Re "Marriage is for White People" what is the "swag" that black men have, and white men do not?

In My Humble Opinion
21

There are plenty of black “nice guys”. Trust me on this. Enough of them exist that its unwise to consider this a white guy trait. Commonly, the complaint from black “nice guys” is that black women only want thugs. They also feel entitled to a woman’s affections because of what they aren’t (not in prison, not unemployed, not free loading from their mother), not because of what positives they might bring to a relationship. These also are the type of guys who attempt to coerce black women into doing what they want by shaming them with comparisions to white women, who as a group apparently know how to “treat a man”.

It’s kind of silly to read a lot into what swagger means. It’s like overanalyzing the word “hot”. To me, swagger means understated confidence that speaks of the kind of competence typically associated with masculinity. I do not think of machismo when I think of “swagger”. I think of Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, when he silenced the crowd simply by raising his finger. The idea is hilariously captured in this pic of Obama as well. Idris Elba had it in the Wire. Plenty of white guys have it too. Bruce Willis, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Mark Walberg usually play men with swagger.

Anyone who thinks “swagger” is a black thing is probably stuck on stereotypes.

22

I always took “swagger” to be either macho or “cool”.

Like in the case of Obama. Watch him when he goes running down the stairs. In those moments, he’s the coolest cat on the planet. I’m as indifferent to masculinity as they come, but even I see it.

Thing is…I can’t describe exactly what it is about it that makes it cool. I just know it when I see it.

When white people date inter-racially, they have difficulties to contend with as well. Peer pressure, familial pressure, and insecurities about their own identity that they may not even be conscience of. But it’s also not a big thing for them because the numbers are stacked in their favor. They have more same-raced applicants to choose from.

Not so much for black women. And in addition to the pressures above, they have to think about cultural stuff. Minorities are way more familiar with white people’s culture (the dominant culture) than vice versa. There are still plenty of white people who don’t know that black women chemically straighten their hair and what that entails, for instance. Or it comes to a shock that a black person can speak one way at work/amongst white people and speak a totally different way around black people (I had a co-worker gripe to me about how a certain black radio personality with a humongous following doesn’t speak correct English and how it annoyed him that he was even on the radio).

There are hundreds of other things that your typical white person does not know about black people. It’s not white people’s fault. It’s just that they have the advantage of not having to know.

So if you’re a black woman and you’re considering “going white”, you have to consider how much of a teacher you’re willing to be. And not only a teacher to your man, but also his family and friends. Do you really feel like having explain to your future mother-in-law how your little girl’s hair and skin will need to be groomed when she spends the summer with her? Do you really feel like dealing with your husband’s discomfort when you take him to visit your parents’ Pentecostal, writhing-in-the-aisles, Holy-Ghost-possessed church? Are you ready to feel like a sore thumb at his all-white, different-worship-style-than-you’re-used-to-experiencing church? And not only that, are you prepared to be the ambassador for black people at your in-law’s get-togethers? Prepared for racial tension at his family reunions as well as yours? What if your children do not want to see themselves as black? How will you handle that?

Are you prepared for training yourself out of “code-switching” when interacting with your husband, his family, and yours? Are you prepared for the identity crisis that this might cause?

These questions are not trivial, and people who are acting like they are need to get a clue. Yes, it’s easy to say “love knows no color”. I believe this is true and if I found love, I wouldn’t let other’s opinions on the subject slow me down. But love, in itself, is not what makes a relationship last. Mutual understanding does.

The swagger stuff is out of my department, but I will say this. People like what they like. White guys are just as cool as black guys…but it’s not the same kind of coolness, on average.

23

There’s a ton of misogynistic rap out there complaining that women are just gold-diggers, though.

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Well…she aint messin’ with no broke niggaz.

25

Interesting. However, to me what you call the outer wrappings (culture & race) are so intertwined with what you’re calling the inner parts (attitudes, life style, outlook), it’s not possible to separate the two. I can’t conceive of being able to have succesful marriage with someone who doesn’t share my same culture. Sex and love are possible, but that’s not going to keep a marriage stable for the long haul.

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To put it very mildly, your perspective on the meaning of culture isn’t even in the same galaxy as most people in this country at this time.

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Why? Because they think we all watch Seinfeld and listen to John Mayer while driving to Applebees in our pickup trucks?

Yeah, but nothing like Samuel L Jackson, Denzel Washington or Laurence Fishburne.

What people typically describe as “nice guy” is more often than not “typical, polite, law abiding, educated, middle class American with a regular boring corporate office job”. A lot of people, both black and white, think that isn’t “cool”. And it may not be. But it pays the bills.

