Posted: Tue 06 Feb 2007 17:43 Post subject: Eyes on the prize-civil rights battle finally won in bed?
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Eyes on the prize
Will the civil rights battle finally be won in bed?
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By Joan Walsh from Salon.com
Feb. 5, 2003 | One of George W. Bush's biggest campaign blunders was his February 2000 visit to South Carolina's Bob Jones University, a bastion of the segregationist South that had finally admitted some students of color, but still banned interracial dating. Critics had a clear shot at Bush, whose own brother Jeb could have fallen victim to the university's invidious rule, since his wife Colomba is Mexican (producing three mixed-race grandchildren whom the first President Bush famously called "the little brown ones.") "You could make the case that 'compassionate conservatism' died Feb. 2 when Bush appeared at Bob Jones U," conservative William Kristol fulminated. Of course, the beleaguered GOP candidate had to denounce the school's interracial-dating ban, and soon even benighted Bob Jones U. did away with it, too.
Nowadays, with the president's brother a miscegenationist, and the right's favorite black man, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, married to a white woman, it's hard to find anybody who will publicly attack interracial romance, beyond the fringes of white supremacist Web sites -- and, of course, the popular black media. Take November's Essence magazine, a glossy geared to black women, which featured a major spread headlined "Bring me home a black girl" by contributing editor Audrey Edwards, laying out how and why she's indoctrinated her stepson not to date white women.
Edwards, a respected, veteran journalist, is unapologetic about her racially biased home training. "For Black women, one of the inequities on the current playing field has been the rate at which Black men are marrying outside their race," she says. Too many black men think they're marrying up socially by marrying out racially, Edwards believes, so it's up to black moms to convince their sons by any means necessary -- including guilt, shame and ostracism -- not to date white.
I tried not to take Edwards' piece personally, but it was hard, because I'm one of the race mixers; I have intermingled, interdated, intermarried. My ex-husband, still a close friend, is Jewish, my boyfriend is black, as are several of my best female friends. I know from experience: Get too close to the fiery eruptions of toxic, black double standards on race, and you will get burned. The first time I encountered the old "I like whites just fine -- but I wouldn't want my brother to marry one" hypocrisy, it felt like I'd been slapped. Over the years I've come to see that as a minority sentiment in the black community, and despite stories about angry sisters harassing white woman-black man couples, by far the worst treatment I've encountered as a result of being with a black man -- dirty looks, nasty comments, rudeness -- has been from whites.
Still, it's stating the obvious to observe that no mainstream magazine today would publish a comparable piece by a Caucasian mom exhorting her son to "Bring me home a white girl!" (However, Jews are allowed to voice such misgivings publicly; convicted Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams developed a sideline as a crusader against Jewish intermarriage before Bush hired him as the National Security Council's director of Middle Eastern policy. Even after the Bob Jones debacle, nobody from the administration asked Abrams to renounce his stand against Jews marrying non-Jews, but I'll get to that later.) Yet black-oriented magazines and Web sites continue to clamor with a debate over interracial romance that's alternately infuriating and poignant -- and also on a collision course with demography.
In a recent Gallup/USA Today poll, 57 percent of teenagers said they'd dated someone from another race, up from 17 percent just 20 years ago. The number of interracial marriages has more than doubled in that same period, and while blacks are still less likely to marry outside their race than other minority groups, the number of black-white marriages has almost tripled. Maybe most remarkable, because Edwards is right that the trend has favored black men, the number of black women marrying white men has more than quadrupled, while the number of black men with white wives only doubled. In 1998, black-white couples in which the wife is black made up 37 percent of all black-white marriages nationwide, up from only 22 percent in 1980. It's not 50-50 parity yet, but at that rate of change, we'll get there soon. Race-mixing is clearly the future, and the more I looked at the data, the more I felt sympathy for Edwards, rather than resentment, because she's clearly clinging to a bygone past.
But when it comes to race, the past is never very far away. Beneath a discussion marked by surface consensus -- Of course we can all get along! I mean, Justin Timberlake dated Janet Jackson after Britney! -- roils confusion and rancor. Now along comes Randall Kennedy and his new book "Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption," whose tone, against all odds, is scholarly, sober, even soothing. Kennedy's great accomplishment is his exhaustive recounting of the history of interracial intimacy in America -- from slavery and Jim Crow through the civil rights movement, up to Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever," interracial adoption battles and even online dating today. He clears up some misconceptions about famous folks who did or didn't have interracial dalliances -- Booker T. Washington probably didn't, despite some claims to the contrary, but Strom Thurmond did. Yes, the man whose segregationist run for the White House in 1948 cost Trent Lott his Senate leadership 55 years later almost certainly fathered a child with his family's black maid, Kennedy concludes -- a fact that was revealed in Marilyn Thompson and Jack Bass' biography, "Ol' Strom," but was barely mentioned during the national conversation on race that ensued after Lott's racist remarks at Thurmond's centennial.
Having looked at all sides of this historical morality play, the black Harvard Law School professor takes a strong and bracing pro-mixing stance: "The flowering of multiracial intimacy is a profoundly moving and encouraging development ... It signals that formal and informal racial boundaries are fading." One can share Kennedy's racial openness and optimism and still be skeptical, though: Does interracial intimacy herald the end of racism?
We don't know -- yet -- but Kennedy's book gets us closer to an answer. He offers tantalizing hints of the way psychosexual issues and economic ones combined to create the taboo against miscegenation, and he tackles related questions that emerge from our new interracial alliances. Are black men (and now, maybe, black women) ever trying to marry up when they marry out -- and is that ever OK? Is interracial intimacy an engine of racial progress, an indicator of it, both, or neither? And is there ever a case for racial solidarity, for discouraging cross-racial intimacy, whether in dating, marriage or adoption?
Kennedy knows exactly how complicated those questions are, and he grapples with all of them -- always sympathetically, occasionally a little naively. I scoured the Web to find out if he's married to a white woman, and was relieved to learn his wife is black -- then ashamed of my relief -- but not particularly surprised. He sometimes seems a visitor in the land of interracial romance, but mostly that makes for interesting observations. Sadly, given how polarizing this debate can be, it actually matters that Kennedy isn't justifying his own choice of a white wife, that he doesn't particularly have a stake in this battle. That is, beyond the stake all of us have: to create a prosperous multiracial democracy unblemished by the tragic inequities between blacks and whites -- in family income, in education, in health, in crime statistics, on virtually every major indicator of well-being we use -- that persist to this day, even as we intermarry and congratulate ourselves for it.
