My Opinion in Black and White...

Toward the end of last year, after putting a nasty chill over a really warm get-together at a male friend's house one wine-soaked evening, I decided that I am not going to discuss black men dating outside of "the race" anymore.

I have yet to have what I would consider an intelligent or even an honest conversation of this kind in the 20 or so odd years since I realized that I would not only have to vie with a horde of other black women for the hand of just one black man, but that I would also have to compete with a multitude of women from other races who were open to the idea of going black.

So, I figured, why get my pressure up?

I was resolved (it's the New Year after all). Or the more apt word may be resigned. So many of the men that I've spoken with have fallen back on the same tired stereotypes of black women's behavior to justify abandoning them as romantic prospects, and closed their ears to explanations of our so-called issues or rational arguments that the five or 10 black women that they have dated in their lives to not constitute the whole of black womanhood, that I've accepted that the situation will remain what it is.

Black men will run from their own and our collective issues into the arms of white, Asian, whatever women, continue to camouflage this escape as evolution (in terms of their racial attitudes) or transcendence, all the while bad-mouthing and blaming black women which while it should show that they are not actually as open-minded or post-racial as they claim only creates a trap in which black women fall any time they dare to defend themselves against these attacks or bemoan the fact that they are being scapegoated.

*Whew*

Anyway, I think (hope) you get my meaning.

I was done. Trying to discuss the issue with black men felt like trying to explain to a klansman that black people in America are not poor because they are lazy but because they have been historically slotted as the nation's underclass.

Pointless.

But then I logged onto Facebook today, and Jimi Izrael, a fellow Clevelander and cultural provocateur had the following link posted on his wall: http://www.afieldnegro.com/photos.html.

Even though the amount of images was overwhelming and rather disheartening, I wasn't even going to respond to them, until I read the statement at the head of the collage.

"Is it possible that some black women are driving brothers away?"

I couldn't let it go, y'all... I tried.

Yes, is the answer. Some black women are driving not just brothers but men away period. It's inevitable. But it's not peculiar or intrinsic to nor characteristic of their race. Some women-black, white, purple, polka-dotted-have such serious personal issues that they cannot maintain healthy romantic relationships. Many of them cannot form healthy friendships either. And don't have healthy dealings with their families. They may have personality disorders, mental illnesses, or addictions that make them impossible or undesirable to bond with.

But we know that's not what Mr. Field Negro meant, don't we?

This is my problem with the suggestion (assertion, insistence) that black women are too emotional, too demanding, too overbearing, and/or too controlling, and that is why black men do not want them.

First, and again, these are sweeping generalizations and often stereotypes. I know plenty of black women that have stayed in relationships in which their needs and wants were horribly neglected. They've stayed and given as if they were receiving what they deserved. I often wonder when I hear a black man complain about a black woman's rigidity, her supposed hardness or coldness, just what he asked of her. And how generous he has been with her. Because let's be real. People who have been consistently cheated are not going to be the most giving. There has only been one Mother Theresa and she's dead.

Second, the implication of these charges is that black women choose to be "difficult" and could change their emotional behaviors if they wanted. Well, let's delve into that. We all know the history of the black man and woman in America. Though men like to make this huge difference between how racism affects them and their female counterparts, I want to say something that isn't necessarly news but that I think bears repeating again and again until it sinks into the collective black male consciousness:

RACISM IS EVERY BIT AS DEBILITATING TO WOMEN AS IT IS TO MEN.

Black women get profiled by the police just like you. Maybe not in as large numbers, but they still do. They are victims of police brutality.

They are jailed in disproportionate numbers, subject to the inequities of mandatory sentencing and a court system that is almost impossible to navigate if you are poor and largely ignorant of its mechanisms.

They may get hired in higher numbers, but they are subject to the same discriminatory treatment as black men on their jobs. And because they do have a relatively easier time securing and keeping white or gray collar jobs, they are often under intense pressure to keep them in order to financially gird their families, even when they are being mistreated or overlooked when it comes to advancement opportunities.

I can personally vouch for the difficulty of this type of situation.

Just as I can say that just because black women are accepted into colleges at higher rates, and more likely to finish, doesn't mean that they are celebrated in these hallowed halls of so-called higher learning. We are no less tokens than black men. No less resented for our necessary presence. No less subject to be weeded out by courses or programs for which our largely inferior high school educations have failed to prepare us. We have the same struggle to finance a college education, keep a decent GPA, and cross the commencement stage as any black man. Our larger number doesn't ensure that we have any more allies or a stronger support system. It is often the opposite.

Many black women born after a certain point in our history were raised by single black women as well. These women did not get to see healthy male-female relationships growing up. They too lacked consistent or quality male role models. Many of them had to grow up faster and harder than they should have in order to help shoulder the hardships in the home or due to a certain lack of parental guidance or mere presence.

I don't understand how black men can have such knowledge of their historical or social-cultural situation, and be so deft in employing that knowledge to explain (justify) why they have so much anger, resentment, what have you, but they cannot (will not) understand that black women share that situation and so would naturally share that same anger or resentment.

