interracial dating: issue not so black and white

My first response to peter St. Jean's article, "Colouring Opinion" was disbelief. I read it a second time, and my disbelief turned to rage. Rage that ignorance and hatred can make it onto the "Features" page during Black History month. Rage that the vicious stereotypes that still seem to surround gender and colour are being perpetuated in a university newspaper.

St. Jean's article purports to deal with the sensitive subject of interracial dating, but he dedicates his efforts largely to an attack on the "controversial" relationships formed between Black men and White women. In doing so, he presents a skewed and inadequate piece of work that fails to shed any new light on even this tiny segment of the issue. Instead, he falls back on a series of clichˇd, almost mythical stereotypes that reveal his complete lack of insight into the delicate racial and sexual arena.

The author quotes various sources that seem to express distaste for the sight of Black men in the company of White women. These sources express fear and anger that Black women are "losing" eligible Black men to white women, as if women's existence and wee-being still depend upon the successful pursuit and entrapment of a man. Alone, this antiquated concept would be merely amusing. What follows is not.

The article suggests that White women are winning the battle for Black men in massive sweeps, that Black men in droves are "selling themselves short" and seeking the ultimately unsatisfying "white woman experience," which is characterized as "the easy way" to a "quick piece of bum." His sources suggest that the white woman is successful in turning the Black man away from his sisters because she is a "quick thing," in contrast to the "high-maintenance," morally superior Black woman who is "not prepared to "give anything up easily." Black women require more courting, state his sources, while the "less inhibited" white women "throw themselves" at Black men, who simply "follow their lead.'

The stereotypes expressed in these quotes are a violent expression of hatred of all women, White and Black. The idea that women are fighting each other to possess men (of any colour) undermines the growing solidarity of all of the sisters, mothers, and daughters in the female family. not to mention the idea that women are still being judged according to how much courting they require in order to "give it up," as if female sexuality ought to be withheld and repressed for fear of public censure.

The proper passive function of female sexuality is compromised by the morally questionable White women who, according to the above quotes, yield it as a weapon of war in their pursuit of the Black man. I am horrified by the assumptions that St. Jean and his sources seem to be making about female sexuality in general, and even more outraged at it's sick division along racial lines.

But the disrespect and ignorance expressed in this article are not confined to an attack on women. They are all- encompassing, and extend in particular to their treatment of Black men. While it is demeaning to all men to suggest that they are pawns in an imaginary feminine battle, it is even more so to imply that Black men are helpless slaves of an uncontrollable sexual instinct that White women deviously manipulate to snare them away from their sisters. This kind of thinking perpetuates a victim mentality and ideas of racial inferiority, as if Black men are sheep who follow where they are led, incapable of making their own choices or controlling their sexuality. These damaging ideas are even more shocking considering that St. Jean's article is largely based on sources from within the Black community. I am saddened to see that the self-hatred implicit in this kind of thinking still lingers in the minds of individuals who attempt to pass themselves off as advocates of the African people.

In a mistaken effort to encourage African pride, an additional source manages to further demean the Black man. Jeff Ayi'Bonte, an SFU student interviewed in the article, implies that the Black man who chooses to date outside his race does not know himself. That he is only "Black by skin" as opposed to "Black by heart" if he finds beauty across a wide global spectrum (funny, I thought colour was only skin deep). Further, the Black man who falls unwittingly into a relationship with a white woman is in some kind of great danger. His identity is so fragile that it will be destroyed by intimate contact with a woman of a different racial heritage. Ayi'Bonte says, "These guys date the White woman and lose themselves." This is a patronizing and insulting statement, one that robs the Black man of personal power and dignity, suggesting that he is incapable of maintaining his individual identity in a non-segregated environment. The racial insecurity evident in this quote denies the spirit of survival that has characterized African history in North America, and particularly the achievements of the past hundred years of Black civil rights activism.

I could go on and on. But I am tired of rehashing these ridiculous assertions, and I am sickened by their vicious racial and sexual implications. I reject the myths that are played upon in the movie, Waiting to Exhale, which demands us to applaud the character who finally stands up for herself, refusing to be her philandering Black husband's "White woman" any longer.

As a strong, "high maintenance" White woman who has enjoyed loving and respectful relationships both within and outside my own race, I know that strong, kind, attractive men come in a rainbow of colours. I know that mutually satisfying interracial dating is possible, if sometimes it is made more difficult by the kind of thought that persists even at this university. I know that my ability to experience and empathize with another person's humanity is only limited if I accept the artificial racial and sexual boundaries that people like Peter St. Jean and company try to place upon me.

As I think back on my own experience, my rage turns to pity for these individuals, who have missed the point of so many years of struggle, forgetting that the idea was to develop a society where we look beyond each other's colour. my rage turns to contempt for those who hang on to their own outdated prejudice and attempt to pass it off as racial pride.

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