The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

by Michael Eric Dyson

  If the issue of black women having higher standards for relationships was a concern twenty years ago, it is even more prevalent now. According to some research, black women have been less willing than white women to marry men with lower status and undesirable traits—those who are younger, previously married, less educated, or unattractive. In short, black women prefer attractive men who are near their age and who have a stable career. For those black women who have never been married, they prefer mates with no previous wives or children. The younger the black woman, the greater her expectation that her man meet the criteria she deemed important. Further, black women who have higher status are more invested in building careers and less urgent about finding a mate. The economic independence of high-achieving black women, and the deteriorating economic conditions of black males, severely depletes the pool of potentially marriageable black men.

  In our nation, people tend to marry folk who have similar educational backgrounds. That poses a huge problem for black men and women, since the ratio of highly educated black men to women has been said to be as small as sixty men available for every one hundred women. There are nearly 400,000 more black women than men enrolled in higher education. Black women are now earning more than 63 percent of all college degrees awarded to blacks. There are nearly 4 million black married couples in the United States, and among them, just under 10 percent have marriages where both spouses have a college degree. Slightly more than 1 percent of them are marriages where both spouses had graduate degrees.

  Moreover, black women with higher levels of education are disproportionately affected by the shortage of black men with similar levels of education. In the 1930s, only 11 percent of black women were expected not to marry; today, less than 40 percent of black women are expected to marry. One might conclude in analyzing these statistics that there is no shortage of black men for black women to marry, but that black women choose to remain single rather than marry partners who do not meet their expectations. Further, educated professional black women seek to marry only those men they find acceptable by high standards; thus, lack of motivation, not availability, is the critical issue.

  But that would be extremely shortsighted. While it is true that such numbers might translate to black women being “picky,” the reality is that black women seek to meet and marry those men with whom they have the greatest degree of compatibility. Black male resentment of black female achievement, especially among black men who have not enjoyed the opportunity to succeed, may translate to unwarranted hostility toward black women. Many brothers feel that black women are the pawns of a white establishment that seeks to hold them down. As a result, black female movement through educational and professional ranks is to some black men a symptom of black women’s complicity with a racist system. Rather than offer an astute analysis of our condition—that in a patriarchal culture, black men do represent a specific threat to white male power that black women don’t, and hence, in some instances, white men prefer the presence of black women in professional settings—black men often confuse the consequences of racism with a desire of black females to undercut them.

  Further, for a black man to reach beneath his class station to embrace a black woman reinforces the status quo: as breadwinner, he can provide for his family, and thus remain “head of the house.” For a black woman to behave similarly upsets the status quo: if she makes more money and is better educated than her partner, the resentment of her man can become burdensome, sometimes abusive. I know a lot of brothers who felt they could take a woman making more money than them, but once the reality of her higher status set in, it usually took on social meanings beyond a paycheck. Issues of control inevitably arose, and the question of who was in charge followed in its wake. Since black men struggle with a society that sets up expectations for appropriate masculine behavior—take care of one’s family, be gainfully employed, be a financial success—and then undermines their attainment, black women are often the psychological scapegoat of our anger. The rise in black male domestic violence is poignant testimony to such tensions in the black home.

  It would be hard to blame black women for wanting to be “equally yoked,” but that does not mean there aren’t sisters who are dismissive of black men outside of their income or educational bracket. In my early twenties, a young lady I had grown quite fond of and with whom I had become intimate, bluntly told me, “I’m attracted to you physically, and I think you’re very smart, but you’re a minister, and you won’t make a lot of money. I need a man who will be financially well-off, so I don’t think we can have a relationship.”

  I was stunned and hurt, and from that day forward, robbed of any illusions about how poorly some sisters can behave. Still, the grim reality is that black men often despise women’s success as the unfailing predictor of domestic trouble. I will never forget a black man who told me that his wife’s education had hurt their relationship because she no longer understood her place. “She became a ‘phenomenal woman,”’ he declared with bitter irony, citing in his resentful put-down the famous Maya Angelou poem of the same name. I have heard similar comments repeated by brothers time and time again.

  Despite all of this, many college-educated black women marry black men with significantly lower levels of education. In marriages where black women have a college degree, only 45.9 percent of their husbands also have a college degree. More than one-quarter of black women who have a college degree are married to men who have never gone to college. And 4 percent of black women with a college degree are married to black men who didn’t graduate from high school. By comparison, nearly 70 percent of white women with a college degree married men who also had a college degree, and only 12 percent of white women with a college degree married men who never went to college. While black women may prefer mates who are educationally compatible, they have often chosen mates whose lower achievement makes their marriages vulnerable to divorce and spousal abuse.

