Comments

1. Stefanie wrote:

   The article about Harold Ford losing the “sister vote” because of his relationships with white women is rather unnerving. I think it’s good to point out that white men are not the only demographic that can be threatened by miscegenation. That. unfortunately, is the reality. But the idea that other black men who seek public office should take Ford’s experiances as some sort of cautionary tale??

   The article states that Ford dumped his “perfect” girlfriend in favor of a white woman. Sorry, but being middle class and well-educated does not make a person perfect. We’d have to assume a lot to try to explain why Ford broke up with his girlfriend, and why he begain dating the new woman. Why can know what goes on between two people in a private relationship?

   Nobody should treat another’s decision to date a member of a different race as a personal insult. And to base a vote on such a thing is immature and irresponsible. And bigoted!

   Posted 13 Nov 2006 at 2:02 pm ¶

2. Megan wrote:

   I agree with you 100% Stefanie.

   It’s rather upsetting to read through some of those comments. None of us know why Ford left his girlfriend, but I think when you say it was racially motivated (when you don’t know either way) then you are just showing that you are just as bigoted as those you’re wailing against. There are hundreds of reasons people break up with one another. And this is just me speaking…. race isn’t the first OR second reason.

   As a mixed race woman, I don’t understand why some black women feel that one black man getting into a relationship with a non black woman is a cause to get up in arms over. After all, Heaven forbid you be concerned over the slew of other topics that effect the black community and black women directly in this country.

   Oh and it’s disgusting to read that Ford needed a “good black woman” to get elected. Really, are we that full of ourselves? Good black woman or a good white woman, if you are marrying someone to get elected or win a percent of the vote, then you aren’t furthering anyones causes and you’re just saying that appearances take a back seat to politics.

   Posted 13 Nov 2006 at 5:58 pm ¶

3. brad wrote:

   I’m sick of hearing about these allegedly pissed off black women whose ire is raised at the sight of a “black” man with a white woman. It’s so stupid on all level, especially given that Harold Ford is mixed. Scratch that. It’s just pathetic. No one has a right to claim a person for his or her race.

   I don’t understand why this line of reasoning isn’t buried as racist trash. How can anyone take this line of thinking as reasonable?

   Posted 14 Nov 2006 at 12:51 am ¶

4. Lyonside wrote:

   Brad: Slight correction that’s important to a lot of people. Harold Ford is most assuredly “mixed,” but is culturally identified as African-American on both sides of his family. I.e. multigenerationally mixed, but AA-ethnically/culturally identified. Much like Vanessa Williams.

   I have yet to meet these “angry black women” who are supposedly all riled up over IRs. Every black woman I know, is, you know, SANE.

   Posted 14 Nov 2006 at 12:59 pm ¶

5. Stefanie wrote:

   I hope you’re right, Lyonside. As a young white woman whose husband is black, I have never in our seven years together personally noticed any flack coming from a black woman about my relationship with him. Other people, however, have said that they see something when they’re out with us, like, “Did you see that woman staring at you?” Maybe it has a lot to do with what you already carry around inside that dictates how you’ll construe a situation. I don’t go looking to see what other people’s reactions are, and I am probably too self-absorbed to notice anyway.

   If black most women don’t really have a problem with IR relationships, then why does one hear about it so much in the media? (I’m honestly asking.) I’d find it insulting if I were a black woman and I kept hearing that I was supposedly all bothered by something if that wasn’t the case.

   Do you think this “phenomenon” is being blown out of proportion or being prepetuated by the media?

   Posted 14 Nov 2006 at 5:20 pm ¶

6. brad wrote:

   Lyonside, I know that Ford is multi-gen mixed-race and identifies as African-American. Just because one identifies as A.A. doesn’t mean that one doesn’t recognize her/his mixed ancestry– especially if it stares back at you in the mirror.

   (I thought Vanessa Williams father was white?)

   That doesn’t change anything. No one has the right lay claim to a whole group of people as their exclusive dating pool. I don’t get it.

   Frankly, I wonder whether this just more spin than reality. I haven’t encountered these people.

   Posted 14 Nov 2006 at 8:40 pm ¶

7. kim wrote:

   I would most certainly hold that the terminology “mixed” is as laden with racist, Mendel-cum-eugenics baggage as is ‘exotic.’ I thought we were (despite the humble origins of the sister site) way past that.

   Anyhoo…some Black women will get upset when they see a Black man with anyone outside of the Black race, or anyone not easily identified as such (eyeball test). These women do exist, and often take quite personally a public display of a perceived rejection of all that they themselves are: brown, full-bodied, hard working [perception is everything], a little saucy (read: outspoken when she needs to be), a little demanding (and worth it!), put upon by the world and underappreciated, even by the men who look like their own sons.

