words from a mixed girl: dating outside of your race, yes, get over it!

Discussion led by Arieanna Garcia

Original post and comments can be found here

(Yes we can!)

Growing up in an interracial household, with an italian/mexican mother, and an African American father, I learned at a very young age to accept people for their skin color and judge them for their actions. My father, growing up in a time and place where racism was at it’s peak, he still managed to look through the fog that was segregation, lynchings, white people hating black people for no good reason, and came out of it an African American man deciding to spend his life with a woman of porcelain complexion.

So why can’t todays black woman do the same? How can looking past racism and color cause you to be a disgrace to your race? Should a black man forfeit his happiness just the prove that he is a credit to his race? Is it possible to date outside your race and still be considered a strong, black man?

(Does having a white woman on his side devalue his masculinity?)

However if you ask todays black man why he would choose to date a woman of caucasian background his answer is simple. “Black women are high maintenance, needy, and can’t spot a good brotha when they see it.”

Ok, with this being said, is it true?

How does slavery play a part in the black mans decision to date a white woman? Even Jill Scott herself said that, ” In our past, if a black man even looked at a white woman he would have been lynched.” Does this secret yearning and curiosity for white women in the past still linger in the blood of todays black men. I believe it’s seen by many, including black women that these white women are just novelties and once they are out of the system of the black man he’ll return to his African queen and everything will be right in the world.

But why is it so hard to understand that maybe what a black man wants is a white woman? I know as an African American woman myself I have no problem with our “brothas” dating outside of their race.

I date outside of mine all of the time. I think it’s the fact that African Americans as a people are afraid of losing their heritage. But isn’t what we want in the world a more unbiased and mixed culture and community? I’m not saying it’s going to happen right away, but sooner or later the facts need to be faced that black men are going to continue dating these “white women” and there’s not a damn thing that’s going to be done about it. You can’t have the equality, black women, and the ability to keep your culture separated from others and not allowed the opportunity to mix.

(Go ahead, he won’t bite…that hard)

And as far as Jill Scott is concerned, she’s a mother, an artist, and an actress, among the array of other endeavors she’s explored upon. I honestly think the last thing she should be giving her opinion on is the state of relationships involving black men and white women. She won her own personal battle against that. She has her perfectly, unmixed family and she’s set out and made the perfect family in which in her eyes is a black man dating if not married to a black woman.