And women don’t “like jerks”. They like strong, dominant men. Guys who just seem to be in control whenever they walk in the room. That is the “swag” that many, if not most, white men don’t have. It is a lack of toughness that comes from growing up in a safe, middle-class suburban environment where their “worth” is determined by how well they fit in with their peer’s pop culture consumerist interests, their ability to play organized sports and the aptitude at completing the institutional demands of school and evenal corporate work.

IOW, most white guys are pussies.

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Maybe, buy they’re responsible pussies.

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One out of five black guys are incarcerated. If that’s a tradeoff, I suppose I can live with it.

It may be boring and pussified, but seeing my kid in the evening after working all day to try to make sure she can go to a decent college is worth a lot more to my wife than “swag,” I suspect.

30

That’s the whole point. People are attracted to the trappings of success - big house, fancy cars, drinking Crystal. They aren’t so much attracted to long hours of work and study.

31

But don’t all interracial marriages have these issues? I fail to see how this is only inclusive to the black/white relationship. All of this is happening in my SO’s family in a white-Asian relationship, and there are shades of all of the above, right up to the slight racism and tension at family get-togethers, and the children growing up with very little Asian identity.

Hell, I’m in an interracial relationship and we have had to deal with a lot of this. We don’t have kids, so we were thankfully able to skip a lot of that.

32

You don’t even need race to get this.

My wife is Ukranian, from a deeply religious immigrant peasant family, whereas my background is a mix of WASP and Jewish atheist urbanites. The colour of our skin is the same, but our family background couldn’t be more different, which has indeed created some issues.

Is that more or less different than a Black family of athiest urbanites? Who can say? Though the racial historic legacy is rather different up here in Canada.

33

Interesting… I talked to Banks just before the book came out as he caught my NPR appearance about Black Marriage Day (and oddly enough, he was the guest that I was bumped for on an earlier appearance on Talk of the Nation). I’m happy to hear it’s out and I will track it down for a read.

It’s a very real tension for Black women. Every year I hear Black women graduate students complain that the dating pool is so limited - and I think that’s the issue, the limitations. As you with the face notes, there are Black men - in much smaller numbers - in the dating pool for professional, well-educated Black women. But I will note anecdotally that they tend to be… well, nerdy. Like me. (I don’t think of myself as extremely nerdy, but I don’t think I have the “swag” that the article alludes to. Not in large quantities anyway.) I guess luckily for me, I met my wife a loooooong time ago when whatever swag I had was sufficient to trap, er, convince her to marry me.

The thing about “swag,” is that it has its upside and downside. From my experience, guys smooth with the talk, athletic, and good looking are well aware of their assets, and often exploit their prowess… and thus the line between “swag” and “dog” can be quite blurry. If you add education and money in the mix, it’s even more tilted in these guys’ favor. So a lot of these guys get around quite a bit and don’t want to settle down.

I think one less discussed, but very real phenomenon among Black men, especially those who are professionally and educationally advanced, is the fact that many are conflicted about their sexuality. Because of cultural and familial expectations, it’s very difficult to be an out gay or bisexual Black man. So a lot of the eligible guys are in fact either gay, or bi, or confused in some way but don’t feel they have the space to explore who they are - so they date women and do jacked up stuff so the relationship ends unhappily. I know many guys like this. Some are semi-out to close friends, and others are living in deep denial. I’m close friends with two out gay Black men - and one is out in his city, but not back in his parents’ hometown in rural Texas.

All that is to say is that the dating scene for Black women is pretty complicated. There’s another angle to this, and that is that a lot of successful Black men tend to be in athletics and entertainment. Indeed, if you look at many college campuses like mine, the ratio of Black women to men is around 3:1. A lot of the Black men on this campus are athletes… and I’m not going to stereotype as I know many upstanding Black male athletes, but I also know of many who behave very irresponsibly in their romantic/sexual relationships. I realized this when I moved to Atlanta, where virtually every Black woman I knew was either dating, or had dated a professional or semi-professional athlete.

I guess what I’m saying is that for Black women, there isn’t this broad swath of guys with college degrees handling their business to choose from. And some guys are not marriage material and others are “undateable.” I had a former student who was set up by a well-meaning (but clueless) White female friend, and both attempts to set her up ended badly - in fact, the relationship between the two women nearly ended over it. The guys were nice but not her type, and she started resenting the friend’s efforts as she had not asked her to play cupid.

monstro makes a great point that in thinking about a long-term relationship with someone outside of your race/ethnicity/culture is a massive undertaking that comes with considerable baggage. One has to be willing to deal with it, along with all the other crap that comes part and parcel with marriage, and frankly, that’s often too much.