It just reeks of ... sexism (their suffering is somehow "superior" to ours), self-absorption (fuck their pain), intellectual laziness (2+2=3)...?

I don't know... something really foul, though. Really foul.

Just as black men have a hard time throwing off the existential shackles of American blackness, so do we. We are no less "difficult" than they are. But... we are lower on the totem pole of sexual desirability. And it's ironic that one of the reasons for this-at least in my opinion- is how negatively black men discourse about us in the public sphere.

Perhaps if they don't want large numbers of us to lament their choices of mates outside "the race," they should talk us up to men outside "the race" so they'll marry us instead. Just a suggestion.

A third reason that I cannot stomach the suggestion that it is black women's fault that black men do not accept us as readily as we do them is it ignores the largely dysfunctional dynamic between black people-black men and black women (versus the dynamic between us and others).

For this, I have to dip into my store of personal anecdotes.

When I was in high school, there was a young man-we'll call him C-that basically harrassed the girls in my class whenever he could. He could always be heard calling them horrible names or pushing or shoving them down the hall or into lockers. He was abusive, even though he and his friends laughed it off in good fun. He treated black girls like dirt and was congratulated by his male colleagues for it.

"That's right, man. That's how you gotta treat them hoes."

Did these girls deserve it? Who knows? It's a chicken-or-egg question really. Perhaps these girls were mean to him, but he was mean to them. Who struck first? And who had the responsibility of being the bigger person?

That might be too complex of a question. Let's just say this. I never saw a girl hitting him unless he had hit her first.

I thought C was a real asshole and I was so very glad that his locker wasn't on my hallway and that we didn't have any classes together.

Unlike your stereotypical Sapphire or your empowered Safire, back then I was a rag mop. I'd take anything off a guy, I was so gratified to be noticed by one.

Anyhow, one day I am working at the friendly neighborhood McDonald's, and who comes sauntering in. C--he's ushering a little blonde white girl, holding the door, ordering for her, paying for the meal, cleaning off the table, sitting down beside her, smiling, chatting, batting his eyelashes.

You could have knocked me over with a french fry.

One of the things that I think black men who date outside of "the race" are disingenuous about is the fact that many treat women outside "the race" better than they do black women.

It makes a certain kind of sense. Black women are background to an extent. They are mothers, sisters, and aunts. So they are a bit desexualized. And black men are accustomed to them. I think it becomes difficult for them to recognize the special things about them because they are as everyday as, say, a McDonald's sign. Most black men are surrounded by them, so they don't feel the need to impress them. They can have one if they want one without really trying.

Other women, however, are not a given. I can't imagine the thrill of having a woman who you probably expect to reject you out-of-hand just because of your race accept you. Even without the sex, it's probably orgasmic. And such a strike back at all of the other others that made you feel like you were nothing or less. Black women can't give that. We can love, care, support, all those things. But we cannot give that sort of validation. And though many men deny it, it's pretty ridiculous to think that growing up in America, it's not something they want. Even if they don't consciously or deliberately seek it.

Back to the issue of treatment, though.

What grows out of black men's familiarity with black women is often contempt-like C's. You see it on TV and in movies, and you certainly hear it on the radio... My bad, on iTunes.

When black men talk about how well other women treat them, they neglect to explore how well they treat other women or how poorly they treat black women. They always turn the conversation back to black women's behavior. But I refuse to believe that every black man on Field Negro's collage, or in this country, that is currently dating outside "the race" was a perpetual or innocent victim of a black woman. There are instances in which they were aggressors, undeniably. So let's stop with the sophistry.

It's the golden rule in reverse. People more often than not treat you the way you treat them (unless you're Elin Nordegren-Woods). And black men can be really unkind to black women.

The fact that so many of them cannot date outside of the race without faulting us for it proves this. If it is truly a matter of love and not race, then why do we enter into the conversation at all? And do not say that we are always inserting ourselves. Black man can be awfully defensive about their choice to cut black women from their rosters. Many are poised for an attack that isn't even coming. I'd say it was guilt, but I don't flatter them. So many of the black men I know that date outside feel so entitled to their dislike or even hatred of black women, they don't feel a thing when they paint them as monsters.

Another reason I object to the idea that black women chase black men away, or even that black men choose away from us for love solely, is that so many men who date outside do in fact cut black women from their rosters.

They don't include others along with sisters. They block sisters out. There is something really problematic about absolutely refusing to consider women of your race or culture as potential mates. I won't go as far as to say that black men who do this hate themselves, but I do wonder if they hate the realities of the black couples they watched growing up and feel that in order to avoid replicating them in their own lives, they have to avoid pairing up with a black woman. If they're being reductive or are frightened into being exclusionary.

Which leads me to the last thing I want to say. And this will probably be the most objectionable. There is a certain laziness to deciding as a black person (male or female) you will not deal romantically with other black people. Men make this decision in larger numbers I think because it is more plausible for them. As I said, the proverbial black dick manages to poke through just about all racial and/or cultural dividers. It's accepted in more places than Visa. This means that black men can excommunicate black women and still have really vital love lives. Black women on a large scale cannot.