Reading "Interracial Intimacies" alongside Essence's "Bring me home a black girl," it's hard not to notice the way racist whites and some supposedly enlightened civil rights advocates have traded places. "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents," wrote the judge who upheld Virginia's ban on interracial marriage in the wonderfully named Loving vs. Commonwealth case (which ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court overturning all such statutes, but not until 1967). "The fact that he separated the races shows he did not intend for the races to mix." Early chapters of Kennedy's book show a long history of bizarre attempts to enforce laws against interracial dating, marriage and adoption, with police, prosecutors, lawyers and judges going to unbelievable lengths to "prove" an individual's race -- stories that would almost be funny if they weren't so cruel and tragic.
The book opens with the awful tale of Jacqueline Henley, a motherless New Orleans toddler whose white relatives surrendered her to the state in 1952, when it became clear, as the child got older and darker-skinned, that her father was black. Henley's story promised to have a happy ending when the black foster family she was placed with decided to adopt her -- until they found they couldn't, because she was listed as white on her birth certificate, and Louisiana law prohibited interracial adoption. Lawyers tried to free the girl from her no-man's land of racial categorization, but failed. The adoption was prohibited. Eventually, though, Henley was adopted by a black Chicago family, when Louisiana officials let her cross state lines to find a home, having made it impossible within its borders.
Anyone familiar with contemporary racial politics knows exactly where Kennedy is going with the Henley story. In 2003, it's painfully clear that outside the Web sites of racist white nutjobs, the only folks obsessing about racial categories, inveighing against racial mixing, advocating race-matching in adoption and preaching racial solidarity tend to be civil rights advocates, mostly but not exclusively black. The NAACP, backed by the Asian Pacific Legal Consortium, opposed the Census Bureau's decision to let Americans check multiple boxes in the 2000 count, afraid the creation of a new multiracial category of Americans would dilute black political power (since, thanks to the history of often involuntary mixing that Kennedy illuminates, the vast majority of blacks have non-black ancestors). The NAACP urged the Census Bureau to designate as black anyone who checked multiple boxes, if one of the boxes was "black" -- a novel update on the pernicious one-drop rule that racists once used to designate anyone with African ancestry black. And while it's black conservative Ward Connerly who is behind the move to abolish the collection of racial data by California agencies, the entire black civil rights establishment is arrayed against him.
Harking back to the plight of Jacqueline Henley, Kennedy points out that today, groups like the National Association of Black Social Workers have worked hard to prevent white parents from adopting black children, calling it a form of "genocide" -- meanwhile leaving black children to languish in foster care, just like Henley did 50 years ago, even when willing white parents are available. Although some critics have complained that the book pays insufficient attention to interracial intimacy beyond the borders of black and white -- which Kennedy admits -- his most scathing chapter is about the Indian Child Welfare Act, which he argues is a pernicious gesture of racial engineering that makes babies of Indian ancestry essentially the property of their tribes, not their parents, with eerie echoes of the plantation system.
I was tempted to argue that Kennedy makes too much of black efforts to enforce racial matching. While such arguments developed enormous sway in the 1970s, the '80s and '90s saw an ideological and political backlash, and by 1996 the Interracial Adoption Act expressly forbade racial matching policies. Still, many states, most notably California, have statutes that permit public workers to consider a prospective parent's "cultural competency" -- a creepy term that's shorthand for whether a parent knows enough about an adoptee's race, culture and ethnicity to raise a healthy, happy child.
You might ask what's wrong with such efforts, until you think about what it means: Who is going to judge what constitutes "competency" to raise a black child? Ward Connerly or Louis Farrakhan? Audrey Edwards or Janet Jackson? Kennedy cites a Rhode Island case in which a white couple's ignorance about Kwanzaa -- a faux-African holiday invented by black nationalist bully and FBI informant Ron Karenga, and ignored by many blacks -- was used against their adoption of a black child. Today, a whole diversity industry trades in what some people might call stereotypes of racial behavior, in the name of cultural competency -- and Kennedy argues that when it comes to adoption, anyway, it's black children who suffer from it.
But if certain racial stereotypes, however well intended, hold too much power when it comes to adoption policy, Kennedy shows that such biases are even more widespread when it comes to interracial dating and marriage. Yet he only touches on another fascinating way in which white racists and black opponents of mixed marriage have traded positions: Now it's blacks who promote the most noxious stereotypes of men and women who mix, in order to stigmatize interracial romance -- and even more intriguing, in these black stereotypes of mixed couples, whites and blacks have switched roles, too.
In the white racist imagination through Jim Crow, of course, blacks were hypersexual and seductive, desired by only the most depraved white men and women, who wanted them for their renowned sexual prowess and nothing more. But today, according to the nouveau black stereotype, white women are the freaks, sexually wild as well as easy, while virtuous black women demand commitment before giving it up -- and even then they stick to an erotic menu that can only be termed vanilla. (The best pop-culture crash-course on these issues is the hilarious 2000 film "The Brothers," in which bachelor Bill Bellamy swore off black women because they're too "demanding" -- and then got his ass kicked by a feisty white girl -- while the married D.H. Hughley spent the movie trying to coax oral sex out of his black wife, who was raised to think it's "nasty.")
Meanwhile, the other half of the stereotype holds that white men who date black women are only into sex, while black men who date white women are chasing not sex but status. (You know, prosperity, not that other P-word.) In a July 1999 Essence piece -- yes, it's Essence again -- on black women who date white men, one source recounts that she wouldn't allow her white date a goodnight kiss because she was afraid his interest was "just about wanting to know what a Black woman looks like naked. Is it just that you want to see my nipples, to see what dark nipples look like?" she wonders. Others worry about the "Makumba-love, bangi-ass fantasy." Conversely, the myth goes, black men today aren't out to rob a white woman of her virtue; they just want her Rolodex, and her daddy's, too. In her Essence essay, Audrey Edwards lamented the perceived tendency of successful black men to marry white, and Kennedy notes that such worries are behind most black disapproval of relationships between white women and black men.
The nastiest version of the myth, however, holds that while those black men believe they're marrying up, they're actually marrying down, almost always choosing white women who are lower class, less well educated -- and unattractive to boot. On that issue the best pop-culture primer remains Spike Lee's iconic "Jungle Fever." Although in interviews Lee has complained about the plague of black men dating "ugly" white women, not just lower-class ones, he cast the gorgeous Annabelle Sciorra as Wesley Snipes' white girlfriend. That's because ugly might make for a useful, stigmatizing racial myth, but it's bad box office, and Spike ain't about socialist realism, anyway. Still, Sciorra's sexy Angie was a working class Italian with a high school education, while Snipes' Flipper Purify -- Purify -- get it? -- and his lovely black wife had graduate degrees. Of course nature intended for Flipper and his wife to wind up back together -- class tells -- and so they do.
