I have my apprehensions about interracial dating.
More specifically, I have issues with black people dating White people.
More to the point, I have some serious issues with Black men dating White women.
White women dating Black men gives me a feeling of danger and anger at how stupid these guys are getting into bed with White women. I view White women as manipulative, racist, and evil.
From dating black men as a fetish to seducing them to their torture and death. White women have, and continue, to destroy the lives and reputations of successful black men.
Oddly enough, I can see the child in their children and find that my heart softens to them. Yes, it seems that they grow out of it, like all of us, yet, still children are children.
I see White men as stupid, toxic, and given way too much space, praise, and power for their deeds. I honestly think that if White women didn't exist, their whole race would still be living the way they were in Europe before they enslaved and colonized nations. Granted the males did the heavy lifting and bashing, but they would not know what or who to lift and bash without their women. With that said, I do not celebrate any Whites, particularly for their past, present, and their envisioned future as a race.
So, how did I have my "I am racist" moment?
I was watching a short documentary on YouTube about interracial dating in post-apartheid South Africa. Towards the end of the doccie, they showed a married couple of a Black male and White female youth church leaders. They were hosting their monthly dinner where they invited a diverse group of their church members to socialize to - I am assuming - break the walls of racial segregation.
When I tell you that they were the poster youth of the rainbow nation that has been pushed on us since the end of apartheid - I am not joking.
It made me sick.
It reminded me of all the ads they like playing on TV like Nivea, Hellman's, etc where they show youths just connecting, chilling, and dancing together, making TikToks and just being TOGETHER.
I remember watching such ads and being unable to recognize that it was in South Africa. They were portraying a part of South Africa that I didn't know and it made me feel sick because of how I could not appreciate that, simply because we had no justice.
Somehow White people can enjoy our lack of freedom, our lack of choices, our lack of space, our brightness towards things that have been normal for them, our curiosity, our desperation for joy, our openness to peace, our hospitality, our country, our children, our kindness, our culture, our sacrifices, our deaths, our hard work, all the blood and sweat and tears poured into our youth, our idea of a world where we can just be.
They receive all of that with no apology, with no acknowledgment, with no reparations, with no justice, and then they throw terms like dependent, lazy, entitled, irresponsible, uneducated, criminal, destructive, and barbaric towards us - the same Black people they are such great friends with, are married to, and with whom they have children.
Us. Their miners, nurses, builders, domestics, their Bokkes.
And somehow I am supposed to find joy in such displays of "community" and "a rainbow nation". Somehow I should be able to look at that and not feel as though it is fake and as if we are being exploited, AGAIN.
Damn it, I am Racist.
You cannot call any Black person racist. It is simply impossible. In all the definitions of racism, Black people are, unfortunately, victims, and do not apply any of those definitions to anyone else.
I'm not too fond of the Rainbow Nation because of what was done to my people and how it is constantly asked of us to move on.
I cannot move on.
I cannot heal.
What does that mean for me?
What does that mean for the millions of Black people just like me?
Hhaaii, another box ticked, I am Racist.
Do you know how I know that I am definitely for interracial love, am not racist but just traumatized. I know because I see any other interracial love as just that - love. I can celebrate it, find their babies weird and super adorable, and see them as just another couple. And although I know all the good things about relationships may be possible between Blacks and Whites, I simply cannot trust, nor do I believe that Whites deserve that from us when they felt that we didn't deserve closure and truth.
Whites, in South Africa, were not looking even to disclose the information we dearly needed to mend our hearts when they were offered a platform that cannot and does not incriminate via CODESA. To them, we just didn't deserve that, and at least we could suffer in these ways.
In conclusion, I could be Racist to White people. Not.
However, I can recognize that all races have good and bad people. Even Whites.
I can also recognize that some white presenting people do not have a white mind, and within that, there is great hope.
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