September 12, 2010

• BLACK LOVE AND GRAY LIES

  Contrary to rumors, libel, and slander, I do not hate all interracial couples. I truly believe that love is always rare and always a gift. As a lesbian, I would be a hypocrite to reject any love between any consenting adults. I am no hypocrite. However, I am a realist.

  Many people that I adore would never have been born if not for interracial lovers: Bob Marley, Huey Newton, Halle Berry, Shemar Moore, Chico DeBarge, Lisa Bonet, Sade, Frederick Douglas... Many people I admire have wed or dated white persons: Quincy Jones, Alfre Woodard, Lena Horne, Pam Grier, Marlon Riggs, Lani Guinier, Labi Siffre, Alice Walker...

  Like all African-Americans, I have Caucasian ancestry. And, I am related to white persons by marriage. Some of my dearest fellow warriors and friends are white. And, some of my fiercest enemies and detractors look just like me! As all warriors, I have always judged my enemies exclusively by their actions.

  I have always dated Black women exclusively. I have stopped counting how many times I have been wounded by them. At 39, I have just ended a six year relationship. I will love her forever, but I could never love her enough...I am completely broken, but healing.

  Only the love of a better Black woman can make my healing complete. Just as being a lesbian has absolutely nothing to do with hating men, but everything to do with loving women, my adoration of Black women has nothing to do with hating white women. I adore Black women exclusively because I love my Black self and my Black mother.

  Intimate love of another should always be a reflection of self-love. This is not racist. This is divine. We are made in the image of God. It is sacred to seek lovers who reflect our own image. I thank God for creating African women. I am a femme lesbian who loves being a woman and prefers fellow femmes as lovers. Black women are God’s most beautiful works of art and strongest creations. As Zora Neale Hurston penned: “We are the mules of the world”. Yet, as Maya Angelou penned:“Yet, still we rise”...

  I date Black women exclusively because I need a woman who understands/shares my life experiences, joys, fears, pains, abuses, passions, missions, dreams, perspectives, politics, emotions, vision, history, ancestry, etc...Clearly, I have yet to find all of this even in an African sister. I truly need and am desperately seeking a soulmate. Our souls are housed inside bodies that shape our experiences. As a lesbian, I need a cloned body that houses a cloned soul.

  I date Black women exclusively because I need what God gave to most of us: Chocolate skin, soft sexy nappy locks, sacred breasts, magical movement, divine rhythm, protruding buttocks, soft full sexy lips, round curves, soothing voices, soul food magic, and sista cool etc...We Black women have “that thing” that no other gender or race has. That is the thing I need to live, breathe, love, heal, and to survive. This is my thing. I humbly respect that your thing may be completely different.

  To each her/his own. Why can’t Africans who need whiteness be as honest about needing whiteness as I am about needing blackness? Why can’t whites who increasingly need blackness do the same? Love is where we find it. But, I am disgusted by how many people blatantly dare to lie about the motivations of their amorous searches!!!

  I want eurocentric Africans to embrace their eurocentrism just as I embrace my afrocentrism. Stop insulting me with your lies about fictitious colorless realities where“race is not an issue”!!! That is akin to saying “oxygen is not an issue” or “gender is not an issue” or “income is not an issue” etc....

  All relationships are difficult. Exceptional relationships are exceptionally difficult. I know this because I have yet to master a single one. But, I am honest about the reality of the world in which I struggle to maintain any healthy relationship. I demand that all others be equally honest about the world that we share!

  Racism and colorism rule all around me. It is a constant battle to keep them both from invading my own life. I live in the real world, unlike the droves of increasingly irritating interracial couples who dare to pretend that racism and colorism are both figments of African imaginations. Stop spinning infuriating fantasies about racism in order to justify your white supremacist romances!!!

  This column is written as an afrocentric reality check! As always, scholar and womanist Bell Hooks was correct when she penned the following: 

   

   “Collectively, black people and our allies in struggle are empowered when we practice self-love as a revolutionary intervention that undermines the practices of domination. Loving blackness as political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates the conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life....[Africans must] break through the walls of denial which hide the depth of black self-hatred, inner anguish, and unreconciled pain” [Killing Rage. “Loving Blackness as Political Resistance”.]

  It has taken our collective oppressors centuries to teach Africans to hate ourselves. Global white supremacy is very real and ancient. Not a single African in America was ever supposed to survive. We are all living black miracles. Slavery, institutional racism, constant media attacks, incessant eurocentric imagery, and mentacide, etc... are all designed to deliberately destroy us. These tortures take their toll on our emotional, physical, and mental health daily.

