INTERRACIAL DATING, WHO CARES ANYMORE? (FROM MARCH COLUMN "ONE MAN'S POINT OF VIEW")

One of the best golfers to ever play the game, an Academy Award winning actress, and the 44th President of the United States all spawned from interracial relationships! I am referencing of course Tiger Woods, Halle Berry and Barack Obama!

With the mortgage crisis, tremendous job loss, high gas prices, health care issues and a black man in the White House that was once built by slaves! With all this on our American plate is this “black and white cookie” liaison still bothersome as it is dunked into this so-called liberal thinking, politically correct, milk massed world?

This subject is one that I love to discuss with people. It ranks up there with politics, religion, and abortion! Some people get really hot behind this subject. A while back, I was listening to a syndicated radio talk show, hosted by self proclaimed “The Baddest Man on Radio,” Michael Baisden.

The topic of discussion was “Interracial Dating.” One of the callers, ironically from Detroit, Michigan, made the comment that people who date out of their race are “race traders performing cultural genocide!”

That was a very strong statement and some other callers, who were predominantly black, were not so supportive of this opinion. Despite being rather extreme, I tended to agree with the initial caller, for I am anti-interracial marriage.

To begin, let me make one thing perfectly clear, no one loves white women more than me! I loved the color contrast and have dated them several times, so by far I am not racist! I would rather liken myself to a realist.

When I first wrote this out I had to delete many things as I said to myself, “Hmm…maybe I am racist!” But I know that I am not! I have many white friends! But you know as well as I, when someone says something like that, they are about to say something really racist. Now with all that out of the way I can go on with my rant!

I, likened to “Othello” and many NBA and NFL players, stood in long lines to sit and dine at the interracial dating table. The whole myth of the White girl thing had me hooked from the very start! It was so taboo, yet I could not flee from its gravity pull! At my high school all my black male friends had white girlfriends! One even said to me “Man, dating a black girl is like dating my sister!”

I wanted to be in with the "in crowd!" I wanted to be cool! I wanted to taste the forbidden fruit to see if it was better than what I was accustomed to!

So, I shaved off my mustache, started listening to rock music, bought a pair of "Dockers," and got myself a white woman or as they were so aptly defined in the movie, Undercover Brother the “black man’s kryptonite!”

I enjoyed the attention, respectfulness, culture and earth-shattering sex that the white woman gave me! I didn’t care who stared or made snide comments! I was hooked, I was happy and it was great!

But as my kaleidoscope soiree blurred, I began to see that in most of these relationships we were just strange bedfellows, not going past the front seat of my car and their apartments. Furthermore, I liked my mustache, pleated baggy pants, "Rap music" was born and I wanted to "pop-lock!" Plus, I did start to care about the stares and snide comments, and it started to affect me!

I started realizing that I was looking at black women very negatively! I thought of them as not being worthy of my time and therefore beneath me. Why did I feel this way?

I started to analyze myself and realized that I was like many black men who were “color struck!” Upon this discovery I got my last fix of the white woman and quit “Cold Turkey!”

Well kind of…I curbed my appetite to only dating light skinned girls, who of course had to have some white in them to be that complexion. But be them mulatto, octoroon, biracial or multiracial, due to society’s “Jim Crow Laws,” they were classified as black in the U.S. Census and therefore were safe! So that way I could, “have my cake and eat it too,” so to speak! I waved off white women all together!

I wouldn’t even go to many of my “friend’s” weddings, if they married interracially! I did not support those relationships in my heart, so why go and be a stick in the mud? Plus I was having withdrawal issues! It would be like a reformed crack head visiting a crack house! Before I’d know it, I’d be feen’ing again!

They say, "once you go black, you'll never go back!" I say "once you go white, you'll never be right!" Regardless, both will give you fits of a fever or as Spike Lee phrased it, “Jungle Fever!”

Many people, prior to meeting my wife would assume that she is white. I guess I just seem like the type! But to their surprise as well as mine, I kept it "real" and married black! I fought the temptation and won! My question to people in interracial relationship is, “Why can’t you fight it?”

For all you people who feel that you can’t control who you fall in love with, give me a break! You didn’t fall in love! You walked in love! You knew what you were doing from the very start. You knew that they could not use your comb! Yet and still you chose to bring them home! You in your tie dye shirt shouting “love is colorblind!”

I have always figured, when a black man gets with a white woman, it’s a “win, win,” situation! This is why there are so many black guy, white girl relationships! Unbridled sex! For its well known that if a child has two-percent black blood in them, they are black! Not Mulatto, not Multi-racial, but black! You too Tiger!

So that blackman has everything! His white wife will give him unrestrained sex and let him get away with bloody murder! To top it off his offspring will be black! Even though they may not look like him at all! So who cares about a few looks, stares and an occasional fight in “Redneck” bars?

Oh, and the upside is you can still eat sweet potato pies! But your White in-laws, who by the way, will never like your black ass…ever! They will bring pumpkin pie to holiday dinners, just to confuse and piss you off! However, they will tolerate you because of the grandchildren.

