Social Capital and Denying the Pain of Black Women

- We watch brothers fetishize light skin; long, straight hair and keen features. For most, the “preference” is subconscious, but some (Kanye, I’m looking at you) have no shame about saying it out loud. (I once dated a black man who admitted that he and his friends preferred women who looked like they were “mixed with something (other than black).” Apparently, my eyes, which he thought “looked kind of Asian” made me acceptable. Needless to say, that relationship ended with a quickness.)

- We see how First Lady Michelle Obama, an attractive, accomplished, articulate and conventionally feminine woman, has been recast as an angry, animalistic, and masculine harpy.

- We watch violence and sexual degradation against black women by black men go unacknowledged in our community. (R. Kelly….NAACP Image Award…for real?)

- We read the “what’s wrong with black women” books and articles, often written by black men. (Hello…Steve Harvey.) Or, we watch Tyler Perry movies to learn where being educated, professional successful and self-sufficient gets you. (Hint: According to Perry, alone and unwanted.)

- Speaking of Tyler Perry…He and Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and Keenan Thompson are sure doing their part to keep the fat, black, sassy, masculine, aggressive black woman trope in play.

- We hear what brothers say when we aren’t around. I shook my head at the scene in Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” that showed a bunch of black men in a barber shop holding forth on the awesomeness of dating a non-black woman with straight, silky tresses.

The scene made me recall a white floor mate in college who exclusively dated black men. I recall how she shared that some of her paramours, in complimenting her, could not help but denigrate black women: We are too mouthy. Our butts are too big. Our features unfeminine. These black men repeated the most ugly stereotypes about black women–women like their own mothers. Yes, my acquaintance could have been feeding her own insecurity, but the dating situation on campus seemed to confirm her stories. It was not uncommon at local clubs to see tables of black women sitting idle, nursing their drinks, while men jockeyed for the white co-eds.

I’m not sure that the dating experience for black women in mixed environments has improved in the nearly 20 years since I graduated college. My stepson reports that the black girls at his majority white school “don’t really date.”

Now, I’ve never been one to spend time mourning over someone who doesn’t want me.

In any case, I am happily married and who dates whom represents no loss for me. And I do think no one should begrudge love between two people. But I don’t think that’s what Jill Scott’s “wince” is about. Nor is it about black supremacy or hatred of white women or a belief that the races shouldn’t mix.

As she said, it has everything to do with the story of African-descended peoples in America. More specifically, it has to do with the history and present of black women in America. It has to do with being a body that is constantly demonized and marginalized, not just by the majority, but by your own people, too…by the men who share your history and with whom you might find refuge. And though you cannot tell by looking why one person chose another person–whether that black guy over there picked his white girlfriend because they are uniquely suited, because love struck them like a thunderbolt or because society says women like her are the ideal or all of the above–the “wince” isn’t about fact but feeling. It is about feeling confronted with the reality of your lack of social worth and the limitation of your own choices. (see Racialicious on how race bias effects online dating choices.) And that is painful.

I am not surprised that many non-black folks hearing about Scott’s essay don’t understand. We do not have the same history and we do not occupy the same space in the realm of heterosexual dating. The black woman’s social situation has few parallels among other races, although Asian men have similar (low) capital. This is not the same as John Mayer talking about his “white supremacist dick.” Through his comments, Mayer was upholding the sexual hierarchy that Jill Scott is lamenting. In other words, in a world of white supremacist male members, it can get pretty, fucking lonely for a sister.

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