I DVRed CNN’s Black in America: The Black Woman and Family and watched it last night with a few other people. We all agreed that it was God-awful. The whole show went through all the problems with the “Black family” (whatever that means), and then included this asinine section about dating outside of one’s race. The basic jist: there are positively NO Black men for Black women to date, so some of them are even resorting to (wait for it) WHITE MEN. OH NO. The world is coming to an end.

I’ve been dating White men my whole life – so am I some kind of freak? It’s not like I was pushed to it out of desperation either. My first love was interracial, like me. We met in 2nd grade, and I loved him immediately. He moved to Kansas in 5th grade, then to Woodstock in 6th, and then to the Greene State Medium Security Penitentiary at the age of 17 – but we’ve remained close.

Since then, I’ve found myself deeply attracted to people who are my opposite (at least on the outside). I’ve been trying to figure out why for quite some time, and I think I’ve boiled it down to a few reasons. The first has to do with catcalling. I was an early bloomer and I remember, at the age of 11, being very uncomfortable walking past large groups of Black men (well, male teenagers). They’d always yell things at me or whistle or walk next to me. Not saying all Black guys do this, but on the whole Black men are much more vocal with their flirtation, and when I was young I really didn’t know how to handle it. I think this informed my early proclivity for White boys.

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