Now, I have always figured, when a white man gets with a Black woman, it’s a “lose, lose,” situation! This is why there are so few white guy, black girl relationships. Bridled sex! Maybe he is caught up in the big booty and full lips thing so much that he is willing to lose himself and his nationality, because there are no Caucasian blood percentages that change anything in the white person's favor! He is willing to lose all the white man "perks" for so-called “love?”

Oh and the other downside is you will always be confusing sweet potato pie with pumpkin! Spinach with turnip greens! And always wondering, just what the hell are "chitterlings!" But don’t worry your passive black in-laws will help you through all the kinks!

Marriage is hard enough within your own race! This added drama is why I’m against interracial marriage! Dating is okay because we all want to see what all the hoopla is about! But marriage usually means children and that is an added hurdle to climb.

This hurdle may be something I will have deal with further down the road. I like many other blacks, ran away from the city, my people and basically myself to a small predominately white country town. Many of my friends who know how I feel about race mixing always say to me, "Who do you think your children are going to date? Are you going to ship in some blacks or something?" My reply is always the same, "Yeah, if need be, I will ship in some blacks or at least some other kind of minority!"

The dating would be okay, if that’s what they want to try. Especially if their parents were cool and they're not sneaking around. I would want them to get all that out of their system! So they won't lust and long for it later in life like some rare, precious nugget like during the “Gold Rush” days!

But the marriage, I honestly would have a problem with, and even more so having grandchildren that don't look like me and will have problems fitting in with this hodgepodge yet divided world.

A somewhat sarcastic skit on the Family Guy was about this very perplexing situation! There was a black and white couple living in a shack eating dinner with their children. The youngest child in a very Tiny Tim-like manner said “The best part about being half black and half white? When I grow up I’ll be accepted by everybody!" A statement that couldn’t be further from the truth! As many interracial children are confused with their racial and cultural identity.

Charlotte Nitardy a M.Ed. in human resource development wrote an article concerning this entitled “Identity problems in biracial youth” which states, “Biracial youth have a very unique problem that most of their peers never experience: racial identity. These biracial youth have difficulties identifying who they are in our society. Historically, children of mixed parentage were identified with the parent of color; if one parent was black, then the child was considered black. While such simplification may have been adequate in the past, studies are showing that more and more biracial children in today’s society are experiencing identity problems.”

I did a personal interview with a woman whose father is black and her mother Italian. She had this to say about growing up interracial. “You are in the middle and you don’t know how to act! You don’t know what side to pick! And whatever side is picked, the other gets neglected. So you have to be chameleon!”

I then asked her which family was more supportive of her. I automatically thought it would be the black side of her family! As black people for the most part except anything! Most black families that I know are almost boastful and proud that their child dates out of their race! To my surprise the woman informed me that her Italian grandmother showed her the most support! But she would often pawn and pupued her skin hue as a tan from the vacationing Hawaiian sun!

I then poised the question did she think that the parents of interracial children were selfish? She paused for a second and then said this resounding reply “Yes! They are selfish! They don’t understand what their children will have to go through! They can’t even help them to understand because they are not the same as you!”

Other people who I have talked to say the parents of interracial children are not selfish at all, but innovative in their "colorblind" thinking! Concerning their children, they are idealistic! In the sense that their children will know that their parents love them no matter what!

Even the parents themselves face identity problems! Have you ever watched an interracial couple? I mean really watched them without rolling your eyes, snickering and gnashing your teeth? They look as though they are so in love and that there is no one else in the world but them! That’s true as they are not well-received by many! So in part it's them against the world!

For all the people who are in these types of situations and appalled by my point of view, I can sense your anger towards me as you hope to make this confused world a better place! But as we are supposedly moving forward, I think we skip over very vital issues that need to be examined under a microscope and not swept under an already dirty rug!

I guess my biggest problem is that I wish we as black people would get ourselves together first with each other rather than going on the other side! I wish we could have pride and unity, being able to relish and succeed with our own flavor, rather than opt for the “swirl!”

I remember I went to a black friend’s family reunion! As we entered the pavilion he said to me with a great big smile, “As you can see there are many white people in my family! He was actually proud of that fact! Like if it was all black he would not be happy about that! I was shocked and appalled!

What made him think that his reunion was better than mine or better than “Tyler Perry’s" fictional character in Madea’s Family Reunion? Well…actually it was! They had golf and an open bar! Everybody was on time and so cordial…Damn!

I have tried to develop the philosophy of the old song, "To each his own," but I'm just not there yet! Maybe due to southern sprawl, integrated proms, the electing of the first black President Barack Obama and the unified racial vote that got him there, maybe race relations will continue to improve…we will see!

Maybe my children will marry someone of another race and I will smile, support them, and even go to the wedding! Maybe with continued race mixing, we will all turn a nice shade of beige…again we will see!

So, does anyone care about interracial dating anymore? The answer is unequivocally, positively, yes! Well…at least I still do!