Source: blackenize-romance.com

Why are black folks so infatuated with interracial dating?
It sounds like a blanket statement. Of course, all black folks aren’t obsessed with interracial dating. However, it seems like almost daily I come across a news post, and columns in magazines and blogs dedicated to black folks, speaking about the glory of dating outside of the black community.  They ask stupid questions like Are Black Women Better off with White Men? and write guidebooks about snagging a white man (including the helpful tip of how to order wine the “white” way).  And if they are not expounding on your personal choice on whom you date, than they are highlighting all the wonderful interracial couples in Hollywood. There are swirling sites run by black men and women and even a forthcoming coming film, which hopes to appeal to the “Rainbeau” dater in all of us.

So yeah, excuse me if I generalize by saying that nobody talks more about interracial dating than black folks. I mean, you just don’t see the topic broached in mainstream magazines like GQ or Vogue. You don’t see white therapists or white relationship experts or other white folks with alphabets behind their names and a platform, spouting the virtues of dating black men and women.  Let’s face it: when it comes to reporting about “Jungle Fever,” this virus is only at epidemic proportions in the African American press.
But while the topic has no doubt been beaten to death by the black media there are still no shortages of articles directed towards interracial relationships. So obviously these stories are very popular, which is why these publications continue to put them out. After all, stories mean page clicks, and page clicks equates to dollars. And if there are folks willing to read it, than you can place the blame solely on black media for continuing to cater to their audience.

Which leads me to ask: If the color of the person we choose to date doesn’t matter, why do we talk about it so much?
Here is the standard disclaimer: I don’t have a problem with two folks of different races – or same gender for that matter – hooking up.  Some people really do date outside of their race out of love and not some underlying motive. Okay, now that that’s out of the way; it’s the other would-be Rainbeau daters, who bother the hell out of me. These folks are the ones that go around touting anything but black as proof positive of equality, social advancement and worse, the magic solution to cure all problems within the black community. Unemployment rate is high? Get a white girl. Violence plaguing the community? You know what could solve that? Dating a white man. Can’t find your car keys? Girl, get yourself a white boy. They never lose their keys!

Let’s face it, no matter how far we think we have come in this society, as a race, too many of us are still looking, waiting and idolizing the white savior.

Yet science says that some of the same problems we find within the community can also be found interracially: In fact, the rate of divorce and domestic violence is much higher within interracial relationships and the incidence of spousal homicide is 7.7 higher in interracial relationships than in monoracial relationships. So much for thinking that the milk is less spoiled on the other side.

Truth is, championing dating interracially to empower the black community, particularly black women, is no more logical or rational than the colorblind racists, who believe that breeding ourselves into one in-between race will fix the world (yeah, like that worked for the Chinese and the Japanese). How we empower our people is by teaching self-love and by erasing those mental chains that tell us that “we” are inherently bad. We heal the world by recognizing cultural differences, and yes skin tone, and by ensuring that our differences do not lead to inequality. That is how we live interracially.

However, if you are using love and sex as some sort of political statement, position for advancement or weapon of revenge and conquest, than you are no better, and odds are, you’re more part of the problem than you think.

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Madame Noire caught up with author Christelyn Karazin as she explains the concept behind her book “Swirling” and the importance of judging a man for his character rather than his color.

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Source: socialtickmag.com

If I had to make a list of the stuff that I don’t like, advising single Black women to date outside of the race would be at the very top. I just want to find whoever started that “70 percent of Black women are single” conversation and put them on a rocket ship to outer space with whoever first volunteered that “the solution is to date outside of your race” remark.

I don’t even remember when it started, but apparently, of all of the solutions presented for this so-called “issue”, interracial dating somehow emerged as the groundbreaking cure-all. But I guess as long as you convince people there’s a sickness, anything can be marketed as the antidote.

The latest person to capitalize on this mythical “issue” by spewing this illogical advice is a blogger named Christelyn Karazin. She already has a book you may have heard of (I hadn’t!) called “Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race, Culture, and Creed”. Recently, a production company picked up feature film rights to the movie. No other information on the movie has been released yet, but the author says the book is  “a dating wake-up call for African American women”.

A wake-up call because not dating interracially implies that you’re sleeping? What kind of silliness is that?  This is the stuff I do not like.

I don’t like the fact that these women (and men) are out here encouraging Black women to date outside of their race like it’s a fad, a trend or even a novel idea. I don’t like it because then it makes it seem like women (like me) who happened to be married to someone of a different race did so because that’s the popular advice of today.

This “should we” or “shouldn’t we” interracial dating debate goes on ad nauseam in the black blogosphere with people speaking out passionately on both sides. Then in the middle you have people like me who honestly do not care and wish that everyone would just stop talking about it – even those that are supposedly in support of it! Especially those that are supposedly in support of it.