  Other black men complain bitterly that many black women prefer the hardcore, thugged-out brother, the bad boy, the player. A brilliant young Vanderbilt University professor of mathematics, whom this thinking victimized, wrote an essay about his experience for Essence magazine. Jonathan Farley is a tall, slim, attractive brown-skinned young man, a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard who took a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University and is an outspoken advocate for the Black Panthers. In his essay, he recalls a painful episode: a young lady with whom he fell in love only wanted to be his friend. But the worst of it is that she took him to dinner to heal his wounds by telling him why he struck out. “She outlined the difference between men like me and the men Black women preferred, between mere African Americans and ‘niggaz’: AfricanAmericans are safe, respectable, upwardly mobile and professional Black men. Niggaz are strong, streetwise, hard Black men.”

  Jonathan pointed out that his erstwhile love had a question posed to her by a friend: if she was walking down a dark street at night, who would she want by her side, an African-American or a nigga? She told Jonathan that black women sought a strong protector. Jonathan writes that he “tried to explain that physical strength had ceased to be a survival trait back in the Stone Age.” Further, he warned her that women who prefer niggaz to African-Americans were making a costly mistake since African-Americans, by virtue of their “higher social and economic status”—and wasn’t this what black women wanted?—could better protect them and give them the security they desired. Since many young black women grow up without fathers in the home, even college-educated black women often settled for dropouts and drug dealers.

  Because of his experience, Jonathan found himself “resisting my own impulses to open a door, start a conversation or even say hello to many young black women I meet, for fear of appearing too gentlemanly and hence unworthy of their attention.” Jonathan argued that even black men who were “raised in the suburbs don the attire and attitude of street thugs so that they, too, will be chosen.” He concluded his essay by admonishing sisters to “leave the players in t
he playground. . . . Knights in shining armor don’t have to have gold teeth.”

  Many black women have admitted that this is far too frequent a flaw among their sisters. Many sisters claim to have outgrown such an inclination, chalking it up to their youth and their failure to know what kind of man would really be a good partner. Once they mature, many black women are attracted to brothers whose stability and substance are prized above the flashy danger of destructive black men.

  If some black men chafe under the restrictive mythology of the ghetto tough, many more black women are passed over for an equally nefarious reason. Recently, when I lectured at a northeastern college, a young lady approached me after my lecture. As we chatted about a number of issues, we began to discuss the dating situation at her college for black women. That’s when she dropped the bombshell on me.

  “Professor Dyson, my boyfriend broke up with me earlier this year,” the attractive chocolate sister told me.

  “Why’d he do that?” I asked her, noticing that her heart was heavy, her eyes tearing up as she spoke.

  “He said I was too dark,” she said lowly.

  “That can’t be right,” I protested on her behalf. “Did he actually tell you that?”

  “Right to my face,” she replied, as if still in shock.

  Although many black men are rarely that blunt, their actions speak just as harshly. The preference for light-skinned women finds painful precedent in black culture. It dates back to slavery when the lightest blacks—whose skin color was often the result of rape by white slave masters—were favored over their darker kin because they were closer in color and appearance to dominant society. Unfortunately, despite the challenge to the mythology of inherently superior white standards of beauty, there persists in black life the belief that light is preferable to dark. Music videos have historically presented light-skinned black women as the most desirable women. Even as browner women have more recently won space in the culture of representation within our race—a few of them, like Carla Campbell, Angela Basset, and Valerie Morris appear in videos, film, and on television news, respectively—there is an undeniable subordination of darker-skinned black women to lighter sisters in everyday life.

  A bright, beautiful, and brown friend of mine—I’ll call her Renee—recently told me that she dated for a year a famous football star, a very dark brother, who told her that he almost didn’t ask her out because she was so dark. One of his gridiron colleagues, an equally chocolate brother, said within her earshot that Renee was not the kind of girl he usually dated since his other women had been much fairer. Renee also reported to me that an all-star NBA player told her that in order to fit in, he had to have the same car, same house, and same-looking woman as most of the other basketball players—meaning women who are very light-skinned or of mixed heritage, since these women are “hot” now.

  Renee shared with me a painful e-mail missive from an intern who worked in her office that testifies to the persistence of virulent beliefs about skin color in black America. The young lady said that she and her friends felt that “as normal/ average looking young black women, we are no longer desirable.” She has “many friends who are dark-skinned and have natural hair who complain that they can never get attention from black men.” She also commented on what she and her friends have termed “hybrid chicks,” girls who are showcased and admired in music videos because they “are exotic looking, either half black and Asian or half Hispanic.”

