TW: Discussions of abuse
Despite how it may look on social media, I can’t say that most Black women & girls desire to date out of their race but of course in the world we live in, to increase your chances of finding a quality partner, widening your pool is a logical choice that I think all races of women will do more of in the future. As I’ve alluded to in previous articles, I’ve come to realise that most Black Women have a mindset where they believe that whatever happens to them at the hands of someone outside their community (this can even be ethnicity) is because of their race/ethnicity.
TW:
I was on a thread about a Youtuber who had found her husband to be s*xually abusing their toddlers. Prior to it being exposed that her husband was Black some believed he was White, commenting things like “some WM prey on BW with kids to get to their children”. After it was made clear that he was a Black Man, some highlighted that it would be swept under the rug. The conversations around White Men ceased and turned to the dangers of men in general. I know with our history and the fact that the OG sex tourists who abuse children overseas were White influenced these assumptions as Black Men typically devour their own while White Men devour their own and others but I also realised that for many BW because of maybe how we view ourselves, the idea of a non-BM harming Black women and girls is very triggering because they think that the man has only targeted/harmed them because they are Black & no matter how diabolic the act a Black Man has carried out, there is a comfort in feeling like he’s just a sicko as opposed to someone doing that because they are a Black Woman (which is an identity many of us have been made to feel very low about). This is not always the case since a Black serial killer of the past did state that he killed black women because he knew no one would care. Clearly someone harming you because of your race (whether a member of that race or not) is possible but it is not always the case because we are women like everyone else.
I think of women like Khloe Kardashian (black men constantly cheating on her and visiting brothels) or Katie Piper (a British woman having acid thrown in her face by a mixed man) all still dating/married to mixed/Black Men or an oriental woman who’s white husband killed her son or rampant s*x tourism/pedo’s in Asia which has never stop Asian women seeking white men (not saying this is something to aspire to since such behaviour may be rooted in self hatred). I realize that those women directly or others in their community don’t think that they were harmed, sometimes in the most terrible way because of their race, they just think they got a bad apple and bounce back to find a good man. Typically, after negative incidents, BW don’t bounce back and turn to writing think pieces to warn other BW who are already fearful about how they are viewed by men. It had me thinking that beyond not finding non-Black men attractive or not desiring to date men from anti-black culture that maybe most BW don’t date out because if it fails, it may have such a significant impact on their self-esteem.
A few years back I remember a story of a US based Pakistani young man who was dating a Black girl and I believe he fed her abortion pills causing her to lose her child. I saw a BW comment on the situation with ‘Black women should give up on love, we are abused by men in and outside the community’. Now as someone who has previously lived around South Asians, where honour killings were rife and the man living below me bludgeoned his wife to death with an iron, I knew that the situation was a reflection of the nature of men in that community. Currently in the UK there is a national story of a young girl – sarah sharif , half white, half Pakistani, tortured to death by her Pakistani father who had been in numerous abusive relationships with White women because this is their nature but in the eyes of BW, what happened to the Black girl fed abortion pills only occurred because she was Black and wouldn’t occur to another race of woman and it is not a reflection of his cultural conditioning and therefore we should give up on relationships.
Because of the dark side of male nature, when you are a woman & you engage with men, sometimes negative things will happen but I realize that whenever these things happen to a Black Woman, unlike other races of women, they seem to really blow our self-esteem & open up the floodgates for negative narratives for how men in and outside our community view us. This may be a by-product of worldwide anti-blackness as other communities are not as visibly discriminated against (as non-Black appear to be able to bounce back from abuse at the hands of other races of men) therefore if we are not treated like princesses by non-Black men, it is always used to scare Black Women into sticking with Black Men – something we’ve been indoctrinated with for decades.
Although IR dating may increase your chances of finding a partner, I’ve come to realise that I’m not sure if most BW have the mental capacity for it, especially after seeing a multitude of think pieces online about the topic which has me thinking at times, is it really that deep (but I understand the nuance of me living in Europe and some of my readers living in countries where racial dynamics are worse). As you see with other races, they often have to kiss a few frogs to get their prince but because of maybe a weaker sense of self, anti-blackness and decade long problematic racial dynamics, that process can cause BW to internalise many negative beliefs so although I don’t think most western BM are worthy of a lineage, I also think we need to understand that IR dating is also not for everyone especially when you can’t engage with a man without seeing everything in colour which is not something we should beat ourselves up about or obsess over because it’s not totally our fault that many of us think in this way. It is what it is. Even in the formation of a relationship and day to day interactions with a man not from your community, imo I think it would be difficult for that to be successful if he is viewed as a colour and not as a person and I think that’s something to be aware of.
OTN
