I remember the first time a black man told me that he didn't date black women like it was yesterday. It was my freshman year of college, and he was part of a group of black students protesting racist remarks made by the university's president. This guy in particular was the epitome of a fist-raised, power-to-the-people type. So it came as a shock when I approached him and he assumed that I was trying to get his number, and he immediately said, "Oh, I don't date black women." Needless to say, the tongue-lashing he received from me was brutal. And well-deserved.
Fast-forward to the year 2016, and we still have black men out here confessing their lack of desire to date black women. And all of their feelings were put on display by Iyanla Vanzant in her effort to dispel the "angry black woman" myth.
Bo, 28, Koro, 33, and Michael, 46, all gave different reasons as to why they don't date black women. They all gave different sad reasons. Very sad.
Bo apparently likes docile women, and says that black women don't know how to "stay in a woman’s place." I'm still trying to figure out what that place actually is.
Koro is a God-fearing black man who, for some reason, doesn't realize that there are tons of black women in the church. But he also feels that they don't want him because he's not a pastor.
“If you don’t have a collar, they don’t want to talk to you,” Koro says.
Talk about having some low self-esteem.
But the pièce de résistance came from Michael, a musician who thinks he's the only black person who travels and has "refined" tastes. Oh, and he also seems like the type who relishes in the fact that he "doesn't talk black" and seems like he surrounds himself with nonblack people so he can be the special snowflake.
“I traveled a lot when I was a kid. Very talented, very gifted musically,” Michael said. “Because of that, when I came back to my neighborhood and I was dealing with certain black women, [they said,] ‘You’re different. You talk funny. You dress funny. The music you listen to is funny.’”
All of these "woe is me" black-man excuses are downright hilarious.
Now, let me be the first to say that I don't exclusively date black men. Never have. But what you won't find me doing is making excuses and saying that I'll never date a black man and trying to disparage black men. For some reason, it seems that when some black men want to give their reasonings as to why they date outside their race, it's always due to something negative about black women.
Clearly, these types of men have some deep-seated issues of their own, and it's unfortunate that three of them went to Vanzant for help and that she gave them an outlet to bash black women.
What exactly was the point of them airing their black-woman grievances? I'm actually glad they did, because now their sad faces are all over the internet, and black women (and other women, if they had any common sense) will stay away from them.
And here's the part where I say, "A [insert random ethnicity] woman can have your ass."