Maybe the most radical thing Kennedy does, albeit briefly, is suggest the possibility that the conventional anti-mixing wisdom about successful black men -- they get some money, then they marry white -- sometimes works the other way: Some black men (and black women) may choose white partners, then become successful. And not because they face less racism (in fact they may face more, given lingering prejudice from blacks and whites), but because of the social capital and wider world of connections they acquire with that merger -- and maybe even because of psychological traits that leave them open to finding a white partner.
The paucity of research on these questions is amazing. I saw one intriguing study of 1990 census data showing that in upper-income American marriages (over $100,000), as well as marriages in which both partners have postdoctoral educations, there are almost as many black-white couples as there are couples in which both partners are black -- even though black-white marriages make up only 12 percent of black marriages overall. No one has really looked at what this means. It might simply mean that affluent whites are raising the income level of their black spouses; it might mean successful black men -- and now women -- wind up marrying whites; it might mean racism and other bars to success faced by blacks are reduced if they take a white spouse. But it might also mean that men and women inclined to marry outside their race have other traits -- curiosity? courage? self-confidence? -- that make them materially successful.
We really don't know. But Kennedy approvingly quotes Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson's bold pro-integrationist theory that intermixing is a good thing, especially for blacks, because it widens their networks and increases their social capital, as well as that of their offspring. You can see why that's offensive to some African-Americans, who ask: Can't we increase the cultural, social and economic capital of black families? Can't we lower the barriers of racism, so black people who fall in love with other black people have the same advantages as those who love whites?
But social progress may not work that way. Those who are willing to venture out into new worlds and explore frontiers are often rewarded for their courage. And marriage has always been an economic arrangement, in which partners choose one another, and give one another advantages, in ways that have nothing to do with love, even if they only cop to the fairy tale version of coupling.
I think Kennedy overstates the roles that sexual fear and projection, and the threat of racial "mongrelization," have played as the motivation behind racially discriminatory laws. Maintaining economic privilege for whites has always been more important. From slavery to the New York City draft riots to Reconstruction, up through the opposition to welfare, busing and affirmative action that emerged in the 1960s and persists today, the desire to maintain white advantage -- or in the working class, the desire not to face more disadvantage, thanks to competition from another pool of exploitable workers -- has been the force driving most racist laws, and the racial prejudice that survived those laws' repeal. That's why it makes sense that today, the most (publicly) acceptable black critique of intermarriage centers on the fear that the trend will hurt the black community economically, that it's causing an exodus of good black husbands who, choosing white wives, flee to the promised land of integration -- which means whiteness.
When those arguments fail, of course, opponents resort to sexual stereotyping and stigmatizing, name-calling and contempt. But it didn't work for white opponents of intermarriage, and it won't work for their black counterparts. It's wrong, it's racist -- and the drive to mix is just too strong. My advice to women like Edwards who are trying to revive the taboo against interracial dating is simple: Remember Sexuality 101, in which taboo heightens attraction. And I'd also suggest a lesson plan for Sociology 2003: Defining a community by the threats to it is not an appealing vision of community.
As an outsider who's been intimate in the world of blacks and Jews, I can certainly testify from experience that neither approach is working. Of course, Judaism is a religion, not a race (at least the way most people understand the concept), and so it's been possible for some people who worry about Jews intermarrying themselves out of existence to come up with a compromise approach, involving outreach to non-Jewish spouses based on the appeal of Judaism -- its spiritual and cultural traditions of wisdom, justice and comfort in the face of suffering and loss -- rather than just guilt about high rates of Jewish intermarriage. But there's really no comparable black compromise with intermarriage, at least for those with views like Edwards'. An old friend and mentor of mine who worked on black poverty issues used to tell me, "Black is a state of mind," and he welcomed white co-workers, as well as the white girlfriends or husbands of black friends who shared his values, into his vision of community. That's not possible for racial essentialists, who define community by color.
By the end of Kennedy's book, though, unexpectedly I felt a flash of sympathy for Edwards. Because if you insist that no one should ostracize blacks and whites who love one another, you have to have some human sympathy for black women who love black men, and are genuinely pained at the shortage of them. Stanley Crouch's wildly pro-miscegenation novel "Don't the moon look lonesome" actually captured it well, when the tough, screwed-up Cecilia explains why she can't get over wanting a black man -- a man who is the color of the men in her family, the color of childhood, the color of tenderness and love. "All I want in the world is one of those kinds of men I saw what I was just a little kid," Cecilia says. If the heart has its reasons, hers does too. None of us can be blamed for whom we love.
That said, we can't preach racial separatism for one group, and not for everybody. Although the current clamor to revive taboos against interracial dating lacks the force of law -- one thing white supremacists used to have on their side that black mothers like Edwards clearly don't -- it's still the wrong message for a multiracial democracy. And clearly most people understand that. There's no doubt all this is easier for the younger generation. Edwards is in her 50s, Kennedy and I are in our 40s; Essence's target audience seems to reach from our age down into the 30s. In the pages of Africana.com, and other sites that seem more geared toward younger black people, there's a little less angst and a lot more acceptance, by women as well as men.
Still, interracial love can't by itself eradicate racism, and Kennedy admits that. He makes the obligatory nod to Brazil, ground zero of miscegenation, in which everyone mixes and yet somehow, the elite remains white and the underclass is black. But it's too pessimistic to say the U.S. is headed for the same fate -- there's less racial mixing here, but there's more social mobility between classes. Intermarriage could lead to greater social equity here than it has in Brazil. We don't know where this experiment will wind up. But one thing is clear: Interracial intimacy alone won't eliminate racism, but efforts to stigmatize it don't move us forward, and almost certainly set us back. The comfort in reading Kennedy's book lies in its clarity that just like their doomed white forebears, today's opponents of race mixing can't win.
Debate between the author, Joan Walsh and Essence's Audrey Edwards
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The "Bring Me Home a Black Girl" debate
Essence's Audrey Edwards and Salon's Joan Walsh square off on whether it's racism or realism when black mothers say they'd rather their sons not marry white.
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Feb. 21, 2003 | [Read "Eyes on the Prize: Will the Civil Rights Battle Finally Be Won in Bed, by Joan Walsh."]
