On Love: Do you really sleep with white women? do you feel bad about it?

So my mom dated Ving Rhames. Legend has it, he cooked her dinner in his home-but she didn't like him...But she never likes anyone cool.

She messed it up for my brother and I;  our dad could've been a movie star, an underrated movie star who once dressed as a woman, but a movie star none the less...Anyhow: My first experience with Ving was a little less personal:

 I saw him in the film Holiday Heart; (the snippet is one of my favorite scene) It made me think, about love and the Holidays: What does it mean to love? Granted when you are into someone, you recognize the flaws in their humanity, but you can look past it, generally , everything becomes negligible.  However, we cant always count on the people in our family, friend circle and other "informed outsiders"to be so diplomatic. This can often add all sorts of:

to your recipe for "grand love, especially now  that we are in the throes of the holiday season.
Family  can make you question yourself and put a "wait" on your love. Resulting in your "boo" becoming a "friend" when its holiday dinner time or even just having to wait (elsewhere) for a plate and late visit.

Exemplar: I dated this guy ( a case of liked and lost), whom I will call "Alumnaigerian" and his last serious relationship was with a white woman. Now, I don't know why I am compelled to psychoanalyze everyone I meet! It was only our third date/outing/whatever and I was starting to really like him. I thought, since we are a culturally mixed pair (him: Nigerian and me:Jamaican and African American) , I need to find out "the what's what ' before I take him home and deal with the fuckery that is bound to ensue from my family.  I mean if he is just dating me for kicks and doesn't intend to be serious, I need to find out. I don't want to deal with:

• my cousin asking if he "swung from trees , as a youngster in Africa, like Mowgli from the lion king" 
• My brother asking about his citizenship.
• My "color struck" grandmother asking me to "consider the children...". 

Lets be real, we all have moments where our families remind us of how far we have to go... So, to put the burden on him, I asked, "Do you think your parents would like me better than your last girlfriend? " He responded, "well of course they will, at least you are black..." and my dumb-ass has to belabor the point with the obvious, "You mean she wasn't black, your ex? The one you were with for four years?" looking at him like: "well, do you feel bad about it?" As if he should. In that moment I realized I had hangups and insecurities regarding white women. I had never come across someone who had dated/ been in love with someone who wasn't of color before, and as a result I never truly considered "white women" competition, especially with regard to any object of my affection. My mind flooded with all sorts of assumptions about his ex and now him:

• so she must of been fat
• she must of been ugly 
• she must be uneducated
• just all around bottom of the barrel
• he wants someone to be submissive... 

 If I had an audience , in my head, I would have been like>>>>>

Thankfully, I paused and internally asked myself why was I thinking like this? Usually whenever someone starts bitching about how interracial relationships are a threat to whatever, I am like:>>>>>>>




Generally, I can't allow stupid stuff to be said in my presence,just for the cool crowds sake. Yet in this case, I liked this guy-so home girl became a threat...and all of that "white girls are better for black men because, theory" came up-even though it's B.S. Because B.S is always fair in love and war; love is a war. lol  

While all this is going on, in my head-homeboy continues... : "yeah, she never met my family"  '  I am like,"in four years...I don't believe she stood for that foolishness" I would never!

And in that moment she became a woman to me, and I was angry for her; Like, how could he do that? That's awful! I had to ask him,


"So did you love her?" ( Why would I ask that?
)Diplomatically, he admitted that he did, to point of a weekly upstate bus-ride to see her in law school-not jail (double standard: no one visits women in jail-lol).

In that moment, i decided, he was cool. Anyone who can keep it real, when there is a very real risk of everything going wrong, gets all my respect... So, he loved her, but not enough to deal with possible (and likely) familial disapproval to legitimize her by binging her home to his family. Now this is the point where I realized that this scenario definitely played into something that could be my issue in the future.

I may be black, but I am not African, and I am most definitely not Nigerian. As someone who constantly has to hear aunt refer to my mom's attitude as "the Caribbean problem" and that she had claimed me for the "purely African American" side of my family that has sense", I know that this discrimination amongst people of African decent is real...I hate it and considering the stories I hear from my African friends,(from various countries), if your man doesn't support 
                                                you (and sometimes even if he does) you might be wasting your time...

They had an interracial connection and he and I had an intercultural connection, is one easier to defend/overcome than the other?Probably not...





That was something to mull over, then , and even more so later: when I thought about dating "white chocolate" and when I heard "this boo stayed home" stories from many of my other friends; who  involved in relationships where there are significant differences (race, culture, income and even location)....

Can you imagine someone saying, "I know you aren't thinking about bringing a Brooklyn chick to our home for dinner, you know those people steal-why can't you meet someone local!"  (Someone's mom)  

 As I have said many times before, I have lupus and unnecessary stress rattles my teeth. So I don't try to do a good job being tactful, when I know not using my words will bother me. I had a visual in my head of meeting his parents and him not "checking" his family , if they said something crazy .   I had another visiual of how hard it would be to corral my family into behaving, because they are all about passive aggressive "funning":

 I will never forget when they called my "Muslim" boyfriend "the bean-pie man", though that didn't stop them from fighting over the last slice of bean-pie that he brought over-to be social with their uncivilized asses.
 (In that moment , I regretted not leaving my boo, at home. Just to avoid the headache.  And you know when it fell apart, I was too through-after all of that.with the mental gymnastics of that day.)

Now, whenever the holidays roll around, as they do yearly...if I have a boo, I am forced to dissect our love. Like I may have enough love for him enough to cook dinner, but do I have enough love for him and enough faith in us to to bring him home and legitimize his boo status? that is the question  Sidebar: That connection didn't last, with my line of Sherlock Holmes questioning about things that don't concern me -surely you understand why.lol


Thank goodness that there is always another man to "try better " with. Someone you can "love, just the way they are, so let's toast to letting it all hang out privately."