Not With My White Daughter, You’re Not
Black friend… tolerated. Black boyfriend… never.
The diversity dating pool in a predominately white community is shallow at best. If you are Black and interested in diversifying your portfolio, you’d be better served to venture out from the land of soccer moms and racist-lite microaggressions. If “melanin challenged” is your thing, look no further than your closest froyo shop.
When I got bit by the dating bug in my early teens, the thought of how others would react to my seeing someone outside of my race admittedly was of little concern to me. At 13, I was too focused on spending time with whomever I wanted.
That is until I got a taste of racism by the families of those girls I was chillin’ with.
Receiving threats of violence is not uncommon if you are a minority in a white space. That’s just part of your world. Somehow you learn to live with it, as do many people of color in diverse-free communities. You’re a target. Full stop!
As a Black teen, once I stepped outside the comfort of home, my environment was a healthy mix of discrimination, the occasional physical threat, and racial profiling, especially when it came to dating life. Yum!
Guess who’s coming to dinner
Everything you experience while Black in a white space has strings attached and is often met with suspicion. There is never an occasion when you’re able to sit back and not have to worry about what might happen, if someone from the majority will mistreat you, or if you’ll make it home alive. Arguably your life (to some degree) is predetermined. How you navigate your childhood to how, and if, your aspirations take root are decided for you as soon as you enter the world.
For many teens, the social dynamic is of the utmost importance. The peer group often determines your interactions with others and can be the benchmark by which you are judged. My presence in the homes of friends (white friends) parents was accepted to a point under the unwritten AND unspoken rule of not overstepping my invitation. If no threat was perceived, said invitations would be extended but shadowed always by an underlying hesitation.
For some reason, my instinct as a preteen was to be overly friendly with the parents of whoever I was seeing. Probably a result of some deep-rooted trauma and subconsciously wanting to please the “massah.” I’m not sure, but my objective was to regularly paint a picture of the non-threatening Black person who, surprisingly, was more concerned with a parent’s acceptance than that of their daughters. Looking back my eagerness to please makes me sick but at that young age, I guess I always knew the potential danger of poking the “white supremacy” bear and how that could directly impact my life as a young Black kid.
Jane got a gun
Jane, a friend from a neighboring town who loved to host, would often offer up her house to the friend group to engage in typical teen shenanigans. Over time, I developed a rapport with her parents who often inquired about my next visit. When I did visit (with a group) I consistently felt welcomed and was usually extended expressions of hospitality even before other friends had time to settle in. I enjoyed the attention. While Jane never thought much about her parents over the top hospitality toward me, I admit, at times, I was a bit suspicious. Think, Get Out!
At some point during the summer of my sixteenth year, a mutual friend told Jane’s parents that Jane and I were dating. Though we were close, this was not the case as I was kicking it with one of her friends. I’m not sure of the intent of this lie but the damage was just beginning. One evening, a rather large group of friends congregated at Jane’s to hang out. Her parents, expected to be home late, came back early to find tens of mildly intoxicated teens about their house carousing and carrying on. After a few scolds and spontaneous threats to call parents, the bulk of the guests left, while the core group of friends stayed to help clean up.
At one point, Jane’s father asked me to stay after everyone left. Because we were familiar with one another, I obliged thinking he trusted me and wanted to get the skinny on what went down in his house that evening. I was wrong.
Once the house cleared, his true nature came out to play. He began by informing me that if I stepped foot in his house again, he would have me arrested (or worse). His rapid-fire continued. “You are never to see MY daughter again.” Not Jane… “MY” daughter. By his revealing his ownership of his daughter, it seemed as if he was more concerned about how the optics of his daughter dating a Black boy would reflect on him. The picture was getting clearer after every microaggression. “You will not go near her, this house, or my family” — as if he had unearthed the ultimate threat to humankind.