Ms. Walsh:
I read with great interest your critique of my article "Bring Me Home a Black Girl," in the November issue of Essence. To begin with, the article never stated, nor have I ever told my son not to "date" white girls. He has always had a number of white friends, male and female alike; he has escorted white girls to proms, and continues to have friendships with whites now that he is in college. I have also dated white men, but married a black man, and want my son to marry a black girl. This to me is normal, natural and what people of all races, tribes, ethnic groups and nationalities have done for eons. To say that "no mainstream magazine today would publish a comparable piece by a Caucasian mom exhorting her son to 'Bring me home a white girl!'" is a bit disingenuous, don't you think? White moms don't have to give such messages to their kids. It's implicit in everything they do -- from the neighborhoods they live in, to the schools and churches they attend, to the social organizations they belong to. Whites still live, for the most part, in a segregated white world, so it's natural that their children will marry other whites. But just watch what happens when they don't! You yourself admitted that most of the hostility to your interracial dating came from other whites, not blacks.
And this gets us to what I think is the real problem in how others have reacted to my piece. First, I don't tell my son to marry a black girl because I think there is something inherently inferior or negative about white girls. I don't tell him to marry black because I think black is superior to white. Yet these are the very arguments whites have historically had against marrying black, which is what makes those arguments racist. Laws against miscegenation were based on the premise that blacks are less than human, so no self-respecting white should marry one. I don't teach my kid such racist crap. I simply want him to affirm his racial identity, which to me includes marrying someone of his race. Since when does affirming who you are mean denying someone else's humanity? Just because that's how Europeans have historically interacted doesn't mean that's where I'm coming from. And, frankly, I resent whites imposing that particular mind-set on me.
As I said in my article, if we were all playing on an equal field, people could be free to love and marry any and everyone, and probably would. But we all know the field remains quite tilted. Young black women complain that too many black men are marrying white girls (I won't even go into how many of them called and wrote to thank me for speaking so straight about an issue they discuss constantly); too many black men are blinded by the light of white just because it's white; and too many whites think that an article talking about affirming blackness means rejecting them. It doesn't. It ain't even about you at all!
Finally, how convenient that Randall Kennedy has my piece as a launching point to push his tome on "interracial intimacies." I must say, though, "intimacies" is another one of those disingenuous terms that denies the real sexual history of blacks and whites in America. There was never much that was "intimate" about the rape and sexual violence that was perpetuated against black women by white men in this country for over three centuries. It is the major reason more black women do not seek the company of white men. (How many Jewish women do you know who seek the company of former Nazis?) Even the portrait Salon used to illustrate your piece -- Ma and Pa Kettle updated for social relevance? -- conveyed a stereotypical sexual image to me. I can't imagine that the black woman pictured would willingly have chosen to be with that old geezer. But, hey, what do I know? I suppose this is someone's idea of what interracial intimacy should look like these days.
The struggle continues.
-- Audrey Edwards
Ms. Edwards:
Please call me Joan.
I'm sorry if I misread your piece to include a prohibition against dating whites, when it only applied to marrying them. But the clarification disturbs me more. Telling your stepson he can "date" somebody white -- I can only assume that's a euphemism for "intimacy," to return to Kennedy's words, which is of course a euphemism for "sex," but maybe you have a way of monitoring his dates to make sure they don't go there -- but not marry her is degrading. I guess that's OK if both people know about it, but there's a smell of sexual exploitation that gives me the creeps. Speaking as the mother of a white girl, I'd say please tell your stepson to lay off the white girls entirely if he can't marry them. Again, if I told my son he could "date" black girls but not marry them, I'd be called out as a bigot, and I'd deserve it.
Just a few observations: Your assumption that white moms don't need to indoctrinate their kids to date white because they live in alabaster suburbs, go to ivory schools and worship in ecru churches makes me wonder where you live. San Francisco, Ms. Edwards, is less than half white, and the city's public schools -- my daughter is in seventh grade -- are only 28 percent white. We don't go to a church -- her dad's Jewish -- but the Catholic parish in my neighborhood, which I go to on the anniversaries of my parents' deaths, is mostly Filipino and Latino. The monochromatic world you assume I live in doesn't exist anymore, at least not for me, and not for most Californians -- or city dwellers in most urban areas. We have to seek out sameness if we want it. If we do, we're loathsome racists. And if we don't -- and I don't -- well, sometimes we're chumps. Boys can date our daughters, but not marry them?
And while I accept your claim that your prohibition against marrying someone white isn't meant to communicate anything "inferior or negative" about whites, I've also gotta say that the reminder of white rape during slavery times would seem to stigmatize a generation of men who are at least 140 years removed from that crime, and link them to something awful, if not "inferior." And comparing black women who date whites to Jews dating Nazis seems a little "negative." But I'm done second-guessing your motives.
I know all this angst mystifies you. Why would white people care about this, when white people have so much? Well, I can only speak for myself, and my problem is, I took the message of the civil rights movement literally. I truly don't believe, in a pluralistic society, that we can have rules that apply to one racial group and not others. I know that race and racism in America are complicated, and simple answers won't always get us where we want to go. But the simple civil rights message - equality and justice, Dr. King's beloved community -- took us miles. The crabbed, angry, separatist message of the post-civil rights movement has set us back. If it's wrong to allow one group to generalize and stereotype on the basis of race and to preach exclusion -- as it was wrong for whites in the bad old days, and it remains wrong for whites today -- it's got to be wrong for all groups.
But I thank you for writing. Indeed, the struggle continues.
-- Joan Walsh
Hey Joan,
My letter to you was more of a rant than the kind of edited piece I would have submitted for publication. I spent some time in Los Angeles with my friend Bebe Moore Campbell, the novelist, and she said exactly what you did: "Audrey, telling your son it's OK to date white girls, but not marry them, is worse than saying don't date them." I truly didn't think about it like that, but now upon reflection, I understand how such a statement could sound.
As for whites living mostly white lives, I stand by that position. Most whites don't live in major metropolitan areas such as San Francisco or New York. They inhabit that vast area in between, and even those in the cities still interact mainly with their own. I know that's the case here in New York where most whites have never been to Harlem and most blacks have never been to the predominantly Italian area of Bensonhurst or the predominantly Russian area of Brighton in Brooklyn. I debated Randall Kennedy on NPR when my piece came out, and even he agreed that the expectations whites have of their children marrying other whites is an implied one based on where they live and with whom they have the most interactions. And while I can't speak for San Francisco's public schools, the public schools here are predominantly black and Hispanic. There are only two white children in the predominately white, middle-class building I live in Brooklyn who go to public school -- the rest are in private, predominantly white schools.
