Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

  Thirdly. Sowwie not sowwie, but last I checked, my name is not “White Girl Murder Victim in the First Five Minutes of Criminal Minds,” so, no, I will not be taking a Lyft to your crib so I can be murderized. Coretta Scott King didn’t go through all she went through for me to go out like that. In my mind, she worked her tail off so I can work my way onto the Obamas’ holiday-card recipient list. In all seriousness, this is the kind of grossness hetero broads deal with no matter the dating app—Tinder, Match.com, Bumble, Raya, etc.—but I decided to not let it discourage me completely, and I remained on Tinder for another week. That was dumb.

  I met a guy—let’s name him “David.” David is a white dude and private chef in New York, New Jersey, and Miami, which makes him sound like the star of a why-doesn’t-this-exist-already Bravo reality TV show called Playing with Fire where he runs his own business and has a long-term girlfriend he can’t settle down with because he’s afraid of commitment. Anyway, David and I matched and began texting off and on for hours. Everything was perfect until he hit me with, “What’s your background, btw?”

  Apparently, I’m Naive McGee because I told him I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, and he said, “Lol. What’s your ethnicity?”

  Hmm. There are five photos of me on Tins. It’s obvious I’m black, so I wrote back, “Black.”

  “Caribbean or American, etc.”

  “American. Sup?” Please note that this “sup” has an uppercase S, so this was not a “sup” as in “You down to party in my pants?” It’s more of “Boy, please don’t test me.” But, y’all. He did. He straight up dropped a blue book exam on my desk like I was back in ninth grade and had to break down the themes of Lord of the Flies. David wrote back: “Lol. Nothing. Lol. Just asking. You’re hot regardless.”

  Hold up. “Regardless”? “Regardless”? That word is Gorton’s fisherman fishy. It’s as though this dude is letting me know he still thinks I’m attractive despite being black American and not something more “exotic.” How patronizing and self-absorbed of him to think that I need or will only feel relief if I receive external reinforcement from a guy I barely know; furthermore, he’s participating in the racist and historically damaging fetishization that a black woman is only beautiful if she has a diverse background. But what’s even more infuriating is that in the span of me staying on Tinder for another week, David was the fourth guy who tried to see if I was indeed not African-American. Another white dude clumsily asked me about my background, as did two black men. The only difference is that the black dudes were much bolder about their displeasure in who I am. In fact, one black guy and I were getting along well until I told him I’m African-American and he stopped talking to me altogether. The other one? “Jamaican or black?” was his question straight out the gate. I responded “black,” and not only did he end the conversation, but I assume he unmatched me because I was never able to see his profile again.* Suffice it to say that after this trifling-ass week, I deleted my Tinder account, but still, I must ask: What in United Colors of Benetton is this fucking fuckery? If y’all dumb heauxes cannot tell that I am black AF and/or are hoping I’m mixed with something so I’m low-cal black, y’all can choke on the peacoat Rosa Parks wore when she told that white dude, “It’s gonna be a ‘no’ from me, dawg”—#Callback—and stayed her behind in the front of the bus.

  Unfortunately, this background check is all too familiar with every single black woman I know. We’ve heard time and time again that black women and Asian men get asked out the least on dating apps. Well, the OkCupid blog did something about these rumors and analyzed their own data in the 2009 OkCupes’s blog post “How Race Affects the Messages You Get,” which is still, to this day, often cited because the numbers haven’t changed that much:

  Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.

  But my pals and I didn’t need this data to confirm what we already knew. We relied on our own dating experience and what we constantly hear every day. There’s the black guy on Instagram under the moniker Maserati Rick who stated rich athletes don’t marry black women because “most of the sisters were raised in broken homes . . . the biggest difference is a white woman knows her position and accepts her role as a woman and let[s] her man lead. Black women believe it’s 50/50 and you have to be uneducated to ever think such a thing.” There’s also the black woman on Facebook who told me that a guy wouldn’t let it go and asked if she was sure that she is only African-American because she’s beautiful. Or a white girlfriend who was confused as to why I get so many fewer messages from guys than she does. And, by the way, this is not just a hetero problem. OkCupid confirmed that black gay men get 20 percent fewer responses than all other races, so the problem is widespread. And the website pointed to the fact that Latinx and Asian women are often heavily fetishized when interacting with men on dating apps. Depressing and upsetting, ain’t it? Not my intention, just trying to present the lay of the land here before we dig into my dating history.