His anger elevated each time he explained his directive. His eyes red with disgust and his demeanor fluctuated from unstable to threatening — I could tell he was on the verge of calling me the n-word but somehow suppressed the impulse. Perhaps in that moment, he remembered he previously “tolerated” me. I was scared. Not of him but more by what he could do. At 16 all you can think about is what trouble might lie ahead. When you are a 16-year-old young Black male, what you think about is much worse.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. — Mother Teresa
Ultimately he couldn’t wrap his brain around the idea of my seeing (or not seeing) his daughter. It just didn’t compute, or he wouldn’t let it. Although Jane and I were just friends, the idea of her involvement with a Black boy was enough to trigger his inner racist.
The thought of contaminating the gene pool or muddying the waters with a drop of that “Black blood” was his all-consuming misguided racist belief, ultimately driving his objective of putting the hammer down on future interactions with his daughter.
Needless to say, Jane and I were no longer friends after that night. From mutual friends, I did learn that her father thought about involving the police after the fact just to put a pin in the possibility of her and I socializing in the future. It didn’t matter that this father knew me, that he had frequently invited me to his home, or that for a time, seemingly had no issue with my being around his daughter. What mattered to him was the unimaginable thought of a Black boy involved with his white daughter.
Don’t you want to hang out?
Each family had its own way of reminding their daughter (or me), that our union was not accepted and by every means necessary, would try to stop it. Some white fathers, as you might expect, typically took their lack of tolerance to the extreme.
Throughout my years of multiracial interaction, I’ve been met with threats of violence, told to stop seeing friends, and witnessed daughters being told they would be disowned if they continued to see me, etc. On occasion uncles, cousins, and big brothers were recruited to step in and make sure I kept my distance and not get anywhere near their female kin. When you were one of a handful of Black kids in the community, there was no hiding — certainly no respect.
I was 15 when the threat of being hanged first entered my life. I’m not referring to a Shotgun Daddy waiting on the porch for his daughter to come home from a night out with her boyfriend. My exposure to this ugly experience was a father in his truck chasing me from his house where earlier his daughter and a group of friends were hanging out. I was the “lucky one” who got the threat and the chase.
Looking back at my dating history, I don’t recall a time when a white family ever approved of my dating their daughter. Going into these situations was never a shock. By my mid-teens, I was well aware of my Blackness and how many in my orbit opposed my existence.
More than what you see
In my early years I got a crash course in racism and the blatant hatred many had for young Black boys trying to live their lives. The seed of Black trauma was being planted yet would not identify itself till much later. Experiencing a relentless racist agenda in an unwelcoming environment, for a time, solidified my mental segregation from the world around me. Though I knew it was wrong for people to judge me and have issues with whom I spent time, the reality often dictated my social interactions causing many self-reflective days of contemplating my worth.
Over time, casual dating and a few relationships were done under cloak and dagger. Of course, this was only the case when seeing a white girl. Strangely (or perhaps not), I never ran into these obstructions when dating women of other races. Yes, like, many male (or female) suitors, there were those occasions when a family member’s disapproval was evident but in these instances, race never played a significant role. In a way, a welcomed surprise. There is something to be said for being scolded by a father for bringing a daughter home late than for being threatened to be hanged from a tree because you don’t fit a racial standard.
Having to pull the plug on a relationship once word got back to a non-accepting family was also part of the dating equation and a means of survival especially for the significant others involved. In a few instances, daughters themselves experienced threats of violence if they continued to see me. Out of concern for their safety, sacrificing our happiness was imminent.
The logical thinking is why not stick with people who share my skin color or with non-whites. Makes sense, however, being a Black kid raised in a white space the opportunity was limited. Racism exists in many cultural groups; certainly in how they treat the Black community. Finding that balance between self-empowerment and acceptance from others can be a challenge but in order to live your life, you have to be fearless in your pursuit of happiness.
Bottom line… you love who you love, you kick it with whom you want to kick it with, and no one has the right to keep you from doing so. Living your life is exactly what it is — YOUR life.
Love is blind despite the world’s attempt to give it eyes. ― Matshona Dhliwayo
Thank you for reading!
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