   It feels personal to those who would take it personally. Perhaps it hurts most when the hard day just won’t end, or some particular old wound is re-opened in that moment. It does not keep Black women up at night, but may be the reason she does not join in when her White co-workers want to swoon over Denzel or Tyson.

   It happens in the reverse all the time, from White women to the Black women dating White men. And, true, you really don’t notice it unless someone gets in your face about it, making their problem your own.

   Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 2:28 am ¶

8. Stefanie wrote:

   Kim, why do you find the term “mixed” racist and what would you suggest in it’s place? I am curious.

   If someone ever did get in my face about my IR marriage, I’d just try to remember that, as was pointed out, it’s their problem and they’re trying to make it mine. I’d try to not take it personally. If they don’t know me personally, how could it be personal?

   But it’s unpleasant if someone blames a stranger for their own unhappiness. Life is hard, but that doesn’t justify thinking about everything in racial stereotypes. For a black woman to feel rejected for all of the qualities Kim listed upon seeing me and my husband, she’d have to assume a lot of things (like, that I am not hard-working, saucy or demanding and that my husband should want a woman who is hard-working, saucy, demanding, as he was raised to value these traits he has later “turned away from”, or that by having dark skin he has certain obligations to people who claim him as one of their own, rather than just being free to live his life).

   This line of thinking reinforces racial stereotypes (black woman are sassy, white women are meek, all blacks share the same culture and values, etc…) and that doesn’t help anybody.

   Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 2:54 pm ¶

9. kim wrote:

   Stefanie,

   There was no justification intended in my explanation of reasons a Black woman so inclined would feel slighted, rubbed, irritated.

   I offered it up as edification.

   Just as we each run into people who are generally agreeable, but happen to catch them on a bad day, so, too, can the bad day run into someone, run them over. Truly you heard that, even through what you admitted what a self-absorption that keeps you in some sort of bubble.

   Truly you understand that Black women have been devalued on every level imaginable, overtly, covertly, systematically, and had this devaluation codified as a natural observation and reaction to the presence of that uncultured (she’s not White, lily, pure or otherwise), oversexualized (venus hottentot, once-removed; but on the subject: venus hottentot!), ugly (the more polite terminology: outside of any accepted standard of beauty), rough, insensitive and desensitized person (if we’re willing to grant her personhood).

   You don’t think that way? You’re at this site, read others’ comments, listen to conversations around you, encoded language, watch for extensions of social privilege that are routinely denied to Black women. Pay attention.

   I don’t want to hear that you “don’t even notice color,” and you’re not like that. Maybe you don’t notice what is truly not there: people of color (your husband notwithstanding).

   “It’s unpleasant is someone blames a stranger for their own unhappiness.” Have you ever considered the impact that systems have on peoples’ abilities to determine the outcome of their own lives? Unpleasant. Unpleasant.
   That word sounds like weak tea to me. Is that as far as you go in the conversation to actually hear someone else?

   Stefanie, as I continue to write, I find myself becoming edgy, and have to ask why. It is because I know that you are not prepared for this conversation.

   Reread my previous post, have your husband read it, listen to the tone. I am far more in concert with you than not about the effect a passing interracial couple SHOULD have on the average joe, but I am also willing to consider the core of the discordant moment for the passerby.

   And I always smile.

   “Mixed” goes to breeding: half-breed, quarter-breed, we mixed two dogs: a collie and a shepherd, etc. It has been used to hurt people, and seems to fall into the arena of “Colored People,” to refer to Blacks/African-Americans. You are familiar with that terminology when it comes to the offspring of the Native American and a White person, yes?

   Best answer for you: there are unpleasant strings attached.

   Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 4:02 pm ¶

10. Lyonside wrote:

    Damn.
    Stepahnie:
    ““Mixed” goes to breeding: half-breed, quarter-breed, we mixed two dogs: a collie and a shepherd, etc. It has been used to hurt people, and seems to fall into the arena of “Colored People,” to refer to Blacks/African-Americans.”

    “Mixed” is a term used by many in the multiracial/biracial community, and I don’t agree that it’s automatically associated with much of the baggage you describe above (which is more accurately/usually applied to “mulatto”, a term I hate.) Mixed can mean mixed religious backgrounds, mixed ethnicities within a “racial” group, etc. as well, and allows for solidarity beyond the admittedly artificial “racial” categories.

