have kept to the colorline while black men crossed back and forth tasting the rainbow.  There are some black men who appreciate the racial fidelity of black women because when it comes to (mating/procreating/dating –you pick your word) any man of any color would like to have a wider field to choose from.  So for them to have black women as a safety net benefits the small number of black men who like to play the field way past the point that anyone with any sense would have settled down. 70% is the number that is being bandied around this year as the number of single black women of marrying age.  I think I might pull that down to maybe 65 or 68% because some of us might not want to be married (or married to a male).  But still it’s pretty high. 

Black women are wondering why the number is so high.  We are looking at ourselves (are we overeducated?  too overbearing?  too defined in our ownselves?) and we are looking at them (too many are in jail/uneducated/on the DL/want white women). 

Black men have some reasons why the high number– for us.  They will say we are too loud, we are too brash, we are too independent, we are too fat.  Never is the question asked about how many of them are unattached.  For black women and black men the focus is kept on the women.  We didn’t need for staticians to divulge that many of us were single, we already knew.  Which is why we have been mad and berating the black males we see on the street for crossing over to the white side.

And then we want to know why.  In our minds its simple: if the white woman is a bit overweight its because her skin is white.  If she’s thin its because her skin is white.  If she’s pretty or smart or dumb or ugly its because of her skin; for us it all boils down to he’s with her because she’s white and we, too, can be  all those of those things he’s attracted to in her but he didn’t choose one of us, he chose one of them. 

There are some men who are that shallow, who only assess the containment of a female and not what’s within because he doesn’t see the woman as a person but as an object.  A few of these men who exclusively date white women will then slur us behind our backs to them, degrading our beauty and our intelligence as they uphold anothers just because of race.  Any woman with any sense would see that this man is not a prize for neither black women nor white women.

But then there are some men who will say they are in love with the whole person.  They were attracted to her physically and then grew to love the person inside.  They may have dated all sorts of women but she is the one he ended up with.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what these men have to say about why they chose to love the woman they are with because in the long run they are off the market to viable, intelligent, worthy black women.  Why wonder about what’s not for you?  Why let it hurt you?  A few years ago on an interracial forum I used to have a black woman went off on a black male because of a disagreement they had over something simple and suddenly she wrote,” Why are you even responding to me?  Aren’t you married to an Asian woman?  Go talk to her!”  The black woman herself was engaged to a white male and claimed to have been in several interracial relationships.  But it was apparent to a lot of people on the board that the idea of bm interracial dating upset her.  I wondered if she dated interracially because she was interested in the men or if it was for spite. 

When black women see a black male with a non-black female they shouldn’t sweat it.  It doesn’t diminish our beauty no matter what reasons any particular male has for dating out.  People have the right to choose to love whom they want to love and not have it become a statement on who they are.