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Getting to know you, Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you, Getting to hope you like me. Rodgers and Hammerstein |
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an interesting article on interracial dating that made me feel good: finally issues like this are being discussed beyond Oprah and the latest issue of Ebony. Atlanta is a mostly-black city, but still, it's nice to see issues like this being disussed in the general press. I hate the way we often feel we have to tiptoe around race issues.
I've dated black women, including one relationship that was...
...pretty intense for a few months. We got dirty looks fairly regularly, but it was almost always from black people, most especially from black women. Having lived and worked in predominantly black communities, I kind of knew to expect that, although it was still disappointing. I grew up believing we're supposed to look beyond trivial things like skin color, and as an adult it came as a shock to realize that countless people in the black community reject that notion.
Remember all the hubbub about Bob Jones University back during the campaign of 2000? One of the little things that rarely got mentioned was that Bob Jones University does have black students. Their famous ban on interracial dating was one thing that made the place attractive to some black parents who were looking for a Christian college for their kids. I guess pointing that out wouldn't have played so well with the "Bush snuggles with bigots/Hero McCain trying to rescue his evil party" line that the press was so fond of back then. Nor would pointing out that black Republican Alan Keyes also spoke at Bob Jones, even though he's both Catholic and married to a white woman, his wife Jocelyn.
But anyway, the article is pretty interesting. One thing they missed in all their talk about how black women have trouble finding mates: the number of black men who like to date white women would also contribute to the "problem." I've known a lot of black men who date or are married to white women. Including some of my in-laws.
To me this shouldn't be a problem, since color shouldn't matter so much. But to the extent that it's perceived as a problem, I guess we should note that one of the reasons young black women have a hard time finding a black man is that a lot of them are already pairing with white girls.
Anyway, I sure wish people didn't care so much about these things. If my wife were black, I still would have married her. Although come to think of it, that means I'd have missed out on a lot of good Polish cooking, so maybe I'd better rethink that. Nah, I guess I'd still keep her if she could make grits and collards. As a Southern Boy I can do soul food too. ;-)
Now the next taboo: why do we automatically consider a kid with one black parent to be black? Why are we so obsessed with wanting to label kids that way? Ah, but maybe we'd better not open up that can of worms just yet. Now here's something to ponder: Angry white males : how'd we get them? See Gordon Allport's answer.
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| let us be glaad and rejoice in it. All we need is love (MLK) |
