The Michael Eric Dyson Reader

by Michael Eric Dyson

  While black men were being constructed as studs, and black women as inherently lascivious—basically it was guilt by association, since black women must be hyper-sexed to be able to satisfy the sexual desire of their men—white women were being projected as paragons of sexual virtue and placed on pedestals of purity. White female sexual desire, as much as possible, was segregated from public view. It was exclusively directed toward the bedroom of their white husbands, whose carousing outside the home—whether in the slave quarter or the whorehouse—was for the most part exempt from ethical scrutiny. There was minimal sexual contact between black men and white women during slavery. However, during Reconstruction there was a noticeable increase in these relations, although interracial marriages remained rare.

  Antimiscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage between whites and people of color existed in forty states until 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down these laws as unconstitutional in the landmark—and aptly named—Loving v. Virginia. Moreover, after emancipation, vicious sexual stereotypes served in part as a smoke screen to divert attention from how white men sought to prevent black men from enjoying the privileges of economic stability, middle-class status, and the freedom to raise their families. Still, the white woman defined the norm of beauty for the culture. She remained the prized erotic possession to be fought over by black and white men. Black women were largely excluded from this economy of desire, except in the crudest fashion.

  This history must be kept in mind as we ponder the sexual fault lines in black America, and the tensions between black men and women around the perception that black men are aggressively marrying white women. Interracial marriage among black men and white women has risen dramatically in the last few years. Nearly 8 percent of all black men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four who were married in 1990 married nonblack women, compared to just 4 percent for white men in the same age cohort who married outside their race. Region, occupation, and education play a huge role in determining the interracial marriages of black men. In the Pacific Northwest, 32 percent of black men marry white women; in California, it’s 20 percent; in the Rocky Mountain states, it’s 30 percent; and in the New England states, 19 percent of black men marry white women. Military service hikes the numbers for black men marrying women outside their race, as 14 percent of black males in the military are married to nonblacks.

  By contrast, only 7 percent of black men who didn’t serve in the military married nonblacks. More than 10 percent of black men who complete college marry outside of their race, compared to only 6 percent for black men who didn’t complete high school. And for black men who have attended graduate school, the number jumps to 13 percent who marry nonblack women. In fact, black men with graduate school experience are 30 percent more likely to marry outside their race than even black men with a college degree. Overall, more than 200,000 black men are married outside their race, mostly to white women.

  On the surface, despite the soaring rates of intermarriage for black men, that number might not seem particularly disturbing, but from the perspective of educated black women, it represents a significant draining of the pool of available black men from which to choose a potential mate. As more black men go to prison, die early from crime or from AIDS, are severely unemployed or underemployed, or choose an alternative sexual lifestyle, the numbers of compatible black men begin to significantly diminish for educated black women. And given the hostility that black men without higher education often harbor toward educated black women, the numbers of black men available for black women dwindle even more.

  Young black women face a crisis in available black men unlike that faced by their grandmothers, who found marriageable black men in relatively plentiful numbers. The GI Bill altered the educational and employment landscape for black men of the postWorld War II generation. Black men who had been closed out of white-collar and professional jobs found new opportunities beyond the school teaching to which they had been formerly relegated. While black women, especially in the South, held many of the teaching jobs, blue-collar jobs were at the time a far better source of income, including waiting on tables in five-star restaurants and hotels, jobs that many college-educated black males took, along with serving as Pullman porters.

  In the South’s segregated black schools, black men held most of the principals’ jobs. For those black men who didn’t go to college, especially since it was tough in the rigidly segregated job market for black men to reap benefit from higher education, they went to work immediately after high school in the jobs that collegeeducated men coveted as well. Under Jim Crow, the educated and uneducated alike met and mixed, and black women enjoyed a much larger pool of available and socially attractive black men from which to choose a mate.

  Today, not only are the economic opportunities severely shrunk for black men who don’t obtain higher education, but the overwhelming majority of black students who attend college—80 percent of them—are matriculating in predominantly white schools. In contrast to black students of earlier generations who attended historically black colleges and universities, black students now have far greater access to white culture, tastes, opportunities, values, and goals. And they mix with white peers far more frequently than black students at black colleges and those black youth who end their education at high school.

  The situation I have just outlined has in its own right negatively affected the prospects of black women finding a mate. But when one takes into consideration the persistence of the belief that white women are the ideal embodiment of beauty in our culture, and the prize that all men seek, the situation for black women is even more dismal. They not only fight against trends in the economy, employment, and education, but they fight a far more elusive opponent: the mythological eroticization of a standard of beauty that by definition excludes them from competition. Furthermore, black women are subject to stereotypes among black men about their being “difficult,” “demanding,” “bossy,” “full of attitude,” “aggressive,” and the like, ruling them out of play as possible mates, often by the relatively small pool of highly educated, or highly achieving, black men.