  So, to recap: (1) Being single is fun sometimes (assuming the starfish position in bed without having to worry about bumping into anyone is #Goals), and at others, it blows (Doing chores by yourself is trash. I have to do dishes and dust my bookshelves? LOL.co.uk/BloodyAwful). (2) Dating apps make it tough for black ladies (and indeed all ladies) to find a quality partner, and (3) being in your thirties means you inspect all potential romantic entanglements the way Detectives Stabler and Benson do a crime scene. Now about me.

  We all remember the story from earlier in the book with the dude who told me I should tone up so I would look better? I don’t want to say #NeverForget, as that hashtag should be reserved for legit tragedies, but maybe #GrabSomeNeosporinBecauseDatsGonnaLeaveAMark would work? Hmm, not catchy enough. What about #RememberTheTime? Fine. That’s a Michael Jackson song. Perhaps #YourMindWillMakeYouThinkAboutThatMomentWhenLiterallyEverythingIsGoingWellInYourLifeJustSoYouDontGetTooBigForYourBritches. All right, that is less a hashtag and more just an accurate description of what my brain likes to do to me for funsies. Whatever the case may be, it happened and we ain’t forgetting about it anytime soon. Thankfully, that is the most humiliating thing I’ve encountered while dating, so yay, we got that out of the way. The rest of my dating life has been normal: crushes, unrequited love, being dumped, falling in love, and doing the dumping.

  To be more specific, here’s the Lipton tea: I went to a predominantly white private high school; my college’s writing program only had two black people in it, including me, in my graduating class; and as a stand-up comic/writer, I work in a field that has a lot of Jewish and non-Jewish white guys. In short, from the time when dating typically begins for people (high school) up until now, my dating pool has mostly consisted of white dudes. So I’ve got a decent amount of experience dating outside my race, and more to the point, I have a good amount of experience dating white dudes (two significant relationships have been with white men) . . . which, depending on who you are and if you care, that might make you SMH, side-eye, or judge me in a multitude of ways.

  To be clear, my stating that I’ve dated my share of white dudes is not meant as a form of braggadocio the way Kanye West rhymed that he balls so hard that his girl can “order fish filet.” (LOL. Wut? You can buy a four-pound bag of tilapia filets from Walmart for $10.98. Buying fish filet is not baller; it’s literally the foundation of Blue Apron’s practical business model so that basic Bs like me can feel like Iron Chef’s Morimoto for an evening.) Neither is my stating that I’m asked out by (noncreepy, nonracist) white dudes somewhat regularly. It’s not the sign that some in society believe it to be: that I’m dating “up,” or have been “chosen” to hang with the “cool” kids. It happens since white dudes and I inhabit the same social circles.

  I also do not state this apologetically, as if to imply t
hat I’ve merely dated outside my race only because I’ve been asked and not because the interest level was mutual. As in, “Y’all, listen. I normally avoid nonblack dudes the way you do when you don’t want something, but when you’re offered it for free, you’ll take it.” White dudes are not the JPMorgan Chase bank keychains of my life.

  Finally, I am not mentioning that white guys are interested in me as a tit for tat because black men date nonblack women, but that seems to be some people’s perception.

  Whenever I’m in an interracial relationship, I get emails or queries from black dudes wanting to know why I’m not with a black guy (funny, when I’m single AF, these same black dudes aren’t asking me out, and most, if not all, of them are now happily boo’d up with nonblack—usually white—women). Look, I’m #TeamBlackLove. It’s beautiful, gives me warm fuzzies, and on the rare occasions when I fantasize about having babies, it’s with MBJ, and we have little Lindt chocolate truffle balls of adorableness, but there seems to be a double standard where I have to have a Nation of Islam vajeen while black dudes can be out in these streets dating whomever they damn please. (Note: Just to be clear, I know that black men who date outside their race, or any person who does, get a lot of mess thrown their way, and also that black/white couplings aren’t the only IRCs [interracial couples], but I’m speaking specifically about my experience, and white men have been the only nonblack dudes I have seriously dated.)