I’ve had a number of differing opinions over the years about interracial relationships - at this stage in my life, I’m of the opinion that it’s hard to find happiness, and if you find happiness, you should go for it, to hell with the racial/cultural aspect of it. If two people want to be together I say more power to them both. But it’s also much more complex than that. There are families to contend with. There’s the enduring stigma of racism that Black men in particular contend with - microaggressions - that even the most aware White people sometimes overlook or don’t see. (The same is true of Black women who often deal with the intersectional double whammy of being Black and female in settings where both identities are seen as liabilities.) Sometimes you just want someone to “get” you without having to explain why you put grease in your hair, and any one of the umpteen million things Black folks do that White folks generally have no idea about.

I know both White guys (well, one) who exclusively date Black women, and Black guys who date exclusively White women. I’ve never broached the topic but when you’ve had three consecutive girlfriends of one race I think something’s going on. Which again, is fine. I admit I’m a little more comfortable with the White guy than the Black guys (though I admit there’s something a little unnerving to me about both categories).

Just my $.02, I’m sure I’ll think of more as folks respond…

34

I think it’s a little different because of the long history of Black-White racial tension in this country. My mom is Jamaican, and I come from a long line of mixed marriages, which is fairly normal and mundane there. Not just Black-White, but Indian, Lebanese, and a whole lot of other mixes. In America, though, our history is imbued with Black-White tensions, from Sally Hemmings to the one-drop rule to Jim Crow to lynchings… all focused on the fear or fascination of Black-White sex.

35

I prefer a responsible non-pussy. I’ll take a bit of swag on my man, please.

We didn’t call it ‘swagger’. In my day, we called it ‘steeze’ which was a play on the word ‘style’.

It just meant you had style. It’s a part of black culture that comes along with slang and hip hop and…that walk. The way a man stands. Or licks his lips. Hard to put your finger on it.

Prisoners can have it, teachers can have it, ball players, drug dealers, A students.

White men can have it too.

There are so many different kinds of black men. The idea that the ones with swagger are all criminals or dead beats or whatever is crazy. And I raise a cocked eyebrow at any black woman who claims she can’t find a man because they are all in prison, or all with white women or any other such nonsense. The statistics don’t bear that out. Nonsense, it is.

If one doesn’t have swagger, it may be easy to say, “Black men have it because they aren’t responsible working family men” but that just aint so, in my opinion.

36

Without even knowing the specifics, I can relate to this story. My parents has gotten on my nerves by hinting that I should hook up with men that only a moron would consider to be a good fit for me. One of them was a former tenant of theirs. I say former, because they just evicted him from their rental property because he was several months behind on the rent. Now even though I’m sympathetic to people having hard times in this economy…come on now. Why would my parents be trying to recruit me to date a guy in his position, when he can’t even afford a roof over his head? Aside from this, he’s a devout Muslim and I’m a heathenous agnostic. But he’s black, you see. And I guess that means we’re supposed to overlook petty trivialities like socioeconomic status and religion, and let the power of love set us free. Reality doesn’t work like this, though.

I can’t even talk to my parents about this area of my life anymore, because I know they prioritize race above me actually being attracted to or having anything in common with a guy.

37

Apparently black guys get lots of free merchandise at conventions.

38

Even if this is true, so what? Why is Denzel’s swagger any better than Bruce’s?

Again, it’s quite silly to read anything more into “swagger” than just a word to describe a certain kind of masculine attractiveness. Bringing trappings of wealth, irresponsibility, and criminality into it just screams sour grapes projection. It would be like a woman going out of way to suggest that to look “hot” you have to conduct yourself like pinhead bimbo or prostitute.

39

Speaking as a guy on the other end of the comparison being made here–I’m white, and I’m pudgy, and I’m sporting a full beard. Normally I wear jeans and a polo shirt.

Uniformly, when I am dating, I get negative to neutral responses to pictures of me from women.

Uniformly, when I am dating, I get good to wildly positive responses regarding my attractiveness from people who see me in person or in motion. I have been described, by a black woman even, as having “swagger”.

It seems to me that it’s primarily (if not solely) based on how one moves and carries himself. What matters is that you’re comfortable with yourself and the position you’re in, not what that position is. I don’t even want to speculate about the perceived color bias, but I expect it has something to do with a concept I’ve heard from a lot of guys–“I don’t have to brag, I know I have it.” Yeah, but you still have to brag a little, or no one knows you have it.

40

Shouldn’t that say “white”?

And, if this white man could confirm the stereotype for a moment, why do black women have to put a scarf on at night? Is it to stop the straightened hair from getting messed up?