Interracial Dating: Grudgingly Heading Toward Acceptance

Contrast that with the women he’s brought me to meet in adulthood. Bland, wan, boring and uninteresting, they sit silently at the table when we go out and do not engage in conversation. They are uniformly thin and chesty. They are prone to dramatic threats when they are feeling ignored, but are otherwise a silent species intent on staring at their own reflections. They drink too much, too often, and often wake up in the throes of regret about something.

Bestboy once showed me a video from CollegeHumor.com called “Amy at the Club.” In the video, the actress is parodying the legions of (white) women who drink to escape their problems, come off as obsessive and strange, and think sexual contact is a quick and easy substitute for conversation.

I couldn’t laugh at the video.

I saw too many of his girlfriends in that parody.

The only difference is the actress is a brunette and his last girlfriend could hold her liquor.

One girl he dated for two years, and she was a nice, sweet girl.

She was also as boring as wallpaper paste.

Bestboy complained about her lack of stimulating conversation and home body habits often, often calling me in frustration after they would fight. When they broke up, I asked him what he saw in her.

He shrugged. “She cooked. And she let me do whatever I wanted in the bedroom.”

The answer irked me, especially as the answer has repeated itself with other women. It is not the fact that he dates white women, but the fact that he seems insistent on dating a stereotype – and specifically, the stereotype that is often attributed to white women: submissive, sexually adventurous, and easily controlled.

As he started to discuss all the things he had asked her to do sexually- things he asked for just because he could – I felt the angry black woman start welling up again. Is that it? Is that all it fucking is? The grand mystique of white girls boils down to passenger seat blow jobs and a girl who will shut up on command? What the fuck?

In that moment, I could completely understand the teeth sucking that happens, the anger that occurs, why so many black women start getting that familiar pain behind the eyes when they see a white woman and a black man linked romantically. It isn’t just about them, in that specific relationship, at that specific point in time.

It is also what that pairing symbolically represents.

The black man, envy of the world, attractive and in control, shunning his darker sisters for a white prize. The white woman, beauty standard world over and desired by all races of man, able to pick and choose any man for the taking.

And black women, mules of the world, once again pull the short end of the straw. We came up short, again. Lost out to a white girl, again. Have yet another subtle reinforcement that even the men who look like us do not find us attractive. Again.***

It’s enough to make a woman consider kicking her best friend down the stairs.

But, I don’t. I inhale deeply and remember that I am loved, remember that there are plenty of men who don’t act or behave this way around white women, remember that there are some people who were able to navigate the treacherous path of stereotypes and fetishes, and manage to come out with love.

Love.

This thing that is so difficult to find, so fleeting, so elusive that it is hard to begrudge anyone who has found it with anyone of their joy. Their love. Their story.

But as I said before, love does not happen in a vacuum. The influences of societal programming run deep. And when I see Bestboy, the question on my mind most often is not why white women, but rather, don’t brown girls deserve love too?

Why don’t you think you’ll be happy with one of us?

I wonder these things. But more often, I wonder about my friend. He isn’t happy, and with each failed relationship, he feels as though he is moving further and further into being a lifelong bachelor. He occassionally voices his sadness aloud, and I hurt for him. Everyone wants to be loved. I’m just worried he’s looking in the wrong place. He’s looking for the woman society holds as beautiful and desirable, the airbrushed and polished trophy, and not the real flesh and blood women that exist in the world.

Women who know who they are. Women of any race.

And I would be happy for him, whoever he finds, of any race, as long as she suits him.

But until then, old habits die hard.

Another Sunday passes, we’re breaking bread at yet another brunch spot, yet another blond walks by and I find myself subconciously scouting for a WoC alternative.

The blonde passes.

“She’s cute,” Bestboy remarks.

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