Why? Because people who think they’re giving well-meaning advice by saying “Black women should date outside of their race” are really just perpetuating the fallacy that Black women (who want to) don’t date outside of their race already.  In fact, there are plenty of Black women who have dated or married a non-Black person and it isn’t because they’ve applied some sort of warped logic and panic-stricken thinking to their love lives. It’s not because they’re out of options or answered a “wake up call” either. These women just happened to fall in love with someone who isn’t Black because they don’t regard race in dating or marriage and they certainly don’t view their marriage as some sort of “movement”.

It’s amazing how much Black people have begun making interracial marriage a huge issue again. Since this “Single Black Women” conversation started, women who happened to have married outside of the race begin being used by both sides of the useless argument. Some will prop her up as an example of how to “win” in relationships while the others will use her as an example of what’s wrong with the state of “Black Love”. Some Black women want her to give advice on how to meet White men and others want her to prove she doesn’t have something against Black men. People assume that she is in it for the “pretty babies” and others say that she doesn’t want her children to have black features. People think she either found the “secret” or is “self-hating”.

It’s exhausting and insane. Personally, I am sick to death of people expecting me to either encourage them to “leave these Black men alone” or insinuating that my marriage is some sort of gimmick and a direct response to trendy advice. Maybe there are some Black women who have taken a look at their lackluster love lives and decided that Black men were the problem, so they made a conscious decision to date or marry someone of another race. I am not one of those women. In fact, I think that any woman who believes that a husband being White (or Black) will insure her against infidelity or divorce or general unhappiness is just delusional. I believe that because it’s not about race at all. We definitely shouldn’t be basing matters of the heart on something as arbitrary, dubious, and fickle as pop culture relationship advice. Just marry who you love and love who you marry — and assume that others are doing the same.

Follow Alissa on Twitter @AlissaInPink

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Source: Shutterstock

We know that dogs come in all breeds, but can we agree that all men aren’t dogs?

In many of the Black Women: Doomed to Be Single news stories, the recurring advice is black women need to seek love outside the confines of their race. Some advice-givers go as far to assert that, if black women refuse to expand their racial horizons, they will never be married.

Unsurprisingly, this advice is not well-received by the Single Black Female Brigade.

While the advice givers may mean well and feel they were just responding to the “I can’t find a good black man” complaints with the obvious “then don’t date just black men” solution, surely what they’ve found is that some people with questions have already determined that there are no answers.

In fact, instead of exploring this suggestion and determining if there is any merit to the solution based on the expressed problem, these single black women have completely flipped the script altogether. What used to be television specials, books and endless columns about what’s wrong with black men, have now been edited to exclude the word “black” and explain what’s wrong with all men.

As Sil Lai Abrams points out in her Ebony article “The Myth of the White Knight: White Men Are Not the Answer to Black Women’s Problems”:

Black men do not have the market cornered on shady relationship behavior.

She’s right. Black men do not have the market cornered. But because these highly-publicized single black women declared that they’re single because black men are shady, some have recommended these women look at other races.

That’s not sufficient though because as Sil Lai points out:

From my years of field research, I can assure you that a White man can be just as commitmentphobic, misogynistic and unreliable as a Black one.

Over at Clutch Magazine, Stacia Brown further drives this point home:

[The date men of other races] advice is tied to mythical ideas about the superior morality, dating practices, and values of white men, [and] it’s highly problematic.

Noncommittal, emotionally detached, unfaithful men come in all colors. And there’s no valid, non-anecdotal evidence that supports the idea that a white man who dates or marries a black woman is predisposed to treat her better than a black man would.

So White men are out.

And in the comments section on the Clutch article another woman mentioned:

Now days, Chinese women say at least American men play around first then get married, whereas Asian men get married then play around. But, what they don’t know is men play around regardless.

So Asian men are out…oh wait, she mentioned that all men play around regardless so we’re screwed.

This is where we’re at in the black female community? We’ve convinced ourselves that there are no answers to our dating woes and we’re pretty much doomed to play “wifey” because no man anywhere is going to make us his “wife”?

With that kind of attitude, it’s no wonder the statistics are where they are.

I’m not saying that black women need to date outside of their race when they only want to date black men. Relationships should be based on the heart, not logic or mathematical equations. I am saying that we need to collectively check our thoughts and beliefs and see what it is we’ve internalized about black men…and every other man.

For some reason, a slew of black women saw the “date outside of your race” advice as some sort of offensive comment against black men — even though it was clearly an understandable response to a group of women seemingly fed up with their own self-described shallow dating pool.

To go from criticizing one group to criticizing every single man everywhere is out of control and this whole discussion is starting to reek of bitterness and delusion. What part of the game is that? No one is saying we should ignore the negative experiences that we’ve had, but to shout down anyone trying to give you a solution by just hollering about more problems makes it seem like we don’t want an answer.

Maybe dating outside of your race isn’t a viable solution, but finding fault with every single type of man on the planet while you wait for the man of your dreams seems counterproductive and will likely leave you right where you are, single.

Follow Alissa Henry on Twitter @AlissaInPink

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock

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Though many try to pretend that we live in a colorblind society; for many people of color, racism is a very real issue. Considering we speak to an audience of black women everyday, we thought we’d ask them to share their racist, ridiculous and hurtful experiences with us. Here’s what they had to say.

