Update: Corrected and clarified some things. This post was originally published August 1, 2011.
There’s a guy I am familiar with that’s constantly bemoaning black women being involved in interracial relationships, especially when it comes to being with white guys. He keeps throwing around the fact that he thinks it’s all for money or the privelege of class shift, or that it’s self-hating and he throws around the name Sarah Baartman.
I honestly wonder if this guy is just like the black women who gripe that we can’t find good men.
I used to date solely outside my race, until I realized that what I was looking for wasn’t anyone who was not a black guy. I did have an interest in one guy for awhile – we talked a lot – but he had two kids by two different moms, and being 19 I wasn’t wanting to deal with that kind of drama. My prom date (also a black guy who just graduated from Princeton) my senior year was a wonderful guy, funny, and very handsome. I liked him a lot but I didn’t want to think about pursuing it any further for other reasons. But the thing that I liked about him, and the thing that I found myself admiring about my other serious love interests, was that they could entertain my mind.
I’ll say it unabashedly: I’m a smart girl. I might not always have the best common sense, but I am above average when it comes to intelligence. That means that for me, I am happiest when I am in the company of people who make me think and who challenge me intellectually. I had gone out on a date or two with black men, but I found that they were either anti-intellectuals or the type that seemed a little affronted by a black woman having a brain that thought above the level of designer shoes. The argument is similar to the one about being a “nice guy”. Just being a nice guy or black guy isn’t enough.
Even now as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to recognize that the people I hang out casually with aren’t boring types, or people that think about low-level things. They’re dynamic. They’re visionaries. Or they, for some reason, put up with the crazy inner workings of my mind and my philosophies. This is actually part of why I had to leave my ex; aside from a specific family of his friends group, there was very little talked about aside from Xena, Hercules, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was stagnating and going nowhere at all.
To go back to the scenario, I feel like this guy who is so busy lamenting black women dating out is actually someone who isn’t very interesting. Even if he was a Steve Urkel, it’d be a lot more interesting than just being flat out lame. From our conversations (casual conversations that for the most part are initiated by him, as I’m more than happily attached), it seems like the only thing he can really talk about is… black women dating out and how evil that is. When I tried to engage him in other conversation, like his job, he gets stale fast. Either that or he goes back to calling me an Aunt Jemima in an attempt to get me to entertain his attempts to “get to know me” (flirt).
Sorry, guys, but sometimes it’s not that you’re black that black women don’t like you. Sometimes it’s because you’re just not interesting. You’re boring.
Men, do you think this is true? Or do you think women are just hating on you for being black? And ladies, what’s your take on this situation? I know there’s other reasons for not being with a black guy, I just didn’t mention them in this guy’s case.