More Thoughts on Interracial Marriage Blogs

Did you get a chance to read my prior post Thoughts on Interracial Marriage Blogs? If not, please check it out.

It appears Black Female Interracial Marriage closed her blog to public view in response to my post. Perhaps I am wrong in that assumption, but the timing seems awfully close. If so, while I don't regret my post, I want to make it clear that my intention was not to shut any body's blog down from public view or hurt anyone's feelings. My intention was to make it clear how these blogs made me feel. While I was startled to see that Black Female Interracial Marriage set her blog to private, it did confirm my feelings about her blog. Because if your stuff is not foul, why block it off? She already had public comments off so it's not like anybody could post a bunch of nasty comments on it. I wouldn't do that anyway, and I highly doubt any readers of my blog would either.

Edited to add: the blog is back open to the public, looks like she closed it off not out of response to anything I wrote but rather to block off portions to be read for free and portions you have to pay to read.

I responded to a comment left on my blog by someone who wanted to clarify for me what the intention of these blogs were...I am re-posting my response here as I feel it deserves it's own post:

Surely there is a way to express interracial dating as an option without putting down black men and without holding up white men as the solution to the dating and marrying woes of black women. Because they are not. They are just men...these black women act like white men are princes come to rescue us or something. Marriage with a white man is not a fairytale and they are not any better than black men at being husbands. They are not any better at black men than being fathers. If anybody thinks they are, all you have to do is check out some majority white message boards for mothers to see tons of white women who were lied to, cheated on, beat up, and left destitute to raise children alone by their white husbands and white boyfriends.

On top that, in a racist culture such as exists in the United States, it goes without saying that some white people are racists or prejudiced. Not all, by any means, but racism still exists. So I think it's very off to suggest to black women that white men are a solution to our low rates of marriage. I am not saying it can't happen, obviously it happened to me, but I think it is probably easier to find a compatible black man than to find a compatible white man free of race prejudice regarding black people. Why aren't these women talking about that? Maybe they are happy or feel validated being their husband's 'chocolate fantasy'...but I truly don't think that most black women want to fulfill any body's racial fetish in order to be married. As a whole we aren't that desperate, LOL.

I also think that for black women who consistently choose black men who treat them bad and who are not father and/or husband material, a better solution would be to suggest that they look at the character of the men they are choosing...and not the color of his skin. Because there ARE black men who are kind, gentle, intelligent, educated, good providers, good fathers, faithful, loyal, spiritual, and want to marry. Just like there are white men with these qualities. And there ARE white men who are liars, mean, crazy, cheaters, abusive, stupid, bad fathers, terrible providers, and who don't want to marry. To suggest otherwise is not only wrong, it's downright delusional...and any black woman, listening to the women on these websites, is gonna get the shock of her life when Prince Charming punches her in the face or sleeps with her best friend or whatever nightmare she believes all black men will do to her.

Thoughts on Interracial Marriage Blogs

I've been surfing around the net reading some BW/WM IR blogs. That's black woman/white man interracial for those of you not in the know, LOL. Something about these blogs rub me the wrong way and I am not sure why...surely it is ok for people in mixed marriages to celebrate their marriages like any other couple? But I guess that's part of the irritation; most are not celebrating their marriage like any other couple. While many of them do celebrate their relationship, the focal point seems to be about race and how everyone is against them and how unique and special they are. Rather than being an aspect of their relationship, race seems to be the focal point of what their marriage is about. How sad is that?

There is are a few in particular that even kinda offended me, and it takes a lot to offend me these days as I am all about positivity. On Black Female Interracial Marriage, the blog author actually is trying to sell tees and bags and stuff with some sort of secret logo that single black women and white men can wear to signal to each other that they are interested in interracial dating. What in the underworld? Seriously, what kind of foolishness is that? Forget color, what woman wants a man who is too punk to come up and ask her out without a secret signal? You have got to be kidding me. She also appears to be running some kind of dating service or something on the blog; she has stuff like 'Miss October' featuring a new black woman every month interested in dating white men. Judge for yourself, but be warned. I found it to be nauseating. Not quite as nauseating as Black Women's IR Circle, whose tagline is "The Underground Railroad to Relationship Freedom for Black Women" (Seriously! I am not making this up!) which made me feel physically sick. That is just plain wrong on so many levels.

I just wish these blogs and websites didn't overwhelmingly say or imply that dating and marrying outside of your race or cultural group is 'broadening' or 'freeing' and that dating and marrying within your race or cultural group is 'limiting' or 'narrow-minded'. There is nothing wrong with dating and marrying within your racial and/or cultural group! They also seem to overwhelmingly feel that interracial mixing is going to be the end cause of racism. While I do feel that the acceptance of interracial mixing will increase in the United States and worldwide, I don't feel that the rise of interracial mixing will cause or even contribute greatly to the ending of racism in this country or anywhere else. To think otherwise suggests a great ignorance of history not only of the United States but of other countries.

For example, interracial mixing has been fairly common in this country since it began as a colony of England. Did such mixing stop slavery, did it then stop segregation, did it cause the civil rights movement? No, the ending of racism will be caused by white people who overwhelmingly choose to not be racist, to choose to end a system of skin color privilege and oppression, and they will come to this decision not because the majority of them will be married to black people. For one thing, as we are 12-13% of the population in the United States there are simply not enough black people for this to happen. For another thing, there have always been white people in this country who have been against racism and staunch defenders of citizenship rights being available and applied to all people born in the United States regardless of color. I do feel that these sort of white people will increase and I do feel that eventually racism will end in this country. I just feel that race-mixing will be a minimal part of this happening.

What I'd like to see on these blogs is a less one-dimensional view of their marriages.