    I have used mixed or biracial in casual conversation, becuase it is incredibly burdensome for me to go around listing the 6 known ethnicities in my family tree, or snippily saying “human” when the inquirer means no offense and it comes up in normal conversation. (Someone stopping me on the street, however, is an easy target for the snippiness and gets whatever I feel like saying at the time .

    Brad: I’m not a fan, so I may have my info wrong, but I had thought that Vanessa Williams has claimed tht both parents were/are AA-idenified (I really can’t care either way).

    As for seeing it in the mirror everyday, the legacy of the color line and interracial couplings (consentual, non-consentual, and that lovely gray area inbetween) is still taboo for many AA families. As such, it’s far easier for many to hold 2 ideas at the same time in one’s mind, or to ignore one in favor of the other, particulalrly if one has public/political ambitions and considering the schitzophrenic way Americans deal with racial issues past and present.

    Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 4:42 pm ¶

11. kim wrote:

    lyonside:

    Stefanie didn’t state that. Kim did (me).

    To be honest, I had no idea that “many in the multiracial/biracial community” use that term. In the African-American community, it has been my experience that the term has lost cache with educated, East-coast residents, and exists in the parlance of those lesser educated, and fixed on the idea that the world rotates on an axis of Black and White, with nothing in between.

    So the baggage is parked in the hallways I have walked. And I leave it there. Of course, others are free to use what they will. The mixed religious, ethnicity language could easily be label “inter-”, and I wonder that it isn’t. Is it?

    Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 5:07 pm ¶

12. Lyonside wrote:

    Sorry, Kim – I was reading/writing too fast….

    >In the African-American community, it has been my experience that the term has lost cache with educated, East-coast residents, and exists in the parlance of those lesser educated, and fixed on the idea that the world rotates on an axis of Black and White, with nothing in between.

    Interesting that that is your experience. Ironically enough, I’m on the East Coast (Philly), college educated, and I first heard “mixed” being used in a multiethnic context in NYC in SWIRL circles, as a way to refer to the “mixed” (not just black/white, or hapa, or what have you) experience. It was being used by “mixed” people about “mixed” issues of various types. MAVIN has also used the term to refer to things such as the “mixed-race experience” (which of course is far from uniform or universal, but tends to share some traits regardless of individual ethnicity/creed/”race”, in that you are perceived by the dominant culture as “other” (and often even by the minority culture, and similar questions/experiences happen).

    Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 5:51 pm ¶

13. s wrote:

    Stefanie wrote:
    “If black most women don’t really have a problem with IR relationships, then why does one hear about it so much in the media? (I’m honestly asking.) I’d find it insulting if I were a black woman and I kept hearing that I was supposedly all bothered by something if that wasn’t the case.”

    You answered your own question. It is done to insult us, the whole black community, but mainly the women. Sure, there are black women who make a fuss about IR’s, but there are just as many whites who do it to, if not more. Some white women whine about the fuss of black women so much that it becomes what they focus on. Thus, you hear it all the time. (and it’s small change compared to the flack black women get from a lot of white people whether we are dating OR NOT!)

    The media is controlled by white men. CERTAINLY you didn’t think those men would be man enough to admitt their on foolishness? No, honey. That will never happen. They will always air the black woman’s dirty laundry, not their own.

    Not to be rude, but I really do hope you are not as naive as you sound in your post. Even a deaf and blind person knows the media is a powerhouse for stereotypes against black women. They have nothing good to say about us (and when they do, they hate to say it and cut it as short as possible).

    Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 6:07 pm ¶

14. Stefanie wrote:

    Lyonside’s take on the term “mixed” is pretty much as I had been thinking of it. When Kim suggested it was racist, I was curious as to why, as I had never heard anyone express that about the term before. I wondered if “interracial” or “biracial” (as the case may be) would be preferable. It seems that maybe “mixed” means different things to different people and just depends on a person or group’s location or experiances as to how they would take it.

    Kim: The whole of my previous post was not directed at you specifically, just the first sentance that begins, “Kim,”. I feel I understood what you were saying in your post. I didn’t take it as you endorsing having a problem with IR couples, but as a description of how that behavior can be justified to one’s self if one has a problem with IR couples, a description of the mindset that may lead a person to have a problem with IR couples. I don’t feel a history lesson is warranted here about the devaluization of the black woman in America. I was just acknowledging in my previous post that while someone may feel that they are warrented to be intolerant of IR couples, it’s still not right. Most bigoted people (white, black, Asian, whatever) can come up with reasons as to why they feel the way they do, drawing upon their experiences and values. But the overriding thing is that nothing should excuse bigoted behavior. That’s all I was trying to reiterate. I did feel you were in concert with me on that point, so I wasn’t trying to refute something you said. But what you wrote does help to shed light on the processes at work in these situations to aid in getting to the bottom of things and perhaps ending the vicious circle of resentment and misunderstanding between groups. Sorry you felt edgy while responding to me.