  And my experience along with my friends’ includes a lot of outside opinions. You know how the Winter Olympics roll around and suddenly everyone at your job is talking about slalom all. Da. Damn. Time. And it’s like none of them have ever, ever, ever skied before, let alone competitively, but they’re now all experts in how the US needs to step up their skiing program to be medal contenders in slalom? That’s what interracial dating can feel like sometimes. Seems like plenty of people have ideas about it, many of them negative, and want to let everyone know about it. Despite the Pew Research Center revealing that IRCs are more common than ever (12 percent of all US newlyweds married someone of a different race), when a celebrity, friend, or family member is in an IRC in HD IRL—#TooManyAcronymsButThisIsMyBookSoFuckIt—it becomes the topic of focus, controversy, and conversation. Serena Williams, Constance Wu, and Jordan Peele have all been questioned for having partners outside their race.

  Out of all three of them, I am most dumbfounded by the rage I saw from black men on social media about Serena being married to the half-Armenian, half-German Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian. Some claimed that she is a sellout, that she couldn’t handle a black man, and that she is no longer a role model for young black women. If I remember correctly, she has publicly dated black men, but more importantly, throughout her entire career, I have witnessed black men on social media call her a monkey, say she is too manly, claim she is ugly and disgusting, assume that she couldn’t handle a black man (Common and Drake) and that’s why those relationships ended, and a litany of other insults (to be fair, nonblack men have historically dissed her as well), so for a lot of these black men to turn around and behave as though it is a grand betrayal that a black woman they didn’t respect found love with someone who, I assume, RESPECTS her is patently absurd. Unfortunately, those aren’t the only sort of comments. The following is just a smattering of what she and other people, like me, in IRCs undoubtedly have heard from people:

  “What do their parents think?”

  “Is this the first time s/he is dating outside of his/her race?”

  “This is probably a phase.”

  “Looks like someone has jungle fever.”

  “Oh, I used to have an [insert race different from the speaker] boyfriend/girlfriend in college.”

  “Is the sex different?”

  “Is it weird to date someone of a different race?”

  “What do you two talk about?”

  “So what holidays do you two celebrate?”

  “Your kids are going to be so beautiful. You’re having kids, right?”

  The last question is always asked, of course, as if there is no other reason to date someone of another race if you’re not going to make a Gap ad baby. Honey Bunches of No, y’all. I said it once, but I will say it again: Fetishizing or thinking that a mixed-race person is better because they fit within the arbitrary “exotic” box that society designed to create disharmony within racial groups (after all, we all know that race is a societal construct as well) is harmful and perpetuates the notion that those who don’t fall under the category of “white” are not multidimensional people, but objects without agency that people can project their thoughts, opinions, and desires onto without consequence. Whew! That was a mouthful, but it bears repeating because no matter how many times some people encounter interracial couples, they still treat them as if it’s something they’ve never witnessed before and do their version of John Stossel investigative reporting. News flash: If you do that, you’re treating these IRCs not as human but as zoo animals to be analyzed. Obviously, I understand that plenty of the questions I just listed and more are born out of curiosity and unintentional ignorance, but a fair amount of the inquiries are fueled by anger and hatred. Despite progress, there are still plenty of folks who prefer everyone stick to “their own kind,” so the dialogue tends to be nothing but vitriol. Take this, for example. When I was still dating my ex, an Italian, this is one of the lovely message I found in my “Others” folder on Facebook:

  Conversation started Thursday

  11/5 6:28pm

  ialmost sent u a frien request thank god i looked a ur pictures ur the fucking ennemy u r sleeping with the ennemy damm lilgirl u have tobe a lilgirl inur brain