  It is a great feat to survive all that we do. It is an even greater feat to love ourselves and those who look like us as we survive. I am proud to be up to that task. Despite the toil and the pain of being black and blue, I will not stop looking for an equally Black and regal Queen to share my throne...

  Why is it that when black love fails, interracial love is presumed to be medicinal or superior? Yet, when interracial love fails, individualism is lauded as a reason to quickly seek a better white person? It is not racist to love yourself and your own race. It is not racist to want your children and grandchildren to look as you did when you were a child. It is not racist to want to see your own reflection in your lover’s face. It is human to love a person who looks like you or your parents.

  Why is interracial love so often restricted to black and white unions? How many other beautiful races of persons are on the earth? Why does the interracial propaganda that bombards us never seem to promote other racial mixes as adamantly and expressly as it does black and white unions? White supremacy rules all mixed equations. Thus, whiteness must always be in the mix.

  Race is complex. Racism intensifies that complexity. Mixed race persons should see their reflections in many races. Yet, even they most often seek only the whitest lovers they can find. Because even their exotic blood is no shield from mundane white supremacy.

  It is impossible not to be affected by racism and colorism in this world. We must defeat these ills rather than embrace and perpetuate them. Love heals all hatred. Self-hatred is the most virulent of all. Only self-love can cure global hatred. No one who values their own life would deliberately breed themselves out of existence...

  I have no respect for any person who exclusively dates outside of their race. Respect must be earned. I can never respect someone who does not respect themselves or their ancestry. Hatred is always learned, even self-hatred. Like all hatred, it can be unlearned. For Africans, that lesson begins with learning to love blackness.

  I have no respect for persons who are textbook examples of the perils of white supremacy. They want their children to be yellow with straight hair. They actually like the ghastly visage and bleached skin of Michael Jackson. They romanticize and covet the creation of Sicilian Italians by the racial suicide of the Moors. They hate and nullify blackness as they embrace whiteness.

  I exclusively adore all people who adore themselves. One must truly love and appreciate themselves and their own cultures to be interculturally competent and racially sane. I was born in 1963 and reared in a cosmopolitan area of Chicago, Illinois known as Lakeshore. I grew up appreciating racial, cultural, and sexual diversity. I still embrace a rainbow of persons and a melting pot of personalities in my life. However, I never translated a love of other cultures into a hatred of my own African one. I never had to stop loving blackness to embrace multiculturalism.

  I adore Malcolm X because Dr. Betty Shabazz did not look like Marcus Garvey’s octaroon spouse. I adore Denzel Washington because his wife does not look like Taye Digg’s fiancé. I adore Halle Berry because she is not Jennifer Beals. I adore Deion Sanders because he is not Tiger Woods. I adore Spike Lee because he is not Sidney Poitier. I adore Bono because he is not Eminem (“Enema”). I adore Madonna because she is not “Dr” Laura Schlessinger.

  Many strangers would be shocked to know that I adore many heterosexual males, who are both black and white. Most of my closest female friends are heterosexual. I am too afrocentric and too out for most eurocentric and closeted Black lesbians. I also cherish many lesbian friends in interracial unions. But, the vast majority of the women I love are platonic heterosexual friends.

  Despite the lewd lies of gaybashers, my lovers are rarely ever shared with the public. My private life is my own. I am often seen with women of many races, and most of them love women or men who look like them. They do not regard me as a black sex object. They love me as a human friend. These international people who really know me know that I am not a racist. They know that I am only a proud African who loves my own black skin and fellow African people. And, they know that I love and embrace all righteous warriors irrespective of race.

  I do not hate all interracial couples. But, I do hate all liars. I hate people who lie about their own self hatred and white supremacy. I hate people who lie about the reality of racism and colorism that are undeniable global cancers. I hate people who lie about precisely why they choose their interracial lovers...

  I have a former Black male friend who has loved many Black women. And like myself, he was abused by them. He is beautiful and dark skinned and grew up in the rabidly colorist South. I understand his pain. He is soon to wed a white woman. I believe that he truly loves her. But, we are no longer friends because he is not man enough to admit that he now hates Black women, and that I am emotionally stronger than he is because I still love Black women. He wooed his white bride deliberately to escape black pain. I am sincerely happy that he found relief. I only wish that he could understand that when he decided to leave Black women, he left me too.

