Interracial relationships are one of the most highly controversial issues that the Black community deals with. Black women feel justifiably slighted by Black men when they choose white women as partners proclaiming them as symbols of status or beauty or behind the cry that white women are more supportive. Black men feel a sense of betrayal and rage when they see sistas with the proverbial “slave master.” All too often, the reasons why white people pursue interracial couplings are based on the objectification of Black people and racist, stereotypical perceptions of our sexuality. There are a host of reasons a great many interracial relationships operate from of an unhealthy perspective. That is not to say that they don’t work for some people. Obviously, with the numbers of interracial relationships, a great many do work for the people who engage in them. For a great many others, they refuse to see how their preferences are not born out of colorblind love but of deep-seated beliefs that white people are better.
As more and more African Americans become completely assimilated, distancing themselves from the Black culture and people in academia, the workplace, church, in every aspect of their lives, it’s only reasonable to assume that those people would have more in common with people who don’t look like them. Does that signal the end of racism or a model for all Black people to emulate? Adopting someone else’s identity to distance yourself from your own unique culture, heritage, history and culture is never psychologically healthy. The mainstream would have us believe that we as Black people should disavow ourselves from anything and everything that has to do with our African identity in order to be more like them. The real problem lies in the fact that African American identity was born out of oppression and slavery; it was formed out of inferiority and self-hatred. Africans who were enslaved had to form their identities, beliefs, customs and coping mechanisms because they were beaten, whipped, and tortured, because they were raped, bought and sold like property, they were taught to hate anything that was inherent to their African identity and to covet those things that their owners possessed. Many African American behaviors are, in fact, unhealthy. Not thought our own devices, however, but because of our unique history of enslavement. It is in the restoration and recognition of healthy African principles, re-establishing and redefining an African centered identity that one should be able to form healthy relationship with someone of another race.
How could anyone love themselves when everything in society tells them that they are inherently inadequate, that they are less than human? Slaves couldn’t love their own hair, their own facial features, their traditions and customs when white people repeatedly beat into them that they were inferior. But that was a long time ago, right? That has no effect on anyone today, right? While no one wants to admit or believe that slavery has had any long-lasting effects, while everyone wants to believe that they are beyond any of the messy realities of an ugly past, unfortunately, there are far too many Black people today who don’t want to be Black. Add a whole bunch of clichés and rhetoric like, “color doesn’t matter,” and “love knows no color,” and you get a whole lot of denial about how many interracial relationships are formed. If you can’t find beauty in the features that stare back at you in the mirror, if you want to distance yourself from the people who look like you, then you’ve set up an internal struggle with your subconscious mind, fighting with your external desire to be someone other than who you are.
What about those Black people who don’t look Black? What about those African Americans who don’t have African features? One could argue that it’s perfectly okay for them to date interracially because they have the same features of white people, they look closer to white than they do Black. That ignores the fact that the history of light skinned Black people is that of rape by slave owners. It discounts the generations of ancestors who did everything they could to maintain their light privilege. Concerted efforts were made to ensure that darker skinned genes didn’t “infect” the family line. How can anyone deny the dysfunction in that sort of thinking? Many do, most people adamantly deny it because they refuse to see the connection of the tragic history of mulatto slaves being given preferential treatment and how that made them want to distance themselves from their Black-featured brothers and sisters.
All too often, when Black people come into an interracial relationship, the assumption is that they have somehow raised themselves up to a level in which they can be equal with whites. That basic assumption is based in the racist belief that black people are inherently inferior. If a person has to have no cultural identity to be with a partner, if they must conform to a set of standards and behaviors that denounce their unique background and heritage, there is something terribly wrong with the balance of that relationship. No interracial partnership should be formed without both parties willing to share equally in cultures and histories and traditions that support the equal and balanced footings of both partners. Black people have a history of slavery, racism, oppression, discrimination, and suffering that has shaped our collective consciousness. To deny that from, from both black and white partners, is unhealthy.
All too often, the selection of a white partner is based on an inheritance of passed on “mental enslavement.” During slavery, white people were heralded as the most attractive, more intelligent and overall better race. The features of white people, thin lips, small noses, flowing hair, and fair skin were held as the standard of beauty for Black people. The nappy hair, thick lips, wide noses and dark skin of African people was thought to be ugly and that belief was instilled in slaves for generations. Those messages have been passed down generationally and have never been addressed on a collective basis to rid our consciousness of those poisonous beliefs. To many Black men, the only women that are attractive are women that look as close to white as possible, so it’s little wonder they would migrate to white women. Dark skinned women represent what they believe to be ugly.
Lots of Black men justify their choices to fuck white women, to have them as sexual partners and not romantic partners, by saying that they are doing it to get back at the white man. Black men do not make a conscious decision to sleep with a white woman because so many Black women were raped at the hands of white men and to seek revenge. The conscious decision to fuck a white woman is made because they like feeling the supposed “power” they have in the beds of white women where the sexual stereotype is reinforced, where they are told that they are superior because of their savage sexuality. I have never met a brother who was so proud of his Black heritage and culture that he decided to seek his own brand of reparations from society and have his way sexually with the white woman to make up for the years of degradation that Black women have suffered. In almost every case, you hear Black men saying how sexy white women are, how beautiful, how uninhibited they are in bed. It’s usually followed by a litany of reasons why Black women are unattractive as partners because they have too much attitude, aren’t sexual enough, or they simply say, “I can’t help who I’m attracted to.”
The thought processes of the plantation are not that far removed from our consciousness. During slavery, light skinned women were allowed the luxury to be in the house, thus, as a Black man, to get one meant you might have some special privileges. White women were even more privileged. Those were the reinforcements that our grandparents were taught by their grandparents. Just because we have stopped delving into the origins of our sickness, does not mean the disease is not rampant. Show me the man that says, “I want my child to have short, wooly hair, a wide nose, thick lips and blacker than coal skin.” Those things are not revered in our society. I'm not saying a man with that consciousness does not exist, I'm saying that in this society, the Black man (and woman) is taught to love everything opposite of that.
In very recent years, Black women have decided to make a mass exodus of sorts and start dating white men. For many, it’s a choice because they say that the pool of Black men is shallow, for others, it’s a variation of the same theme as it is for Black men. White men are seen as validation. The message implied is that if a white man is attracted to a Black women, that has to mean she is attractive that she’s achieved the ultimate acknowledgement of acceptance, right? White men are the final say on everything so their approval has to indicate overcoming the insurmountable stigma of Blackness. The desire to have kids with good hair, and light eyes is rampant in the discussions of Black women who date white men but it’s drowned out by the discussions of how so much more supportive white men can be. How can that be healthy? The answer is that it’s not but those of us who speak out about the REASONS why so many of us find comfort in the arms of people who don’t look like us, we are attacked by the masses who refuse to acknowledge that there are a myriad of contributing factors to the interracial dating trend, most of which are dysfunctional.
Interracial dating is still the forbidden taboo on many people’s lips and in many people’s hearts. The taboo is the people who aren’t willing to look at the reasons why they date interracially. The taboo is in not peeling off the layers and seeing that the true reasons for interracial dating are self-hatred at its most extreme in far, far too many cases.
Copyright 2006 Scottie Lowe
