Do few black women fall in love with non-black men?

In My Humble Opinion
21

C’mon man, Grace Jones is just plain scary. Having said that, beautiful women come in all sorts of colours, from glow-in-the-dark white to a true African black. It does appear to be true that American society seems to focus on the lighter shades of black when it comes to beauty stereotypes: Tyra Banks is an example. Halle Berry I think is half white.

As for the OP: I don’t know if you can call my girlfriend “black” (there’s a significant portion in there, as well as Scottish, Irish, Cherokee, and Mexican - in other words, she’s American :)), but I sure as hell am very white, and we seem to be doing OK so far!

22

Has anyone raised the possibility of a double standard within Black communities regarding this issue? Is a Black man who dates/marries a White woman pulling of a coup but a Black woman in the contrary situation a “race traitor”?

23

I raised this possibility in my post, three or four above this. I don’t think these attitudes are unique to blacks though.

24

She’s “Black”? I thought she was Italian. I’m not kidding.

25

Naomi Campbell?

26

I think the tide is changing. More black women are opening their eyes to men outside their race than they were in years past. One thing that has held back black females is the idea that non-black men find them unattractive unless they look like Vanessa Williams. Also, there is the pervasive idea that non-black men tend to overeroticize the black woman, so that she becomes the object of fetishness instead of admiration. Both ideas are based on truth and not just a grain of it.

But I think that black women need to start realizing that there is a large contigent of willing suitors out there for them and they may be hurting themselves by only seeking black men. My own experience with dating a white man didn’t end happily ever after, but it was positive enough for me to know that I could be happy in a IR, with the right person.

I think if more non-black men made overtures to black women that would give a boost in their confidence level, relieve them of some of their racial insecurities, and make it easy for them to give IR’s a chance. My own experience has shown that non-black men, even when they’re interested, don’t go out of their way to talk to black women (perhaps they have their own fears and insecurities?), and so things don’t go very far. Both sides need to relax and go with the flow.

27

Her mom may be Italian, but her dad is a black man. So she’s whatever that combo makes her.

28

Bingo.

This echos my personal experiences with dating (well, doing, I was never really much for having boyfriends, black or otherwise) white males. My first white guy’s brother had to spell it out to me that he was attracted to me. Although I’m pretty, I’m no Vanessa Williams.

The first reply to the OP is pretty much what I thought white men thought of me for a very long time.

29

She’s biracial, but you could’ve fooled me too. She looks pretty darn white.

30

Gina Torres? She doesn’t look white, and she’s hot.

31

She’s Cuban.

Has been my experience. It wasn’t that my black female friends and I didn’t find non-black guys attractive or weren’t interested in them - it was the other way.

32

Its been my experience that most white men are afraid to approach black women. There is a deep seeded belief that black women are only interested in black men. Or that black women, even if interested, wouldn’t date a white man for fear of a strong blacklash from their family and black friends.

This was not such a prevalent attitude in University (blacks were a minority, black men even more so) but back in High-School I had a couple friends who were black girls but they only had white friends. They were ostracized by the school’s black population and referred to as white-washed or oreo. That they were ‘sell-outs’ for being friends with whites.

33

All I have to share (besides that I think you with the face and Juanita Tech make some good points, which I’ll address after the show) is one of my usual anecdotes:

Shortly after I graduated from (a Black womens’) college, I developed a crush on a White guy. Unfortunately, said fella did not return my affections (see Valentine’s Day Thread for the heartwrenching tale ;)). I was lamenting the whole deal to a couple of college friends, when one of them suggested I check out the personals in the local free weekly for White men in search of Black women.

I informed her that I did not just like White guys, I liked this particular White guy who did not, unfortunately, like me back.

(And believe me, liking the one was enough to send my psyche into a tailspin, because I’d decided, in the throes of my college-age quasi-militance, that I would never have a relationship with a man who wasn’t Black.)

“But if you go through the personals,” she persisted, “you can find one who WILL.”

I reiterated that I WAS NOT LOOKING TO DATE A WHITE GUY.

“But [Auntie EM],” she insisted, “White guys are SO GRATEFUL.”

To this day, I’m not sure what that meant.

Anyway, in regard to comments made by you with the face and Juanita, I have to say that when I was younger (like in high school), I always assumed that White guys didn’t ask me out because their parents would have objected. I never felt like it was because they weren’t attracted to me (I was far too narcissistic for that), because they didn’t exactly ignore me; they called me on the phone, flirted with me, came to my house to hang out, invited me to their (parents-not-home) parties–for about 8 months out of the school year I was pretty much just like any other gal (granted, I didn’t get asked out on many dates, but several of my White girlfriends were single, too, so I thought nothing of it) . . .

Then when Prom Time came around, I was awash in a conspicuous echo. One by one my friends got plucked from the Pool of the Dateless, until I and my friend from India were the only ones left.

Usually my mom took us out for Chinese on prom night. A little tradition of sorts.

Since high school, a few of those boys have confessed that they had the hots for me way back when . . .

. . . but whenever I’ve asked them why they never asked me out in high school, that conspicuous echo comes back. :dubious:

34

I made some calls, and used my massive influence and exploitative abilities as a white man (actually, I once met THE MAN!) and opressed and dominated and cheated until I got a beautiful black woman.

We’re getting married in October.

35

I’m not aware of any real kind of double-standard. Nowadays, given the relative shortage of desireable black men (and I hate saying that, but it’s true), black women have more of an “excuse” to defect than black men do. Maybe in years past when the prevalence of black men dating outside the race was lower, black women were probably more expected to “stand by their man” and so were considered traitors when they stepped outside the line. But going by today’s statistics, who can blame a sister for opening up her options?

36

A lot of black women are only interested in black men because they believe those men are the only ones who are interested in them. They kind of turn a blind eye to everyone else. Back in my college days at Georgia Tech (predominately white male school), the ratio was 3:1, male to female, but I never reaped the benefits of that ratio when it came to dating because A) hardly any of the white guys pursued me and B) I didn’t pursue a whole lot of white guys. So while the ratio was 3:1, it felt like it was more like 1:3 when it came to romance, because I had trained myself to only count black men. Not because I had something against dating non-black guys. It was because I figured none of them would be interested in me, so why bother including them in my potential mate census?

37

I’m not sure that looking at the attitudes of black women is going to provide a solution to this problem.

A dear and lovely friend of mine is a light-skinned African-American woman, and according to her most white men are unwilling to date black women. She gets hit on all the time when she goes out, but white guys tend to back off when they realize she’s not a Latina (which is what you’d guess to look at her). She says white men may be happy to have sex with black women, but many don’t want to take a black woman home to meet mom and dad or even be seen with her in public.

38

If your friend is right, then most white men are deefoids. I brought all my girlfriends home to meet the folks, no matter their ancestry. Of course, I’ve never been really attracted to a woman until I actually had at least one real conversation with her.

39

you with the face, when were you at Tech? I was at Spelman from cough 1988-1992 (jeez, am I that old?).

I actually visited Tech once, to see a (White male) friend of mine from Kansas (who’d started college at Tech the year after I started at Spelman). I took along my roommate and another friend, and Dave (Tech Guy) said that one of his dorm friends approached him the next morning and said (with the same tome one might use after witnessing a UFO crash in New Mexico), “Was I really drunk last night, or did I really see THREE BLACK GIRLS coming out of your room???”

40

So? There are black people in Cuba. You know this, right? FTR, I’m black and have dated outside of my race. Why limit myself? I figure 98% of males are wastes of skin (whuh? I’m not bitter at all ;)), so why further limit my chances of finding that other 2% by putting race restrictions on who I date? Pfft.