Black and White

I’m a white man and I want to date black women exclusively…is that so bad?

I have no problem with a specific man wanting to date a specific woman. In my personal polycule, many of my male-identified partners are white. I do have a problem when white men say they want to date black women. (Insert other races and it’s the same problem, but that’s for a different post.) My blackness is integral to my identity, and when I meet a white man, I know he is primarily seeing my blackness first. He doesn’t know that I’m intelligent, disabled, liberal, or kinky. He may assume a lot of things about my behavior in the bedroom. He may be well-meaning or he may be straight up racist. I’ve met enough white men to know that many of them are simply ignorant.

White men have been objectifying black bodies since before slavery. Imagine National Geographic covers of women with bare breasts in “uncivilized” parts of Africa. Now remember that hundreds of thousands of black women were brought over to the US and ranked based on their ability to bear workers, nurse white children, or do manual labor. Remember that even after 1863, black women did not have choice over how their bodies were treated for disease. Now in 2017 a woman who has a lot of sex is still derided as a slut. Now imagine a white man who says he wants to date black women. He is bringing with him all the privilege of his culture to the trauma of my culture. It’s a wonder we don’t run away screaming. (We don’t, because after hundreds of years of subjugation we know how to “make nice.”)

So no, it’s not bad that a white man is interested in a black woman. The problem is when that white man has not examined the reasons behind his interest, and when he hasn’t dismantled the entitlement he feels about why black women should be interested in him. (I went on a date with a white man who told me he was really interested in talking about race. I told him that after hundreds of the same conversations, I no longer talked to white people about race. He said, “But we have a lot to learn from each other.”

I have spent 32 years learning about the white race. If anyone wants to talk about race with me, I expect them to shut up and listen.) At the end of the day, every black woman chooses whether she will date a particular white man or not, and it’s on the individual to understand what worked or didn’t work behind their interactions. But, speaking broadly, it’s not OK for a white man to announce that he wants to date a black woman and expect to hear applause or a stampede of high heels. Treat people as individuals and take their culture into mind.

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