    Also, on a side note, this bit was not clear to me:
    “I don’t want to hear that you “don’t even notice color,” and you’re not like that. Maybe you don’t notice what is truly not there: people of color (your husband notwithstanding)”

    Why would I say I don’t notice color? Of course I do. And are you saying that “people of color” are “not there” (not here?) other than my husband, in a literal sense? Like they don’t exist (or don’t exist to me, other than my husband)? I am not sure of your meaning there, so I don’t know how/if to respond.

    s: You point to the media being controlled by white men as the reason for media coverage of AA women having a problem with black men dating outside their race. I agree that much of (most of) the media is controlled by these white men. But the specific article to which I originally referred was not written by a white man, as far as I can gather from looking around the blog, jackandjillpolitics. So there’s at least one non-white guy asserting the existance of this “phenomenon”. Also, I think that the dirty laundry and foolishness of white men are quite often covered in the media (Allen, Gibson, Haggard, Foley?) .

    Whether these sentiments purported in the original article to be held by many AA women are real or not, prevelant or not, I am not for lending such sentiments credence and sending a message to future politicians that more or less says, “If you want to win elections, you better not be in an IR relationship!” Perhaps I am naive, idealistic, or just biased, but I am not for cultivating hostility toward people in IR relationships, though I believe some hostility does exist.

    Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 10:45 pm ¶

15. kim wrote:

    Stefanie:

    I was attributing to you the defense that I have heard too often from “others” when they have found themselves uncomfortable with a Black person’s irritation or (sometimes) outrage. You did not posit that you felt that way, and in my edginess and presumption at your obliviousness to certain aspects of our intersecting histories, I snapped at you. I was out of line to do so.

    Lyonside and Stefanie:

    I was thinking, after Lyonside’s last response to me, about the differing relationships to the term “mixed,” we have and as I washed the dishes it occurred to me to post here something that I posted another site just last night:

    Too often, light-skinned and/or bi-racial Blacks are instantly dismissed, disregarded or held to be suspicious, their thoughts and ideas ready to be ignored or nullified based on the (perceived) sway and influence of the “other” which flows through their veins.

    Quite often, darker skinned Blacks want lighter skinned Blacks to “prove” their allegiance, be “super Black” – or lose the pass that had been tentatively handed over to them.

    Many Blacks tend to think equating street-culture/video-culture behaviors to ‘authentic’ Blackness is a given. Or, if they themselves enjoy some measure of economic comfort due to vocation and/or education, may find themselves betraying their own talk of the merits of ridding our ranks of the ‘anti-intelligence’ waves flowing therein, and intimate the high degree of possibility of betrayal by someone light-skinned…all with a wink and a nod that assumes a shared cultural value as to the assuredness of a politic which places a faith not in a person’s words or deeds, but, sadly, in their “complexion.”
    *******
    So, in summation to both of you, it has been used as epithet, as a conversation ender.

    It is also intimately related to the heirarchy of how a woman is judged, according to the quality or “grade” of her hair: everyone knows the ‘mixed’ child has “good hair.” Marry her and your kids will, too. (I exhale here).

    Posted 15 Nov 2006 at 11:19 pm ¶

16. Lyonside wrote:

    Kim:

    I respect that experience, and I know how pervasive colorism is in the AA culture (it’s dying out in my father’s family, in the post-1950s generation, but yeah, backhanded “compliments” are all over the family) . But a lot of of words can be used as epithets, racial or otherwise. Just know that it’s not a “bad” word necessarily within a lot of the mainstream multiethnic community, and that “mixed” remains a way of INCLUDING a lot of more people than excluding. It’s not just a black/white thing.

    Posted 16 Nov 2006 at 8:02 am ¶

17. S wrote:

    Stefanie, you missed the points. And, your question about black women was not posted as being in specific relation to the article, as you recently posted. You said “in the media” not “in this article”. Of course, the reasons for Ford losing can only be speculated, it hasn’t been proven that this was actaully the reason why he lost. One would have to assume that he WOULD have gotten the vote of every black woman if, indeed, he were involved with a black woman instead of a white woman. I highly doubt if he would ever have the vote of every single person of ANY group of people.

    Posted 16 Nov 2006 at 1:15 pm ¶