  I am a Black woman. I can never leave myself or truly love another who has left me and my sisters. I will always love him dearly. But I can only be his friend, and embrace his white wife, when they are both honest about their union.

  I have asked him numerous times if his white wife has any Black female friends, he has never answered that question that still haunts me. In my experience, most white women who exclusively date Black men have nothing to do with any Black woman. I usually detect no real love in such colorful chaos. These are racists who only sleep interracially while, comically, daring to claim that “race is no issue”.

  One of the greatest misconceptions in existence is that interracial sex proves liberalism. No persons have ever had more interracial sex or could ever have more interracial sex than white slave masters and their black concubine. They literally owned every black body they laid.

  To date, the most racist persons I know are obsessed with interracial sex. The most radical and liberal persons I know all love people who look like them. They do not sexualize their revolution. They do not reduce liberation to their libidos. They do not taint their sincere social activism with sexual lust. The fever we share comes from a passion for justice not “the jungle”. We share a hunger for the abolition of global oppression, not apolitical global orgasms.

  I pray that my former friend is happy forever with his new white spouse. But, if they divorce, I know that he will wed a better white woman. I am unable to be his friend because he is unable to give yet another sister that same individual chance. I love him and miss him dearly. I hope that we can be friends again someday. When he comes home, I will be waiting with black open arms. And, I know many beautiful and single heterosexual African sisters...

  The late homosexual filmmaker Marlon Riggs was so much more honest than my former friend, even as he exclusively loved white men. In his legendary documentary “Tongues Untied”, Marlon painfully explained why he rejected Black men who had rejected him due to his homosexuality as a child. He spoke candidly and graphically about the demonic Black gaybashing pseudo-christians and the macho, sexist Black/closeted/bi-sexual peers who had made him feel sinful and sissyish, until he hated himself and everything else that was black.

  Marlon perished with AIDS beside a white soulmate while, still, defiantly proclaiming that “Black men loving black men is a revolutionary act.” Even as he admitted that he was a broken and unfit soldier for such revolutionary battles. He was perfecting himself as he belatedly moved towards loving blackness, and he passionately encouraged others to do the same. That act itself is indeed revolutionary.

  In “Tongues Untied”, Marlon spoke warmly of meeting his first white lover who introduced him to a healthy homosexual love and kindness that became a white male addiction. Even as Marlon’s afrocentric critics blasted him for refusing to love black men (i.e.“If black men loving each other is revolutionary action, then why is Marlon not acting? etc...”), Marlon accepted these criticisms with honesty, guilt, and grace.

  I respected, loved, admired, excused, and understood Marlon for this. I hate that most Africans who hate their blackness make no such effort to be as honest and humble as Marlon. They display absolutely none of his integrity and courage as they arrogantly and ignorantly embrace toxic delusion and cowardly lies instead.

  So many black lesbians live life even more eurocentrically than my former friend. They act like O. J. Simpsons in drag. In fact, they are so prevalent in gay spaces that I, and many other black lesbians, are often brazenly sexually harassed by white women who assume that we are also lesbian O.J.’s seeking their affections.

  Jazz stylist and author Abbey Lincoln managed to capture this exact same offensiveness as exhibited by heterosexual white women, in her enraged classic essay entitled “Who Will Revere The Black Woman?”, published in the renowned womanist anthology The Black Woman, edited by Toni Cade (1970):

  “We are the women whose bars and recreation halls are invaded by flagrantly disrespectful, bigoted, simpering, amoral, emotionally unstable, outcast, maladjusted, nyphomaniacal, condescending white women...in desperate and untiring search of the “frothing-at-the-mouth-for-a-white-woman, strong backed, sixty-minute hot black”.... We are the women who, upon protesting this invasion of our privacy and sanctity and sanity, are called “jealous”, and “evil”, and “small-minded”, and “prejudiced”...

  When a white man “likes colored girls”, his woman (the white woman) is the last one he wants to know about it. Yet, seemingly, when a Negro “likes white girls”, his woman (the Black woman) is the first he wants to know about it. White female rejects and social misfits are flagrantly flaunted in our faces as the ultimate in feminine pulchritude. Our women are encouraged by our own men to strive to look and act as much like the white female image as possible, and only those who approach that “goal” in physical appearance and social behavior are acceptable. At best, we are made to feel  that we are poor imitations and excuses for white women.

  Evil? Evil, you say? The Black woman is hurt, confused, frustrated, angry, resentful, frightened, and evil! Who in this hell dares suggest that she should be otherwise? These attitudes only point up her perception of the situation and her  healthy rejection of the same.”