  Thus, when black women express anger at being abandoned by black men in favor of white women, they are neither being irrational, unfair, nor unduly hostile. Rather, they are taking stock of an abominable cultural condition over which they have little control. When highly educated or visible black men consistently make choices of partners or mates outside of the race, it appears to be far more than coincidence or the capricious stirrings of affection. In fact, it hardly seems to be arbitrary at all. Rather, there seems to be an undeniable wall of separation between desirable black men and the educated and beautiful black women they are turning away from in droves. White women are often unconsciously elevated as the erotic payoff—the sexual reward—for those black men who seek elevated status in our society, or alternatively, who want to cement their position as outstanding men.

  Hence, the spurning of black women cannot be considered an exclusively personal or private choice of black men in an erotic and emotional vacuum. In light of the factors that drive this trend, it must be seen as part of a deeply rooted, if often unconscious, process of pursuing the emblem of beauty and status from which black men have been historically barred. I am not suggesting that all black men who pursue or marry white women are the victims of an unconscious adoration of white standards of beauty. But it is difficult to ignore the compelling evidence that it is often more than happenstance or coincidence that drives interracial relations between black men and white women.

  Of course, it is hardly a one-way street. Many white women find black men desirable too, obviously for purely personal reasons—as is the case many times with the black male attraction to white women—but also for more complex social reasons as well. A black female student at George Washington University, where I had gone to lecture, explained to me her theory about why many black men and white women are magnetized to each other.

  “See, Professor Dyso
n, I think it has to do with the ideals both black men and white women represent,” the beautiful brown-skinned woman said to me in a circle of black female students. “White women are allegedly the ideal expression of beauty: blonde hair, blue eyes, keen nose, thin lips, big breasts, and flat behind. And black men are the ideal expression of the ultimate physique: muscular, dark and handsome, sexually aggressive, and of course, having a large sexual organ. So naturally, when they get together, it’s pretty explosive. It’s the meeting of two ideals.” That certainly was part of the answer, although neither the student nor I would reduce the complexity of erotic and interpersonal attraction to sheer physical chemistry. It also has to do with the way that chemistry is determined by deeply held social beliefs about features that we are told are attractive and those we are told we should avoid or that we can live without. Too often, those beliefs are shaped by racial considerations, driven by troublesome and often unexamined assumptions about white and black women that pass for common sense, but which, upon reflection, turn out to be little more than projections, stereotypes, or scapegoating.

  For some black men, having a white woman or wife amounts to enjoying a level of liberation from erotic or social restrictions that is downright intoxicating. For some, it involves the complicated choreography of racial revenge, as they seek—as I once heard it explained of a black nationalist who justified his relationships with white women—“to punish their fathers.” For others, having a white wife or woman is a way into the club of white patriarchy, as if to say, “I’ve got what it takes to snag one of your women, now let me have some of your power.”

  Of course, such a move might backfire, only increasing the likelihood of white male resentment, perhaps retaliation. But sometimes, in the strange machinations of the patriarchal imagination, the pursuit and capture of the white ideal of beauty signifies to white men a level of erotic and social competence that augurs well for transracial alliance in the business world. A black woman wrote to me about how her “sons’ biological father (nothing more) married a woman who was thirty years older than him, just so he could move up in the ranks of his job and have a ‘trophy white wife.’ Then he proceeded to have children with other women while he stayed married to his security blanket.” Of course, one might argue that this is merely the sour grapes of a woman who lost her man to a white woman. Still, her belief that some black men prize white women as stepping-stones is not farfetched. Some social scientists have pointed out that members of a stigmatized social group, or those bereft of prestige, often trade characteristics when choosing a mate. That might mean that black men have a better chance of winning the affections of a white woman if they offer, for instance, higher socioeconomic status in return. In fact, white women marry up more often when they marry a black man than when they marry a white man. A black man has higher socioeconomic status to offer in exchange for the elevated esteem he might achieve, in his own eyes, or in the eyes of those he seeks to please, by marrying a white woman. Interestingly, black men marry down more often when marrying a white woman than when marrying a black woman.

  This research may support the perception of many black women that many white women seek only those black men who are well educated, or whose high visibility and social status are compensation for the status conferred by white womanhood. Professional athletes and entertainers, among others, are noteworthy for a high, or at least visible, degree of interracial partnering and marriage. Many black women resent the fact that they are precluded access to such men because they do not offer the status of white skin, blue eyes, or blonde hair. Nor do they simply cater to the unreasonable demands of the black male star or prominent figure, as some black women contend is true of many of their white female counterparts.