Artemis: I was 18 in Zurich, learning to speak German. A guy walks up to me with this sneering smile and said, while touching my hair:

“du bist einen schwarzen schlampe.. ja?”

I understood up until the “schlampe” because I had had no reason to know what that meant until then… when I said I didn’t understand it, he just laughed and muttered it again, then got off the tram.

I asked my uncle (who’s white, he married my mom’s sister) what it meant, and watched him get angrier than I’d ever seen him… and told me to punch anyone who ever did it again in the face and get to his office asap.

MN: Did you ever find out what it meant?

Artemis: “You’re a black Slore? yes?” … My uncle told me … Didn’t hurt, but I was pretty pissed off… this guy was nothing like what “tv” in the islands portrayed racists to look like, he looked “normal,” not a monster that will try to rape you. Heck he didn’t even look like he could take me in a fight… meh… I got over it quickly.

Interracial dating may be deemed as a touchy subject by many people, but in this installment of Madame On The Street, we discovered it’s no big deal for many New Yorkers. Check out what they had to say about their dating choices.

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Here at Madame Noire we talk a lot about interracial dating. In one of our most popular (and most controversial) articles of all time, our writer listed reasons why black women should look to our fairer skinned brothers when it comes to dating options. We’ve done very popular slideshows about the white men in Hollywood who have a sista on their arm. We’re about keeping our options open when it comes to dating and marriage.  That being said, please don’t look to the white man to save you from your brothas.

Yeah, I said it…because it had to be said.

As an editor on this site, it’s so frustrating to see black woman after black woman claim that she’s “done” with black men; that she’ll just go out and get herself a white man, as if they sell them at your local corner store. If you want to date a white man, by all means go right ahead but make sure you’re “swirling” for the right reasons.

It seems that some black women have forgotten that sickening, rejected feeling we get when we hear a wayward brotha talk about how he’s “upgraded” to white women because black women have too much attitude, are nothing but gold diggers and welfare queens. How are these hurtful stereotypes any different from black women saying black men are all cheaters, incarcerated or don’t take care of their children? It isn’t. Just like those stereotypes [hopefully] don’t apply to you, neither do these stereotypes apply to all black men.

I realize, some of us have been so scarred, so emotionally (and sometimes physically) battered by a black man or two, that we can’t recognize and appreciate the good brothas there still are in this world. If you want to cross the color spectrum, more power to you; but assuming that all of your male problems will disappear right along with the melanin, is just ridiculous. Any sane person, whether they’ve dated interracially or not, will tell you that people are people, men are men. Some are shady and some are sweet.

Furthermore, resolving to be with a white man by any means necessary might not be as easy as you think. Just like there are some black women who are not physically attracted to white men, there are some white men who are not physically attracted to black women. You heard John Mayer. Please believe, he’s not the only one who shares such sentiments.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to discourage or dissuade you from dating interracially; but stepping into the game believing that every white man is going to want you because you’re black, is simply unrealistic.

If and when you do find a white man to love you, how do you think he’ll feel knowing that you chose him and his color as a last resort? Just like we don’t want to be someone’s chocolate fantasy, I’m sure white men don’t want to be the milk in your coffee. There’s so much more to people than skin tone and there’s so much more to a successful relationship than the union of two different races. Whatever man you find, whether he’s black, white or leopard print, you better make sure the two of you have more in common than your obsession with each other’s hue.

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This satirical video explores the dynamics between black women, black men and interracial dating. While the piece may hit a few sore spots, we found it pretty funny.

So you won’t be caught off guard, here’s a description…

“Every year over 80,000 black men are abused, battered, neglected. Join the WWSPCABM to make a difference for these innocent victims, and give these men a voice!”

Watch the video below and let us know what you think about it.

Do you find this funny? We sure did.

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Dating in college is a slightly different ball game, especially nowadays with the saturation of technology. It seems like people are more connected yet further apart.

Currently I’m a junior in college and maneuvering around in the dating world can be a little stressful. College isn’t like high school. You’re dealing with a different group of people, hopefully a more mature group. A lot of the relationships people have in college end up being their first truly serious “adult” relationship. In many cases it could be the person they end up marrying and spending the rest of their lives with.

Yet at the same time, college (besides getting an education of course) is a time to have fun and live your life. You’re only 18, 19, 20, 21 so why try and settle down so early? You have the rest of your 20s and 30s to find a “soul mate”.

However dating can still be fun, so here are some tips for all you college readers out there…

Read the rest of this entry »

By Ama Yawson

Be honest.  I am sure that you have had a girlfriend or two call you and, before you can even say “Hello,” shout through the phone “Girl, I’m done with brothas—too much drama! It’s strictly the swirl from now on!”  I’m sure you’ve also read black women’s rants on blogs and comment boards all across the Internet about why they are not attracted to black men or why black men can’t be trusted. Although I fervently encourage all black women to be open to men of any race who can give them the love that their heart desires, I would discourage any black woman from completely excluding black men from her dating pools.  Here are just a few of the reasons why: