Anon 4:06:

Damn.

As a white woman who grew up in Africa and who just started dating an African American man, I recognize the issues you raise here as a problem (and one that tends to worry me a great deal and has for much of my adult life… Most of my close friends are African women, and I too tend to look cock-eyed at my African male friends who seem to invariably end up with white women, esp. when at their weddings to the white women, their friends all seem to show up with blondes, as well…), BUT can we find the space for a white woman and a black man or a white man and black woman to just find themselves head over heels in love with each other because they have become good friends with common interests, goals, and even backgrounds?

I’m not so clueless and idealistic that I’m unaware of the problematic history of colour division and preference in this country and to a lesser extent in formerly colonized African countries, “passing” for white, having “good” or “bad” hair, marrying white for prestige, et. al. There are racial concerns on both sides. I hesitate to tell a close (African American) girlfriend that I’ve just started dating my bf because she’s talked to me before about her resentment that all the “good” men seem to be taken by white women.

Simulateously I cringe when I think of introducing my boyfriend to my conservative white relatives who are well meaning but who “just don’t get it.” I know there are going to be awkward moments there…

However, there must be space, beyond all the awareness of history and politics, for two people to realize that they love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives with each other, whatever the identity politics, gossip, and awkwardness that will follow. This, ultimately, must be the realization that goes beyond the gossip and the misunderstandings. Race matters, especially in this country, but i hope, I really do, that love matters more.

Folks make too much of a big deal over the sex, age and color of people’s partners.

It’s really none of anyone’s business.

It’s hard for black women not to be like men or this man/woman hybrid created by our history, when they are doing the job of a mother and father.

If 70% of man children are born out of wedlock, how many of those fathers have gone on to marry white women thereby continuing the cycle of self-genocide. I wonder if those children grow up wondering if daddy left mom because she wasn’t feminine enough. Why should they think otherwise? This is what there fathers taught them.

that’s not about status symbols. i haven’t pulled up the article. was that included in it?

HOWEVER, they stayed together, and he must have had something to him to stick in a marriage where he would be destroyed, too, in the eyes of his fellow whites, for choosing not to keep her as his ’second family’ and instead choosing to make him and her legal and official and public. So I give him a pass.

As for the black woman who notices black people staring, the thing about that is that sometimes people bring it on themselves. They expect to be stared at, so they subconsciously do things to be stared at.

For myself, I’m not one of those women black men with white women will diss their white women to talk to; I’m one of those women a black men with a white woman will pretend doesn’t exist… right until the white women leaves the vicinity, then they’re suddenly willing to talk to me. It’s either something in them, or something in me. Or both.

Quite frankly, considering the state of black male and black female relationships, I can understand the stares that the Washington Post columnist receives from black people. Whether we want to admit it or not, it has been ingrained into our subconscious that white is better and people get that perception from blacks in interracial relationships, particular when they are involved with white people. My God! Just look at certain blogs and you will see black women singing the praises of white men, while villanizing black men as if they were the second coming of Satan!

I read the WP columnist’s article and this part stuck out to me:

“Black man/white woman couples are far more prevalent than unions such as mine. They make up 73 percent of all black-white relationships, according to the 2000 Census. For some black men, white women are the ultimate status symbol. Other black men say they prefer not to deal with the expectations of black women. And while many single black women bemoan biracial couples, complaining that white women “take the good ones,” the same women are usually the first to reject the idea of dating outside their race.”

This type of statement is so common amongst black women who date/marry white men. It’s like they’re on some, “Well, they (black men) started it!” type of thing. It also insinuates that black men dating/marrying white women is wrong, but black women dating/marrying white men is OK.

BTW, I don’t know where the writer gets that it’s not looked upon that brothas who marry white women as being a traitor to the race. They are PLENTY of sistas who will bless a black man out if he chooses a white woman. The “War Council” in Jungle Fever is real. And look at how many sistas have said, “I’m glad Obama has a black wife who looks black!”.

Then she goes on with the usual “Well, the majority of black women are single so they need to expand their horizons” mantra. The interesting thing is that when they talk about sistas expanding their horizons, it’s ALWAYS ABOUT DATING WHITE MEN. What about Latino men? Asian men? Middle Eastern men? African men? Nah, it’s always WHITE MEN. Hmm…..