Starved For Romance

This post is not about blaming American society fully for why a group of women have allowed themselves to be starved for Romance. This post is meant to give a solution for a situation that has gone on far too long. This post is about African American women and our inability or failure to have men in our lives.

African American women have made great strides in small numbers in the last 3 decades. One of the wealthiest and most influential women on earth is Oprah Winfrey. When Oprah talks, not everyone, but certainly many listen. When I was in Turkey a couple of months ago, I felt a small surge of pride when I saw an article abouther featured in a major Turkish newspaper. Still Oprah is only one successful African American woman with a supposedly loyal male companion who has supported her for well over 20 years.

The majority of African American women don't have financial security or a man in their life like Oprah They are forgotten and doomed. For about 2 decades now, there has been warfare between African American men and women that is known in the black community and which has been occasionally addressed in black magazines like Ebony, but in the larger society this war is not well known. American society knows that young black males are very prone to being shallowed up by the criminal justice system. Just last week the nation witnessed the tragedy of the murder of NFL player Sean Taylor who at 24 had had his own run in with the law and was finally cut down by 4 young black men who were attempting to burglarize his home. He and his killers became another statistic in the constant bad news emanating from the black community, another story of a group of young black male lives wasted in a when there are no more places left where it can be afforded for more black lives to be destroyed. A generation of black males are lost in America; this must be faced. A generation of black females are lost in America too because they have become mothers at young ages relegating them mainly to the poverty and imprisonment of the ghetto. A new report came out this week that paints another grim statistic for black teenage girls. This year the rate of teenage pregancy rose for the first time in nearly 17 years. The jump was notedly sharp among young black females.

In the war and battles between African American men and women a strange situation has actually cropped up unlike perhaps in any other group on the face of the earth. More and more African American men have actually grown to despise their female counterparts and now date, cohabit with, or marry only white women. The reasons cited for this is that some black men see having a relationship with a white woman as a way as avenging themselves against white men. Black women had always been easy prey for white men during slavery. Up until the late 1960s, it could actually mean death for a black man, especially in the south, to try and have a relationship with a white woman. In 1955 a black teenager named Emmett Till was murdered by a group of white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. After the ban on mixed marriages was lifted, more and more black men turned to white women, not only to tweak the nose of white men, but also to deliberately enrage black women as well since many feel that black women were too harsh, strong, and greedy for money.

While black men turned to white female lovers, black women were left deprived. Occasional black men are often in and out of the lives of black women in the ghettos, leaving them with their offspring, but never them. For the educated black woman it is even more stark with relationships few and far between. The complaint has long been that if a black woman gets an education, meeting a black man on her level will be like finding a needle in haystack. This is very true. Over the years some have even advocated that educated black women take black men far beneath their educational and economic stations in order not to be alone. But if you have a Ph.D. how can you reach common ground with a guy who is just a truck driver? How can something as basic as things to talk about be found? Also black men are often intimidated by women who are far more educated than themselves. How can these obstacles be overcome?

I think all the issues about Romance and relationships for educated African American women and our "aloneness" in America can be overcome by more black women deciding to broaden our horizons and date and marry men who are not African American. This is not about something as infantile as tweaking the noses of black men, but about possible self preservation in the long run.

I have long been attracted to men who are not African American, particularly to men of southern European, African, and Middle Eastern origin. I have never felt pressure from my family to not became interested in someone who was not of my "race." My parents like me, feel that color should not get in the way of people loving one another. My mother has even joked that she would like to have a Jewish son-in-law because in the recent past if a black woman married a white man (ie. Alice Walker or Diana Ross) it tended to be a Jew. During the Civil Rights Movement and up until Jesse Jackson's infamous "Hymie Town" remark, African Americans and Jews had in some quarters enjoyed close relationships because both groups found common ground in the sufferings both had endured over the centuries.

Over the years I have admired the daring of women like Diana Ross, Whoopie Goldberg, and Donna Summer who were criticized mightily by blacks when they repeatedly dated and married white men. These black women lived and worked in a majority white industry where opportunities for meeting compatible black men are often slim. Would it have made sense for they have to deprived themselves and perhaps wait for nothing?

When I read that Halle Berry had started dating a white man I thought, "More power to you girl." Why not try something new? Several years back when my friend Mitzi, who had been an odd egg like me being among the tiny minority of blacks to attend The University of Georgia, married an Asian guy and had a child that looked more Asian than black, I was so happy for her. Mitzi did not sit back and wait for nothing. For me these good feelings were not about getting revenge against black men for their inadequecies, disrespect, and insecurities, it was about black women deciding to take control of their lives and seek happiness no matter what the black community or society at large thought.

I strongly advocate that African American women stop limiting their lives on all levels educationally, financially, AND Romantically. In the blog Interracial Dating Blog, the sad plight of African American women in the marriage arena is mentioned:

Many people will agree that the gender disparity in education and business among African-Americans has a spill over effect on relationships that African American women have. And like I said above, big mama taught women to move on with their lives even without a husband. According to some, these implications have redefined Black America's family and social structure. The percentage of African American women between 25-54 who have never been married has doubled over the fifty years, from 20% to 40%. This is more than that of white women (16%).

We must ignore the "big mama's" of the world who say that, "You can do bad by yourself, honey" because I believe that loneliness is killing African American women. After black men who have the lowest life expectancy rate in the country, we are next in line for the funeral dirge to be sung over.

Humans are made to be social. Only a chosen few have the gift of celibacy. African American women must stop speaking the language of white supremacists and saying that it is Biblically wrong to marry outside the race. This view is also talked in Should Races Mix? also in Interracial Blog. In the Bible, race is never once mentioned because over the centuries when it was penned, there was no concept of race. Ideas to divide humanity into racial groups is a western European construct. The concept is foreign to the Bible.

In my life time I have had both whites and blacks propose marriage to me. The two men I have loved intensely were an African from Zambia and a Turk. My first real boyfriend was from the African nation of Somalia. I have had my lonely times like most African American women, but I have never turned down a man's attention because he was not of my "race." I have never felt compelled to limit myself.

I wish more African American women would forget the restrictions put on them early on and decide to open themselves to possibilities in Romance no matter if the man is English, Indian, Arab, Chinese, etc. There is a big world out there, and it is time we became a part of it.