  What is remarkable is that such self-defeating prejudice persists despite the growing prominence in some circles of beautiful dark-skinned black women. There is Ingrid Saunders Jones, the enormously gifted corporate executive who, from her perch as a senior vice president of Coca-Cola and head of its foundation, has funneled tens of millions of dollars into black America in aid of charitable, civic, and cultural causes. Ingrid is a glamorous woman with flawless, honeydipped ebony skin; healthy, sculpted eyebrows; soulful and sexy eyes; cascading, jet-black hair that is often pulled back into a ponytail; a blinding smile; perfectly lined lips; and a ’50s-style sensuality. There is Vanessa Bell Calloway, the intelligent and strikingly beautiful actress and co-host of the BET talk show Oh Drama. Vanessa is a shapely, buff sister with a dewy, espresso-brown complexion; clear, bright eyes; perfect white teeth; and a glittering sexuality—and a laugh as strong as her personality. There is Darlene Clark Hine, a brilliant Northwestern University historian—and former president of the Organization of American Historians—who has written several path-breaking books on black women’s life and history. Darlene is a deep, rich maple-colored beauty with entrancing features: big, expressive eyes; succulent cheeks; sexy, full lips; and milk-smooth skin, framed by a flow of layered, shining, silky, silvery hair. And among the younger generation, there is Aunjanue Ellis, a superbly talented actress with Ivy League credentials—she attended Brown University—and graduate training at New York University. Aunjanue is a smoky, sultry chocolate stunner whose megawatt smile, thick black tresses, chiseled cheeks, sweetly burnished flesh, alluring eyebrows, riveting dark eyes, luscious and life-affirming lips, svelte and taut physique, and comely legs make the gorgeous thespian a vision of soulful sensuality.

  The continued preference for lighter sisters among blacks bears witness to psychic wounds that are not completely healed. The poisonous self-hatred that pours freely in the rejection of dark blackness is painful evidence of our unresolved racial anxieties about our true beauty and self-worth. Dark black women have often been cast aside and looked down upon because they embody the most visible connection to a fertile African heritage whose value remains suspect in our culture and nation.

  As long as black men continue to spurn the root of our reality—summed up, perhaps, in the saying, “the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice”—the longer we will be separated from the source of our survival. While we are wise not to envision our blackness in literal terms—it is not simply about skin, but about sensibility, aesthetics, culture, style, and the like—it would be foolish to deny that the debasing of blackness is often about the debasing of blacks in our skin, through our skin, because of our skin. While race is more cosmic than epidermis and flesh—encompassing politics, social structure, class, and region—our place in the world, and our reward and punishment too, are profoundly shaped by color.

  As big a barrier to the flow of love between black men and women as the issues I’ve discussed are, perhaps none is more controversial, or as hurtful, as the rejection many black women experience when black men date and marry white women. As I lecture and preach across the country, black women of every station corner me, or ask me before an auditorium of hundreds, sometimes thousands, a version of the question: “Why do so many brothers despise us and chase white women?”

  Of course, I am always reluctant to speak for all black men, especially when it comes to something as personal and subjective—though obviously not without serious social overtones—as who one likes or loves. And many of my heroes—Quincy Jones and Sidney Poitier among them—married white women at a time when doing so bravely challenged the nation’s apartheid. In the ’60s and ’70s, interracial marriage, whether intended or not, represented a rejection of white supremacist values and indicated that love was a matter between individuals, not races. Few could miss the heroic gesture of loving across racial lines. Those who did often risked their reputations and social status while enduring cultural stigma. In short, it was apparent that interracial romance was unavoidably interpreted in political terms.

  But if we are honest, interracial love has rarely, if ever, been simply about love. It has always borne political implications. From the very beginning of the black presence on American soil, stereotypes have distorted relations between the races, including those involving sex. Black males were brought to this nation in chains to be studs. Their virility was placed in the service of slavery. Black females were raped at will; their wombs became the largely unprotected domain of white male desire. Their sexuality was harnessed to perpetuate slavery thro
ugh procreation. Later, of course, many more stereotypes of black men and women flourished, from the docile Uncle Tom, the fiery “field nigger,” the compliant “house nigger,” and the uppity buck, to the nurturing Mammy, the sarcastic sapphire, the promiscuous Jezebel, and now, in our day, the sex-crazed Lothario, the unrepentant rapist, the welfare queen, and the hoochie mama.

  These stereotypes revolve largely around sex—how black people have it, under what conditions, for what reasons, how frequently, and if it can be read as a symptom of their debased nature and perverted character. Hence, these stereotypes often expressed the stunted social perceptions of black identity put forth by a white culture that refused to own up to its heavy hand in their creation.

  Moreover, white society was ambivalent about black sexual identity—they wanted their blacks highly sexed to support slavery and white male pleasure. Otherwise, they wanted blacks to be constrained, even sexless if possible. Black men were feared and envied for their mythically large sexual organs. White male sexual desire was linked to strengthening patriarchal culture. As a result, white men sought to exploit black female eroticism, and to minimize sexual competition by outlawing black male sexual interactions with white women. The rise of lynching and castration are tied to the white male attempt to control the exaggerated threat of black male sexual desire. Long after the demise of such vicious social acts, the strong taboo on interracial sex prevails.