  First of all, #FixYourSpaceBar #FixYourLife. And secondly, what is this two scoops of foolishness? This stranger cannot talk to me because I’ve dated a white guy? Riiiiiight. After receiving this ignorant message, I moseyed on over to his Facebook page, and half the black people in his pictures are lighter than a pair of baby Timbs. So clearly, there were some interracial sexy times going on in this guy’s family at some point in the lineage, but somehow it was objectionable that I’d gotten in on the fun. Because I am sane in the membrane, I didn’t write back to this buffoon, but I started to notice that, at times, it seemed that no IRC faces quite the same kind of scrutiny as white man/black woman (this may be colored—hehe—by my personal experience, but I’m sticking with it)—not even black man/white woman couplings. Of course, folks will run through the tried-and-true greatest hits album of racism (Mandingo myth, rebelling against one’s parental units, etc.), but with WM/BW, in addition to the racist snark, there’s also, a lot of times, confusion. People will have a blank look on their face like they’re a 2002 MacBook buffering while attempting to load a ten-minute cat video. Like, “Why are you together? What could possibly be the reason?” Take, for instance, Ann Coulter.

  I know. I know. Ann Coulter is one sparkly, spandex brief away from being a WWE heel in that 90 percent of the things she says fit into her brand of being the villain and may not always reflect what she truly believes . . . and yet her spewing nonsense in the public sphere does provide a voice for the ignorant voiceless who agree with what she says. Like when she appeared on a 2012 episode of Fox & Friends*—DERP—and stated that TV personalities Bill Maher* and Lawrence O’Donnell are “freedom riders” because they date black women. As if they get off on white guilt and this is the only plausible reason they would want to date BWs. I mean, certainly white men like O’Donnell are supposed to be getting their BAs in I Hang with White Ladies All Day, E’ry Day University. So what is going on? What is the “upside” for a white guy?

  Guess what, folks, it ain’t about any false narrative of an “upside.” Some white dudes just—gasp!—find black women emotionally, intellectually, and physically attractive. And isn’t that the real problem? Thanks to the historical treatment and percep
tion of black women, that’s not supposed to happen. Black women aren’t supposed to be considered beautiful by the mainstream. Not desirable. Not to be pursued romantically, at least not publicly. It’s fine to have her as a side piece, but to bring her to functions? Tsk-tsk. And yes, we have the Tracee Ellis Rosses and Beyoncés and Lupita Nyong’os who break through and are celebrated, but for the most part, for the average black gal, media and society would like to have people believe that no one in their right mind would view a black woman as a partner unless that person dating her is also black. Even then, the notion exists that that’s only until, as Kanye West rapped in “Gold Digger”: “And when you get on, he’ll leave yo’ ass for a white girl,” as if black women are a placeholder as love interests until black men can date the actual “prizes” aka nonblack women. But back to nonblack dudes, and specifically the white ones, for a second. Ultimately, some behave as though they cannot believe a WM would give up high status (being with a white woman) to be low status (being with a black woman). Heartbreaking, but that is often the message when they see a WM/BW couple. Don’t believe me?

  When Scandal premiered in 2012, it made Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn household names, but more importantly, it caused an uproar. The central conflict was that DC fixer Olivia Pope (Washington) was embroiled in a steamy affair with the very married president, Fitzgerald Grant (Goldwyn). While many people were transfixed by this love story, some immediately likened their relationship to the nonconsensual one of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Hmm. That seems like quite a stretch. After all, Pope and Grant are two grown adults and this “star-crossed lovers who can never be together” is an ancient plot device that many a TV show and movie has employed. What’s the difference here? Perhaps it’s that people are letting race and the ugly history of white slave owners raping black women inform their perception of the Pope/Grant relationship. Because when other contemporary shows have nonwhite guys or black men in interracial love affairs, they weren’t accompanied by a litany of think pieces. Not much of a peep was uttered about Jessica Jones’s titular character linking up with Luke Cage, ditto for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s Kimmy falling for Dong Nguyen, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Jake Peralta and Amy Santiago didn’t make waves at all. However, when the characters are a white man and a black woman, as was the case with Pope and Grant, she was constantly reduced to a person without agency, and some viewers claimed Grant partially likes her because he “owns” her.