But again, I stress that my position on black men marrying black women is strictly based on the dwindling numbers of "suitable" black men now available to black women and how black men choosing white women affects black women's self-esteem. We still live in a society that exalts the white woman as the female to be desired. If we saw as many advertisements projecting the beauty of black, Asian and Hispanic women as we do white women, then this discussion would be moot, since men would be "programmed" to see that women of all races possess beauty. I can't do anything about how other men and boys are programmed, but I can and will have a say in what my stepson learns to perceive as beautiful and desirable.
A final point, which I made on NPR: In the last episode of the season of "Sex and the City," the character Charlotte had fallen in love with her Jewish lawyer. And he loved her back. However, he told her point-blank: "Charlotte, I have to marry a Jew." She looked confused, so he repeated it. "Charlotte, I have to marry a Jew." End of discussion. As far as I know, there was no outcry or charges of racism sent to HBO over this comment. Charlotte, the nice little WASP girl, was OK to sleep with, but not marry. It's evidently OK for Jews to expect their sons to marry Jewish girls, but not OK for a black mother to expect her son to marry a black girl. Sounds suspiciously like one of those double standards to me.
You're right. This debate could go on forever, but I've got to put a pin in it here, because I have two magazine pieces to get to. But I do thank you for taking the time to listen.
-- Audrey
Audrey,
And I appreciate your grappling with my point of view. Since I think "Sex and the City" depicts the mating behavior of scary, self-destructive neurotics, I didn't see that episode as an endorsement of Jews doing what Charlotte's hairy-backed beau did -- but I agree, Jews tend to get a pass on this. I'm an incorrigible mixer, so I don't think anybody should be preaching against intermarriage -- especially if they're dating outside their race or religion. But I respect your right to think about this and raise your children differently --
and I appreciate your openness to my critique. The struggle continues, but let's put this one behind us.
-- Joan
Making the case for teaching our boys to … `bring me home a black girl'
Essence, Nov, 2002 by Audrey Edwards
The first time I saw my stepson, Ugo, make a move on a girl, he was about 7, and so was she--a dark-skinned little cutie standing at the juke-box in a Brooklyn family diner looking for a song to play. In a flash, Ugo was at her side, shy but bold at the same time. He pretended to be looking for a song, too, but he was mainly just looking at her, instantly in puppy love. "That's right," I said to him, fairly loudly and pointedly. "When it's time to get married, I want you to bring me home a girl just like that--a Black girl." The girl's parents, sitting at a table nearby, looked at me in surprise and then suddenly beamed. Ugo's father, sitting with me, just nodded and grinned.
"Bring me home a Black girl." It's one of those commandments Ugo has heard from me most of his life, right up there with "Don't do drugs," "Finish school" and "Use a condom." Over the years he has rolled his eyes, sighed in exasperation, muttered that I was racist or been mortified whenever I'd blurt out things like "Dark, light, shades in between--it don't matter to me as long as she's Black." But Ugo has also grown up to be very clear about what that edict really means: Don't even think about marrying a White girl.
I myself became clear about this--or clear about a mother's role in imparting to male children what's expected when it comes to marriage--when I interviewed the son of a Black magazine publisher ten years ago. The publisher had three sons and a Black wife who had made it clear to her boys that they were not to bring home any White girls. "We could have them as friends," the eldest son recalled, "but we were definitely not to marry them."
"I really wanted to be connected to my community," he continues. "Carrying the name and the culture is so important, and I think that would have been more difficult had I married a White woman." The expectations of Manning's parents no doubt influenced his choosing a Black woman when it came time to marry, just as his expectations for his son may well lead him to choose a Black woman as his wife.
How parents communicate to their children the importance of marrying within the group will vary, whether it's an in-your-face admonishment like the kind I've always given my stepson, or simply letting your child know, as Manning's parents did, that you're not pleased when he dates White girls. What's most important, says Manning, "is that we communicate to children what our values are. And one of the values should be to marry within the race to further our heritage and our culture."
But culture and heritage are only two factors in a complicated race equation. For me it's just as important that Ugo affirm the beauty and desirability of Black women by choosing to marry one. When he zeroed in on that little Black girl at the jukebox many years ago, he was displaying what I thought was natural--an instinctive attraction to someone who looked like him. But according to experts, by age 7, Black children have already been bombarded by media images that can negatively shape how they view themselves and the partners you'd think they would naturally be drawn to.
That's why it's so important that we constantly affirm our children, helping them to appreciate their own intelligence, beauty and strength. Whether it's in the artwork on your walls, the posters in your child's room or the books and magazines lying around the house, positive Black media images should be as integral a part of a Black child's life as the images coming in through television, videos and other media.
Fortunately for Ugo, his African grandmother and mother and his Afrocentric Black American father have all contributed to his being grounded in a strong Black identity. But that doesn't mean he hasn't also been shaped by seeing his two handsome Black male cousins have relationships and children with White women. So I try to be as relentless in countering the White-is-right images he's assaulted with as our society has been in perpetuating them.
Clearly, one of the most insistent images going is that White women are the most beautiful and therefore should be the most desired. If you buy into this notion, then Black women can never be fully prized--and this is the message we get every time a brother dates or marries a woman who is not Black. Maybe we shouldn't take such behavior personally, but it's damn hard not to. Black women are more likely than women of any other race to remain without a partner. So when Black men marry out of the race, it not only further diminishes the number of brothers available to Black women, but it also undermines our very confidence as desirable women. I don't want this to be a message Ugo ever sends out. He knows that if he wants to keep Mommy Audrey happy, he will bring me home a Black girl.
This is the message senior marketing executive Valerie Williams has also given her 15-year-old son. "I tell him I want to have grandchildren who look like me," says Williams, who is frank on racial matters. "I don't want to be sitting around the dinner table at Thanksgiving feeling I have to bite my tongue." Nor does Williams think it's possible to escape issues of race and White supremacy in interracial unions, no matter how great the love may be. "I don't care what anybody says," she argues, "there's not a White person in America who doesn't feel superior to a former slave. Why would I want my son to marry someone who will probably always subconsciously feel she's better than him just because she's White?"
