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posted: 07/10/12 at 5:43 AM
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Calvin: " One more thing working against black women - of my white friends who aren't down with the brown, if you will, but would make exceptions for a hot black girl? I suspect that means they'd sleep with one, but prefer white/asian/hispanic for the long term.
I'd say the same thing goes for black men, except that to men, having loads of women that are interested in you for sex but not serious committment is hardly a bad thing."
My husband (who happens to be Black) has spoken about this implicit understanding in some parts of the U.S. that if a Black man can date a White woman, why would he want a Black woman. He said that he felt this most acutely when he lived in California. He had grown up in NJ and moved to Cali at about age 15 to live with his dad who was divorced from his mom. He met Black guys who had not only dated White women exclusively, but also were not at all attracted to Black women. He said that until he went away to college there and met Black guys who had grown up in heavily African American communities in California, he thought that this was a Cali norm. Even his dad made reference to the fact that he was free to date as many White women as he wanted without the racial issues he'd grown up with in the rural south. My husband said that it felt like an alter universe in a way, slightly unnatural that these men didn't recognize beauty in women who looked like perhaps their mothers and sisters. He dated White and Latino women sometimes, but said that he often got the sense that no matter how average looking the White woman was that there was this sense that they seemed to think that they were lowering themselves slightly, or that he should be somehow uber gratified by their attentions. He was a young man at the time, we've been married for close to 25 years now. He was, and is, the kind of man that women from all ethnicities take a second look at, and he felt that growing up on the East coast in an environment where there were lots of people of African descent, he valued that aspect of himself and the women represented in that environment, ther were certain features that he found were necessary in considering a woman to be desirable. He found many white women attractive but just as many white guys would "do" a Black woman but not consider them for long term relationships, he and his friends seemed to feel the same way about White women. So, my point is that there are certain environments where the lack of diversity coupled with the strong media images that portray only a certain look as beautiful, it's complicated for humans to recognize even their own features as beautiful if they don't fit that narrowly defined image. I have personally felt my heart skip a beat for men from every ethnicity imaginable if the look good, show confidence enough to actually flirt with me and possess a certain whatever..who knows what that is ..swagger? Asians, Hispanid, White, Black...dorks and construction workers. Ok..back to the point about happily married for 25 years ; ). So, I seriously think that as we get healthier as a nation that we will allow ourselves to celebrate beauty on many levels..fall in love outside of our own boundaries just because we couldn't help it..not because of some color coded caste system that keeps us from connecting. I'm considered Black and so is my husband but the reality is that I was open to love with an amazing person who possessed qualities that I could spend my life with..and he happened to be brown too..but he could have had vanilla abs like the ones that Calvin has on ..anybody else mesmerized? Ok.. I don't have amnesia..25 years..happily..: )
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