  Meshell Ndegeocello powerfully conveyed this very same rage in her classic rebel tune entitled “Soul on Ice” from her debut CD Plantation Lullaby (1993):

  "We've been indoctrinated and convinced by the white racist standard of beauty 

   The overwhelming popularity of seeing, better off being, and looking white 

   My brothers attempt to defy the white man's law and his system of values 

   Defile his white women....                        

   Visions of her virginal white beauty Dancin' in your head                              

   Your soul's on ice 

   Illusions of her virginal white beauty dancin’ in your head

  You let my sisters go by

  Brother brother brother                 

  Are you suffering from a social infection/mis-direction          

  Excuse me, does your white woman go better with your Brooks Brothers suit?... 

  Used to be customary to bow one's eyes at the sight of a white face

  conks and fade creams

  sad passion

  deferred dreams

   I am a reflection of you        

  Black and blue

  pure as the tears of coal-colored children

  crying for acceptance                           

  You can't run from yourself                              

  She's just an illusion...                

  Black love anthems play behind white-skinned affection ...             

  But you no longer burn for the motherland brown skin                       

  You want blond-haired, blue-eyed soul                     

  Snow White passion without the hot comb

  Is that open-minded love thing an equality thing?

  Take a look in the mirror

  You don’t love yourself..."

  I am less angry at these obnoxiously racist white women than I am at the droves of eurocentric Black lesbians who do chase them and make them so arrogantly confident. Racist gay media are also co-conspiratorial culprits in this interracial madness, as they deliberately omit all imagery of black love in gay films and magazines. Case in point:

  I revere and adore a major, glossy, lesbian magazine. For the duration of my media career, this magazine has given me superior coverage. While “Essence” magazine was blatantly ignoring and flagrantly disrespecting my legendary rebel radio work and maverick entertainment activism, this white magazine gave me respect and honor. To date, this magazine graciously and generously features my work.

  Despite my fears of burning a much needed, beloved, and appreciated media bridge, I recently sent a letter to the editor of this magazine, lamenting the constant and gross absence of black lesbian couples in its pages. I simultaneously expressed both my sincere pain and deep gratitude. I was compelled to pen how I am wounded each time I rush to read a monthly issue, only to find exclusively interracial couples, only bi-racial children, and even a black toon that is always in bed only with a white toon etc...

  After a very long and painful silence, I finally received a curt and insufficient response. I fear that my honesty has ended our pleasant union. But, my reticence would end my sanity. So, I do not regret my candor. I do regret the ongoing omissions of black couples that I witness in this magazine’s pages, including its toon...I dream of someday owning a glossy Black lesbian magazine empire. Where ebony-skinned couples grace every page and nullify the sting of such omission.

  The same racist media omission occurs in heterosexual arenas. For example, the vast majority of professional African-American athletes have African-American spouses. Yet, it is only the blonde spouses who capture all of the media attention, mysteriously and perpetually. As always, white supremacy is a deliberate ill. White lies mask black truths. Eurocentric African lies make white lies gray.

  I take extreme and eternal pride in being a sacred and afrocentric exception to self-hating homosexual and African norms. We must ALL love our Black African selves. We must control our own black images. We must demand racial honesty in all arenas. We must keep it real and keep it really black. Bell Hooks is a sage and a savior as she pens superb and intellectual manifestos about black love.

  Loving blackness is indeed the ultimate revolutionary act. The revolution will not be televised. We Africans who truly seek liberation, know exactly how to collectively fade our own personal screens to BLACK...

   

  See these films: 

  IMITATION OF LIFE 

  JUNGLE FEVER 

  BROOKLYN BABYLON 

  SANKOFA 

  SCHOOL DAZE 

  TRUE ROMANCE

  JOEY BREAKER

  THE LUNATIC

   

  Read these classic books on race and love:

   

  Salvation: Black People and Love      Bell Hooks 

  Black Looks: Race & Representation    Bell Hooks 

  Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood    Bell Hooks 

  Killing Rage: Ending Racism   Bell Hooks 

  Love in Black & White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice & Taboo
  Mark & Gail Mathabane 

  The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African-Americans
  Kathy Russell, Madge Wilson & Ronald Hall 

  The Black Woman   edited by Toni Cade 

  Race   Studs Terkel 

  “Color Me Real”  in A Piece of Mine   J. California Cooper 

  The Bluest Eye  Toni Morrison

   

  

  

  

  • 1:24 AM
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