I’ve always felt that as black men we’ve never told the whole truth about how we feel about black women, or our apparent inclination to move towards women of other races. The common narrative from those in interracial relationships usually runs around the theme of preference or the obvious attitude of ‘you can’t help who you fall for’.
Such conversation has featured within the black community for as long as I can remember, and in it there is always the underlying assumption that interracial relationships work to undermine the black relationship.
With this in mind, I feel there are only a few ‘safe’ perspectives (safe meaning abject to defamation within blackness) to adopt as a black man when it comes to this matter:
There is firstly the black man who, by a certain degree of default, dates only black women. This black man neither thinks about nor discusses intra-race relations because, in a sense, black women and culture is all he has been consumed with.
There is also the black man who presents the black woman as Queen. It’s cliché to paint such a profile, but this man is usually considered to be ‘consciously minded’ and is vocal about preserving and elevating blackness.
Finally there is the ‘open minded’ black man. The ‘love is love, can’t help who you fall for’ kind of brother. We all know this profile, yet it must be added that he is only accepted without skepticism if his current partner is black.
Though these profiles are little more than artless caricature, in them I believe to be some broad signifying strokes from which some black men may be able to recognise themselves.
Admittedly, I belong in the latter category – only my current partner is not black. And whilst I’d like to par this off as a ‘love is love’ kind of relationship, my life experience knows me better than that. Love is of course love, but towards which direction that love is steered is not as blind or as non-judgmental as I’d like to believe.
Everyone has a personal history that curtails them towards one direction or another, yet I think there are significant themes in the intimate histories of minorities that work to enable a person to seek distance or separation from the communities they come from.
I see this often played out in feelings of race shame and backwardness, feelings of being isolated within one’s own community, spending one’s formative years in the company of ‘other’ communities and seeking symbols of approval or attainment to compensate for the feeling of poverty towards your own.
Looking throughout my life I can see clearly the reasons that have steered my gaze beyond only black women. I won’t detail my life’s history, but years spent fluctuating between all white and all black environments – feeling accepted in neither – have made me more comfortable in environments made up of ‘other’ peoples.
To add context, at a certain point in my life I grew up around a lot of Asian people who, in their representation, provided a middle ground for me, a space where I didn’t feel the inclination to play up to the caricatures that I felt my white and black friends had come to expect of me.
Yet there are other configurations to consider aside the personal. At some point we all become aware of the indoctrination within Western popular culture that works to stifle, or downright make us feel shit about ourselves. Look at the images young women are presented about themselves. Witness the narratives black boys are coaxed to digest. Consider the absence of the East Asian experience in pop culture.
At this point we’re all wised up to what’s going on, yet we can’t seem to institute any kind impact, not even on a personal level. For the most of us, having this knowledge in our heads does not transmit to our behaviours. My eyes still gravitate (of their own accord, my conscience would suggest) towards those with lighter skin tones than those with darker shades. And whilst some may scream ‘preference!’, it’s simply too pervasive throughout society to deposit such an attitude.
When I was young my mother warned me to never bring home a white girl. Implicit in this message (one I evidently failed to catch) was that as black people we ought to stick together. And so I have to wonder, how much of this article is sketched from a position of defence? An underhand way for black women to understand my seeming betrayal, and so forgive me accordingly?
Often I see the glint of shame in black men’s eyes when coupled with their white partners, and wonder whether I too emanate such feelings when meeting the eyes of black women. What I will say is that there is a sense of being beholden to black women, and whether from my mother, my family or the larger narrative of black unity, I’m not sure whether these feelings can be simply disregarded.
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