And it isn't because we are so difficult that no one else wants us. There are exceptions--interracial relationships in which the woman is the black mate--enough to prove that black women can be appreciated beyond racial boundaries. Still, the ugly truth remains that on a large scale, we get left on the bleachers when many men are picking partners. We have so many negative labels attached to our poor bodies that most men don't want to take the time to pick them off and get to the real people underneath. I mean, shit, our own brothers won't do it a third of the time. Why should men that don't really have to?

And therein lies the laziness. Most black women are raised to marry and mate with black men. Because our options are so limited. Because black people can be so parochial in our thinking, particularly when it comes to child-rearing. Black girls are raised to be good black women which translates into self-sacrificing, long-suffering black wives carrying at least two-thirds the weight of a strong black family on our backs. And we fight to do just that. Do we have high standards for the man we do this with (we women that do this heteronormative dance)? Sure. But are they inordinately high? I don't think so.

It's funny to me that every single one of those photos on Mr. Field Negro's site featured a black man that was more economically affluent than his white, Asian, Hispanic, Latino, or ambiguously raced mate. There were no janitors or bus drivers in those pictures. So what about those women's standards? Why are they not gold diggers or opportunists?

By and large, black women (who want families) want successful families. Some do the work to be contributors. Some don't. But from what I have seen, living on the largely segregated, very black eastside of Cleveland, Ohio, most straight black women will do whatever they can to get and keep a black man short of killing themselves. And some even go there. Emotionally or psychologically anyway.

Straight black men? Not so much.

They opt out. And on one hand, it's human nature, almost understandable. They can. But on the other hand, it's a real slap in the face. And I think this is where the outrage comes in.

I just recently had a black ex tell me he feels no obligation to marry a black woman. He's so weird and black women are so narrow-minded, they don't understand him. So he'll marry whoever does.

I say first, I was raised with a certain unspoken obligation to marry a black man, so what's up with that? What are these black mothers doing when they burden daughters with this and not sons?

Second, nobody's so weird that in an entire race of people they can't find one person that understands him or her. That's some self-aggrandizing bullshit.

And finally, every relationship, even one in which you and your partner share the same tastes in music, literature, or fashion, is essentially a struggle for mutual understanding. I felt like my ex was being a snob and prejudiced, one, judging black women as uniformly less cosmopolitan than other women, and two, exhibiting the laziness I'm talking about. He assumed it would be easier to connect with a woman that wasn't black, and he was saying he'd take that easier route. That he was going to be lazy even as he implied that black women are lazy for not making themselves into more wordly, interesting people.

Maybe he's justified. Maybe black women are martyrs for sticking to black men. But then how can we be monsters too?

What he said also threw me back to the whole issue of standards-how black women supposedly have such rigid standards. Black men are pretty notorious for having their own high standards. A certain skin tone. A certain hair length and texture. A certain weight or body shape. Most middle class educated black men want educated, professional partners. Shit, a lot of so-called thugs want educated, professional partners. No addictions. No kids. A certain amount of money in the bank. And they're unapologetic. And they're not maligned.

One of my other male friends said to me during a deep late night talk that he read philosophy, poetry, that he'd been a lot of places, knew a lot of people. He needed a woman that he could take anywhere, who could talk to anyone. Tall order. He said white women are more cultured. I told him perhaps this is because a large proportion are more privileged. I would love to visit Paris, Rome, all the so-called cultural centers of the western world, but who has the money? It'd love to linger over Sartre or Samuel Delaney, but I teach six classes over five days a week and am practically raising my two-year-old daughter singlehandedly. Who has the time?

It is no easier for black women to make themselves into ideal mates than it is for black men. It is no less natural for them to want equal partners. Yet, they are called impossible for seeking just what their male counterparts seek.

And the bitch of it? They are punished for it by being cut off. Black men want ideal partners, but many don't want to be ideal partners. They resent women pulling out measuring tapes, though they have their own stuck in their back jeans pockets or leather briefcases. They attack women for insisting that they raise their personal level of excellence. And then, out of laziness, they run from their own failings to outside partners and tell black women it's our fault.

They point to their outside lovers and say "she understands me." But they do not consider for a moment, particularly those that are not millionaires, that her acceptance might come from her own failure to find a suitable partner in her own racial milieu or that her acceptance might be based on some condescending notion that she can save, heal, educate, or elevate them. She might just want an adventure, to piss off a controlling parent, or escape her own racial baggage.

Captors can be just as anguished as captives, you know.

All right... *sigh*... I've broken my promise, given my two cents. But I hope that I have lived up to the alternate spelling of my name, and the determination to change certain paradigms that I intend it to embody, in doing so. I think that I've made pretty qualified statements and been diligent in clarifying that this is not all black men or women. Just a lot.

And if I haven't made this clear I do want to say that I think ultimately people should be with whoever they want. Absolutely.

I just don't see why so many black men have to villify black women in order to date outside "the race"with assuredness.