We often forget that relationships are also built on economic foundations and that Black-earned money leaves the community whenever a Black man marries out of the race. This is what rankles whenever we see wealthy Black athletes, entertainers or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies choose to lay their riches at the feet of White women by marrying them. So I have no doubt what motivated the Black publisher's wife to insist all those years ago that her three sons never think about marrying out of the race. Her husband had spent half his life building a multimillion-dollar business, and she did not want the wealth he would leave to his sons to pass out of Black hands. The publisher's wife was very clear about that. And her sons all married beautiful Black women and gave her beautiful Black grandchildren who look like her and will keep the money where it should be--in the Black family. In the Black community.
Last spring, while touring with Ugo the predominantly White college he would attend in the fall, I felt a moment of panic. Too many of the White girls, it seemed, were grinning in his direction. He is 19 now, strapping, handsome and a magnet for women of other races who find Black men as irresistible as we do. "Ugo," I instinctively blurted out, clutching his arm. "Please. Bring me home--" "Don't worry," he interrupted, putting his arm around me with calm reassurance. "I will."
Audrey Edwards is an ESSENCE contributing writer.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
Joined: 05 Apr 2006 {Posts: 300 } Location: Chatsworth, CA
Posted: Tue 06 Feb 2007 22:07 Post subject:
Quote:
Audrey, telling your son it's OK to date white girls, but not marry them, is worse than saying don't date them." I truly didn't think about it like that, but now upon reflection, I understand how such a statement could sound.
A lot of ethnic communities do this very thing. Date white women/shiksas/kefar - outside women, but only marry one of the tribe, someone that the family approves of.
I've known a few upper middle class, black identified men who only dated white girls, but ended up marrying black identified women. Got to make momma happy.
Now, if I recall correctly, there are a few posters on this board who don't approve of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features.
I recall correctly, there are a few posters on this board who don't approve of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features.
Really? I never noticed that. I wonder who that might be.
Joined: 20 Oct 2006 {Posts: 283 } Location: Akron, Ohio
Posted: Wed 07 Feb 2007 07:21 Post subject:
Good question. I'm wondering also. Then again, my problem may be I haven't read the entire website.
It will be interesting to read somewhere if Ugo decided to satisfy his mom instead of his capacity to arrange his emotions all by himself and date a white girl.
Both ladies, Audrey and Joan, have a firm grasp on their positions. However, the question of interracial dating still doesn't sit well with many white people and evidently Black too. Although if I had to hazard a guess I would say mostly Whites are against it. Even this says nothing about what group of Whites (uneducated/educated) I would be talking about because I honestly don't know.
The reason I say this is I rollerskate on Sunday night. Over the years I've met a few women whom are mistaken by my appearance and assume me to be ''not of color'' but ''one of them.''
One lady in particular, whom I've known for twelve years, in a skating rink capacity, nothing more, loves the rhythm and blues kind of music to skate to. She has skated with darker skinned African-Americans on many occasions, even a friendly hug once in a while; when her husband wasn't around. Really a pleasant person to be around; soft spoken, kind words for everyone.
One Sunday evening about a year ago we were standing on the edge of the rink floor talking and I asked her about her husband and family, in a conversational manner, when she said everyone is fine but that she and her husband breathed a sigh of relief when they found out they weren't going to be the grandparents of biracial children. Considering how friendly this lady was to Black men it never occured to me she had that thought. So we chatted a minute or so then I went back on the rink floor.
To tell the truth, I was floored by her comment (not personally disturbed however), only because she moved freely amongst the black men and women as if there was no color to be seen. Actually there was no color to be seen—just as long as it didn't ''taint'' the bloodline. So I guess it can be shown that it isn't a free-wheeling society in some areas after all. And yes, we still chat amiably to this day and are friends; there is no reason not to be. I still don't think she has a clue who I am. With my dumb ass I thought she knew who I was from five or more years ago...especially from the other White lady who has a motor mouth, but has forgotten herself on occasion... What a hoot.
Last edited by Andrew Waters on Wed 07 Feb 2007 07:34; edited 3 times in total
the question of interracial dating still doesn't sit well with many white people and evidently Black too. Although if I had to hazard a guess I would say mostly Whites are against it.
I think that it may be the other way around, according to Randall Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003) or its synopsis in Randall Kennedy, “Interracial Intimacy,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2002, 103-10. I think that Debra J. Dickerson, The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to Their Rightful Owners, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon, 2004) also agrees with Kennedy.
the question of interracial dating still doesn't sit well with many white people and evidently Black too. Although if I had to hazard a guess I would say mostly Whites are against it.
I think that it may be the other way around, according to Randall Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003) or its synopsis in Randall Kennedy, “Interracial Intimacy,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2002, 103-10. I think that Debra J. Dickerson, The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to Their Rightful Owners, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon, 2004) also agrees with Kennedy.
I think the average American White doesn't have a problem with it as long as it not in their family. I think that 1st generation foreigners definately have problems with Black intermarriage. After that, they seem to be okay. For Black Americans, as long as the potential spouse isn't low class, or the mate of an only son, they will have less of a problem.
And Andrew:
I am still acquaintances, chat buddies, etc with people who have expressed similar 'prejudiced comments' as you have mentioned. As well with others where I've gotten a 'prejudiced vibe' from, without them ever making an off-color remark.
I'm just polite, friendly, impersonal with such people. That's just the way some people are, that's their misconception and ignorance, I harbor no hard feelings whatsoever.....
the question of interracial dating still doesn't sit well with many white people and evidently Black too. Although if I had to hazard a guess I would say mostly Whites are against it.
I think that it may be the other way around, according to Randall Kennedy, Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003) or its synopsis in Randall Kennedy, “Interracial Intimacy,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2002, 103-10. I think that Debra J. Dickerson, The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to Their Rightful Owners, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon, 2004) also agrees with Kennedy.
I would argue that both are against it for different reasons and whites appear to be less antagonistic towards the idea because they, unlike black people, rarely obsess about it. The likelihood of their child marrying or bedding someone black is something they don't think about.
Generally speaking, black people are opposed to interracial marriage because it drains the community of black men who should be marrying black women. Further, at least in my experience, black folks tend to see whites, regardless of ethnic background or place of origin, as people who are openly or secretly contemptuous of black folks, and therefore, a black/white interracial marriage, especially one that involves a white woman and black man, will be fraught with problems, both for the community and the couple.
In contrast, most whites I’ve come across are against it because they believe that any black person, regardless of socioeconomic background, who marries into their family (men especially) will undermine the racial integrity of the family and produce progeny that are culturally, if not racially inferior to themselves.