  There is, too, a great deal of hypocrisy involved in the spurning of black women by well-known black men. For instance, some black men claim that their preference for white women—besides the fact that they are, according to these men, devoid of the bitterness, harshness, and drama of black women—has to do with the relative ease with which they yield to the sexual desires of black men. The irony, of course, is that if black women give in easily, they are marked as “ho’s,” and if they refuse black men’s sexual advances, they are often seen as “bitches.” By contrast, many white women are rewarded for the same behavior with permanent partnership or marriage. Further, many of the white women who aggressively pursue high-profile black men are viewed as appropriately assertive, endearing, and supportive. On the other hand, black women who are equally aggressive are viewed as “gold diggers” and materialistic hoochies.

  Perhaps one of the greatest furors among black women in recent memory was sparked when an outraged white woman—she signed her missive “Disgusted White Girl”—who was engaged to a black man penned a letter to Jamie Brown, editor of the popular gossip magazine Sister 2 Sister. Disgusted wrote to Jamie to “challenge some of your Black male readers,” saying she was engaged to a good-looking, educated, and loving black male, and that she didn’t understand “a lot of the Black females’ attitudes about our relationship.” Disgusted wrote that her man “wanted me because the pickings amongst Black women were slim to none. As he said, they were either too fat, too loud, too mean, too argumentative, too needy, too materialistic, and carrying too much excess baggage.” Disgusted said that before she was engaged, she was “constantly approached by Black men, willing to wine and dine me and give me the world. If Black women are so up in arms about us being with their men, why don’t they look at themselves and make some changes.”

  Disgusted said that she was tired of the dirty looks and snide remarks she got, that she “would like to hear from some Black men about why we are so appealing and coveted by them. Bryant Gumbel just left his wife of 26 years for one! Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, the model Tyson Beckford, Montel Williams, Quincy Jones, James Earl Jones, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Kofi Annan, Cuba Gooding Jr., Don Cornelius, Berry Gordy, Billy Blanks, Larry Fishburne, Wesley Snipes . . . I could go and on.” Disgusted admonished black women not “to be mad with us white women because so many of your men want us. Get your acts together and learn from us and we may lead you to treat your men better.”

  Then she challenged black men and appealed to an unstated compact that has been seemingly forged by many black men and white women, when she confidently wrote, “If I’m wrong, Black men, let me know.” This hurtful diatribe exposed the racial logic and, unwittingly, the unconscious white female privilege that work against black women, and to white women’s advantage. By arrogantly lecturing black women about their shortcomings, Disgusted failed to account for the elevated status she enjoyed—and the exaggerated value she had conferred on her—because of her white skin and the social and historical meanings of white female identity.

  But it isn’t just the famous or visible black man who is the object of white female desire. In 1995, seven black female students at Brown University started in their dormitory a “Wall of Shame,” which listed the names of the black males who were dating white women, when they became angry that many of the black males on campus favored white women while spurning their affections. It would be easy to make these and other black women look frustrated, irrational, jealous, foolish, or plain loony when they point to the pathological behavior of their black men avoiding or stigmatizing them. And yet, the trends suggest that increasingly, black males in college are doing just that.

  As a result, perhaps, college-educated black women are increasingly turning to white men and others outside the race in seeking companionship. Black women are often more constrained in the choice of partners or mates by a profound sense of racial loyalty. Between 1960 and 1980, the number of black women married to white men was relatively static, inching from 26,000 to 27,000. By 2000, it had grown to 80,000, and the number is bound to increase with the crisis of available black men only getting worse for the foreseeable future. To be sure, there is the possibility of the romanticized white male suitor—the one capable of providing life’s be
st, unlike the bulk of struggling black men, or the white man who fits the bill of what is sexy and romantic in ways that black men are rarely permitted—playing an equally problematic role in the black female imagination as the idealized white woman plays for black men. And as with many black men, simple attraction to the opposite race might be in effect. For the most part, black women are perceived as coupling with white men out of necessity more than preference.

  A recent spate of articles, in Essence and Ebony magazines, and in newspapers like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has commented on the phenomenon. The JournalConstitution article, entitled “Could Mr. Right Be White?” raised the ire of journalist Nathan McCall. The article quotes twenty-nine-year-old Melanie Robinson, a black woman who has dated three white men, as saying that black men take black women for granted since the numbers favor men, and that white men are “more romantic and willing to go on dates like walking in the park or visiting a museum.” Robinson also wishes that black men would do more than offer to take her for a drink or go to “Red Lobster for all-you-can-eat crab legs on Monday.”

  In a letter to the newspaper, McCall wrote that he found the article “appallingly racist and typically shallow.” McCall argued that it’s “one thing to say that some black women date white men because there is a shortage of available black men,” but quite another to “suggest that the very group that created and perpetuated that shortage—white men—are also the most sensitive and romantic people on God’s great earth.” He suggested that it would have been as easy to find women to “testify that white men are insecure, and that given a dating choice between an all-you-can-eat crab legs special and an evening at the museum, white men will opt for Red Lobster every time.” McCall concluded that he was thankful for shows like Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake, because, as “insane as their programs are, at least they demonstrate that human frailties are as much a reality for whites as for anyone else.”