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Pic from www.babble.com. All rights reserved).
Dear Jill,
Your unique fusion of afrobeat-cum-spoken-word-cum-soulrnb on jazz on "Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Volume 1?" made my heart at once leap and skip, who was this sage who made this nu-music? You inspired my foray into spoken word as I followed you on your journey with "Beautifully Human" and the "The Real Thing"; I heard the love vibrating through your guitar on "He Loves Me", written for your wedding day, your pain was my pain as you sang through your divorce (and I sang through my break-ups) and you didn't know this but we celebrated together (me, in my flat with a glass of red wine, you on the stage in Carnegie Hall) when we both found love again.
I was eager to read your piece in Essence magazine especially when I was told that you went "there". There meaning a favourite conversation piece. I call it WAWWSOM- Why Are White Women Stealing Our Men? Some people thought the article was racist in a world that is post racial, some were of the ilk that wanted to sit around a fire and sing kumbaya- "the world is a happy place, we all love each other, isn't that great?" and they attempted to dismiss your opinion as one without historical, collective, or even intellectual merit. I won't do so and although I love you and recognise your feelings as valid, I must admit that I do not feel the same way you do because I think your opinion piece generalises and stereotypes the experience of all black women and all black men who choose to date white.
Jill, my essential tenet and starting point is that human beings are free to love who they please. We are lucky to be born with choice and freedom in our parts of the world. Isn't it great that we are able to pick our life partner based on any criteria we wish? I believe in absolute freedom. Love is a beautiful thing and when we find it in unexpected places it can be amazing and make you do crazy things- like sing all those sappy cheesy Celine Dion songs about strength when weak and lifting up when we couldn't reach. I am an equal opportunities lover and would love anyone who loves me back :) To those human beings that genuinely find love between races, across cultures, straddling oceans and mountains of social, economic and racial divide; I am genuinely happy and pleased for you. I smile for you and welcome your family into our family; I welcome the mélange of your culture with our culture with open arms. Black men don't owe black women anything except respect.
I am grateful for this proposition I live, Jill, when I read about brides who have to marry men their parents chose: their choice is sometimes between an unwanted arrangement or death. They do not have the opportunity to test the waters, to know their lovers, to let their fingers linger on the small of their backs, to hold hands at the movies, to share private jokes: they are resigned to falling in love with a person that they may not like or to live unhappily ever after. I am glad that religion nor caste nor province dictates my choice. I am happy that we are no longer living in the 1960's where black men got lynched for dating white women, and white men had to date a black nanny on the side.
This feeling of openness however, is hard to square and reconcile with my feeling of obligation to community. With the feeling of example. That we need strong black families raising strong black children, Will-and-Jada families, Michelle-and-Barack-families, instead of broken black families, single parent black families, drug dealing black families, children-heading abusive black families. It was only when I started writing this article Jill, that it became clearer to me what I really believed- upon an honest, open, critical examination of my beliefs, and surprisingly my fears.
Jill, I realised that there are three types of black men who date interracially that I have found that I and other black women do not like. And although it is not for us to approve or disprove of other relationships, black women do more than wince. It is more like a twist of the lips and a cut of the eye. I do not like what I call the Crushers, the Choppers and the Blenders.
Crushers crush black women. They are the men who make a deliberate choice not to date black women because its too much “aggro”. If I lost a hair for every man I heard say that they are through with black girls because they have "attitude", like "drama" and are "weave-wearing"/"angry"/"aggressive"/"eruptive"/"paycheque-spending"/"uncultured"/"divas" (choose one), I would be as bald as Naomi Campbell and with an attitude makes me want to turn into a finger wagging Shanaynaye. Not because of the bullshit psychological rationale about past collective pain we experienced (can we move on already?) and all these intellectual reasons that you spouted, but because we are being stereotyped and generalised by the very people who are supposed to know and understand us best. I want to say to these Crushers: Have you met every single black woman in the world? Because I have met docile black women, and assertive black women, honey coloured, caramel, blue black, matchstick thin, cuddly, museum loving, club hopping- we come in all shapes, sizes, hues and dispositions. Moreover, if the girls you are meeting are all like the negative things you describe, that says something rather peculiar about your social group.
Then there are the Choppers. These are the fetish hunters- they want to chop some "other" booty down, they are after some unfamiliar tail. You see their ads on Craig’s List and Gumtree. These Tigerwoodsian men post listings that are so generic and predictable- "black man, well hung, looking for blonde single girl for fun and good times". These men on first glance appear open and fun, but I actually think that these men are more racist and sexist that any of the other types because their interracial interaction is rooted in images of Mandingoland and they are happy to conform to the image of the black man as a centaur; man-horse and sexual aggressor. By casting themselves in this role, it is almost as if they wish to wreak some form of sick avenge for sins of the past.
Then Jill, there are the Blenders. These are the men who suffer from post colonial self negation and wish for the family and children with "fair skin" "pretty features" "nice hair" and a "straight nose". They wish to neutralise their black features until it is almost erased because their noses are not straight enough, their hair is too nappy and their skin too dark and ashy. I have been told that I should be a Blender so many times by older women in the Caribbean- "find ah nice white man and make some pretty colour children eh darling" but I do not expect it in a modern man. Some Crushers ultimately become Blenders. I have a problem with Blenders because I really believe black is beautiful. There is nothing wrong with black. We do not need to neutralise, mix up, and dilute our features to conform to any societal standard.
So these are the black men I don't like and for the record, I don't like the women Blenders, Crushers and Choppers either. So I would probably not see eye to eye with the women who join the facebook group "I love white men" (huh? when did the colour of someone's skin matter more than the content of their character?"), the girl who says "I am through with black men, most of them sell drugs, smoke weed and don't have a job" or the Trinidadian chick who marries Indian so she can have "nice dougla children". The weird thing is that most people don't know that they are Choppers, Blenders or Crushers; these feelings lie subterraneously.
Jill, the assimilationists tell us that all this talk this is trivial and irrelevant and we should not worry about interracial-ness. However I think this should be discussed because I think our anger may be born of fear. According to the UK statistics, 80% of black men would happily marry outside of their race. Only 20% of white men would. This means that there is a loophole for little black girls- if the majority of black men love white women and the majority of white men love white women, who are dating us?
The magazines and televisions tell us that we are not at the top of the universally accepted standards of beauty and the very men who are meant to "get" that our lips are just a smidgen fuller, our textured hair tougher, our nose just a little bit wider, appear to be also rooting for the away team. We feel therefore that our pool is getting smaller and smaller and may I suggest our anger is not historical, but territorial? This is exacerbated when the 80% of these black men who wouldn't mind dating anyone appear to be the upwardly mobile, successful, god-fearing men who love their mothers. A part of us screams that if these men, whose mothers we resemble, don't prefer us, who will?
Black women are also often fearful of mixing. My boyfriend asked me to debate this question “Is assimilation a form of cultural genocide?” and I was for once, stumped. We are guardians of our homes and family lives and perhaps by extension, we see ourselves as guardians of our culture. However, we cannot lead ourselves into the realms of Nick Griffin who categorically thinks mixing is destructive of human cultures to mask fear of that which we are not familiar, hiding under the pretext of deculturisation (because culture is a way of life that is fluid and malleable).
Jill, my friends and I used to feel like you did at university. We winced because there were probably ten eligible black boys in Cambridge and they all (with the exception of one) did not date black girls. So the choice was effectively made for us. Those of us who stopped looking for the “good black man” and looked simply for a good man found love. I found a gay best friend! The experience taught me that when we are happy and comfortable in our own selves, we do not even notice the black man walking past with whatever woman of whatever colour.
Just sayin'