Having said this, I believe the degree to which whites think about the prospect of other whites getting involved romantically with someone black or their stated opposition to such relationships is related to their nearness to black people and their socioeconomic status and the Euro-American ethnic group to which they belong.
For example, I attended a very racially tense Roman Catholic high school in the Bronx. Race talk was often crude and offensive. Racial conflagrations were not uncommon. Black/white interracial couples were rare to non-existent in this place. One white girl I knew who was dating a black male student (she was the only one I knew about throughout my four years there), was seen as “odd” by many white students. She wasn’t Catholic (she was Episcopalian), she was from Manhattan and her demeanor was different from that of most white kids in that school. To many whites, her interracial relationship was just further confirmation of how different she was from them. I even remember getting into an argument with a white guy in my homeroom class after he referred to her as “the girl who likes niggers” and someone “who’s always hugging up on some nigger in the hallway.” Incidentally, he was dating a Puerto Rican girl on the sly, but I suppose that was different in his eyes. From this reaction, it was clear to me that he saw her as some freak and that sentiment was probably shared by many whites in my high school, many of whom came from working class or lower middle class white ethnic neighborhoods. Most black students, however, were much less contemptuous of her or her black boyfriend.
Most black students, however, were much less contemptuous of her or her black boyfriend.
I imagine that the Black girls were not happy about it. Resentment during teen years varies with gender. People resent interracially involved persons who are of the same "race" but opposite gender as the resenter, or of opposite "race" but same gender as the resenter. At that age, resenters seldom resent those of same gender and the same "race" as the resenter.
Joined: 19 Jan 2006 {Posts: 223 } Location: Southern California
Posted: Wed 07 Feb 2007 17:39 Post subject:
Andrew's narrative about the conversation at the roller rink was rather interesting. I see that as an excellent opportunity to experiment a little bit with human psychology. If it were me, I would have said in response to her "glad-she-won't-have-a-biracial-grandchild" remark (in a very friendly and non-confrontational manner of course, being that the conversation was casual) that the person she happens to be speaking with is of such a background. I would just love to see her reaction then...especially if she had resorted to "back pedaling". That would have been a hoot..and priceless as well
(By the way Andrew, glad to see another rollerskater on the forum. I happen to be a die-hard skater and have been rollerskating regularly for close to 20 years )
Resentment during teen years varies with gender. People resent interracially involved persons who are of the same "race" but opposite gender as the resenter, or of opposite "race" but same gender as the resenter. At that age, resenters seldom resent those of same gender and the same "race" as the resenter.
And sadly this resentment is sometimes not outgrown. On the contrary. It can grow with age and intensify if the root causes behind the hang-up are not succesfully dealt with. If a positive stereotype busting interaction/experience with an IR couple/family does not take place, a hater can just grow angrier as the years go by I imagine. Especially since more and more people these days (the minority for sure but growing) of all backgrounds are mixing and mingling.
There is also sometimes an element of hypocrisy involved with some of these haters which I find REALLY offensive.
Most black students, however, were much less contemptuous of her or her black boyfriend.
I imagine that the Black girls were not happy about it. Resentment during teen years varies with gender. People resent interracially involved persons who are of the same "race" but opposite gender as the resenter, or of opposite "race" but same gender as the resenter. At that age, resenters seldom resent those of same gender and the same "race" as the resenter.
To be honest, I don't know to what extent the black girls in high school were upset about his relationship. Some I knew didn't care and some were upset, but much less so than many of the white kids and for different reasons of course. Afterall, the black guy she was dating was both an academic superstar and athlete, so it's possible quite a few black girls were upset.
I think most were shocked if anything because blacks and whites were rarely friends let alone romantic partners in that high school. I know I was shocked seeing them act as all couples did in school. That was something you just didn't see back then.
I suspect what dampened some of the outrage, at least on the white side, was the fact that she was seen as "different." She came off as odd to many kids in that school and her choice in men seemed to confirm that. She and her boyfriend broke up after he graduated and the next year, when she was a junior, she ended up dating a Puerto Rican guy. That was seen as more socially acceptable.
Joined: 20 Oct 2006 {Posts: 283 } Location: Akron, Ohio
Posted: Wed 07 Feb 2007 23:06 Post subject:
G-man wrote: ''I think most were shocked if anything because blacks and whites were rarely friends let alone romantic partners in that high school.''
I think the key to this one is the time frame and geographical location. The time frame, for example mine, will be 1956 through 1960 in high school and the location in Indianapolis, IN. Whites and blacks didn't socialize at all after high school that I could see. Not that it didn't happen somewhere because I'm sure it did, but as far as I could tell it was strictly a ''hello'' and nothing more. Surely if people like each other then it won't be very difficult to find a way to mingle after school...someplace neutral; wherever that may be.
As I noted a few months ago some of my classmates told me they had seen some of their white schoolmates downtown shopping and they never said a word as they passed by their darker skinned ''friends.'' In a couple of instances I was told they (the black teenagers) spoke first in recognition but weren't recognized.
So in this case it may have more to do with the geographical area than not wanting to be seen speaking to a black person. Kind of like no one else speaks so I don't want to be the first one to do so for fear of fraternizing with the ''enemy.''
You have to remember Indiana is a midwestern state, unlike California which had/has a variety of different ethnicities. I admit, when I first visited Los Angeles when I was in the Marine Corp in 1961 I was simply amazed at the ''different'' people. Everywhere I went I looked over my shoulder. I couldn't help it. In Indianapolis all I saw was black and white.
''I suspect what dampened some of the outrage, at least on the white side, was the fact that she was seen as "different." She came off as odd...and her choice in men seemed to confirm that.''
Once you marginalize someone for ''unacceptable'' behavior then the justification is in place to sustain it.
Joined: 20 Oct 2006 {Posts: 283 } Location: Akron, Ohio
Posted: Thu 08 Feb 2007 00:44 Post subject:
DucorpsToocommented: ''If it were me, I would have said in response to her "glad-she-won't-have-a-biracial-grandchild" remark...that the person she happens to be speaking with is of such a background. I would just love to see her reaction then...especially if she had resorted to "back pedaling". That would have been a hoot..and priceless as well.''
Several years before, a similar incident at another skating rink presented itself with another lady.
I was minding my business witth the music when she skated by and slowed her pace, spoke and then struck up a conversation.
About three Sundays later this particular session was crowded and it so happened about a third of the skaters were black on this Sunday. (Usually three or four would show up once in a while.) I was enjoying myself to no end when you know who popped by (we had been talking in those same three Sundays) and said something to the effect it would be better if ''they'' weren't here. I don't have a clue why she said it but it prompted an immediate response from me: ''I'm one of ''them'' you're talking about. I smiled at her and waited for a reaction but none was offered.
Here's some of that backpedaling you're talking about. She looked at me with surprise as if saying did I hear you right, or maybe she just didn't hear it at all. So I calmly told her again. So it wasn't very long after that, maybe even a less than a minute, that we just drifted apart on the floor.
What had been an energetic personality before, quickly turned into a slow skating around the rink for her: in the fast lane no less; everyone else zipping by, including me, when I decided to stop and ask her if something was wrong; which I knew all along had something to do with the comment from me.
She said she was just trying to remember if she had said anything else. Translation: meaning she may have had more to say (if I had agreed with her comment and said nothing else) but it's just that I hadn't known her long enough to hear the rest of it.) (Later that evening I jokingly told a black friend about it. He said her comments are worthless because Massilon, Ohio (her small city) is half biracial anyway. Obviously that was just his way of voicing his displeasure because I had no way of determining that.)
Now (then) I have her confidence many weeks later. She talks a bit about her niece who is dating a black guy. She says her brother calls him a jungle bunny. She goes on to say she wishes her brother wouldn't call him that. I tell tell her it isn't a very nice name.
On the skating scene, yes, I am a diehard fan of it. I'll have been skating 27 years this April. I have to admit though, my right hip bothers me somewhat when I do so that inhibits my freedom of movement. This just started about two years ago. However, before that, dancing on the toes, heel-toe, skating backwards, crossing over in the turns, stepping backwards, shaking the shoulders, all of it. Whatever it took to feel the music. That music has to be a heavy, rhythmic, sensual beat.
Other than the hip, I'll live to be a hundred before check-out time.
I recall correctly, there are a few posters on this board who don't approve of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features.
Really? I never noticed that. I wonder who that might be.
Frank,
The answer is your good buddy A.D. Powell, who frequently issues screeds against "black" men lusting after mulatto women's white genes. Gemini072 recently called her on this in a posting when she made comments about NBA players married to mulatto women.
Good grief, look at the underlying theme of her recent posting on Eddie Murphy's portrayal of a woman: black men ridiculing black women. Her dislike of black men and their sexuality is obsessive in its negativity, bordering on ideas not too far from what one would expect from a member of the White Citizens' Council.
I don't understand how you could not have seen this?
DucorpsToocommented: ''If it were me, I would have said in response to her "glad-she-won't-have-a-biracial-grandchild" remark...that the person she happens to be speaking with is of such a background. I would just love to see her reaction then...especially if she had resorted to "back pedaling". That would have been a hoot..and priceless as well.''
Several years before, a similar incident at another skating rink presented itself with another lady.
I was minding my business witth the music when she skated by and slowed her pace, spoke and then struck up a conversation.
About three Sundays later this particular session was crowded and it so happened about a third of the skaters were black on this Sunday. (Usually three or four would show up once in a while.) I was enjoying myself to no end when you know who popped by (we had been talking in those same three Sundays) and said something to the effect it would be better if ''they'' weren't here. I don't have a clue why she said it but it prompted an immediate response from me: ''I'm one of ''them'' you're talking about. I smiled at her and waited for a reaction but none was offered.
Here's some of that backpedaling you're talking about. She looked at me with surprise as if saying did I hear you right, or maybe she just didn't hear it at all. So I calmly told her again. So it wasn't very long after that, maybe even a less than a minute, that we just drifted apart on the floor.
What had been an energetic personality before, quickly turned into a slow skating around the rink for her: in the fast lane no less; everyone else zipping by, including me, when I decided to stop and ask her if something was wrong; which I knew all along had something to do with the comment from me.
She said she was just trying to remember if she had said anything else. Translation: meaning she may have had more to say (if I had agreed with her comment and said nothing else) but it's just that I hadn't known her long enough to hear the rest of it.) (Later that evening I jokingly told a black friend about it. He said her comments are worthless because Massilon, Ohio (her small city) is half biracial anyway. Obviously that was just his way of voicing his displeasure because I had no way of determining that.)
Now (then) I have her confidence many weeks later. She talks a bit about her niece who is dating a black guy. She says her brother calls him a jungle bunny. She goes on to say she wishes her brother wouldn't call him that. I tell tell her it isn't a very nice name.
On the skating scene, yes, I am a diehard fan of it. I'll have been skating 27 years this April. I have to admit though, my right hip bothers me somewhat when I do so that inhibits my freedom of movement. This just started about two years ago. However, before that, dancing on the toes, heel-toe, skating backwards, crossing over in the turns, stepping backwards, shaking the shoulders, all of it. Whatever it took to feel the music. That music has to be a heavy, rhythmic, sensual beat.
Other than the hip, I'll live to be a hundred before check-out time.
Something similar happened with my neighbor John. He's an older white guy who didn't our neighbor, a middle aged, wealthy African-American. John didn't mind describing our neighbor in racist terms. When I called him on it, he was surprised and then said that was the way he was brought up. John didn't seem the least embarrassed about his white supremacist views. Of course, John was also gay and saw no problem with expecting people to be tolerant and accepting of him but didn't have it within himself to show that courtesy to another "minority."
I recall correctly, there are a few posters on this board who don't approve of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features.
Really? I never noticed that. I wonder who that might be.
The answer is your good buddy A.D. Powell, who frequently issues screeds against "black" men lusting after mulatto women's white genes. Gemini072 recently called her on this in a posting when she made comments about NBA players married to mulatto women.
Good grief, look at the underlying theme of her recent posting on Eddie Murphy's portrayal of a woman: black men ridiculing black women. Her dislike of black men and their sexuality is obsessive in its negativity, bordering on ideas not too far from what one would expect from a member of the White Citizens' Council.
Triguy should please cite a specific post where AD "disapproves of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features." Whether AD writes about lust or about Eddie Murphy ridiculing women or about "disliking black men" or about "obsessive negativity over black sexuality" is not at issue. My question was solely about "posters on this board who don't approve of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features." This is the only point at issue: posters on this board who don't approve of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features. Triguy should provide a link to a post by AD in this discussion group where she has explicitly expressed disapproval of relationships between men with Afro features and women with Euro features. Failing that, he should apologize.
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What a hoot.
I think that 1st generation foreigners definately have problems with Black intermarriage. After that, they seem to be okay. For Black Americans, as long as the potential spouse isn't low class, or the mate of an only son, they will have less of a problem.
