Did interracial dating ever help anybody?

TL:DR

• There is no such thing as “reverse” racism, and strong negative reactions by Black people to interracial relationships are not evidence of this non-existent phenomenon. Hopefully that’s not too critical-race-theory for the people in the back.

• Well-intentioned white people seem to believe that more interracial dating is indicative of progress on racial issues, but it is not, and never has been (white people and Black people been fuckin since the beginning of this country, and where has that gotten us?)

• Anti-miscegenation sentiments and laws from the perspective of white people in the US have been premised on an idea of white superiority.

• From a Black perspective, they have been premised on safety and on cultural protection for us as a people. We have been all we got for a long ass time on this side of the water.

• There is a difference between someone who happens to fall in love with (or is open to love with) someone outside of their own race, and someone who seeks relationships with those outside of their own race. Black people categorically seeking relationships with white people are often ingrained with anti-Black ideology, which is exhibit in more ways than just their dating preferences (I can always tell within 5 minutes when I’m talking to a Black person who only dates white people).

  There’s a video doing rounds on the internet right now of a Black family with 8 sons, at least 6 of whom paired and had children with white partners. There are strong negative reactions from several Black viewers, and extensive claims of “reverse racism” by white commentors reacting to the negative commentary. The thing is, when you've raised so many sons who seek something in a partner that they don't see in their own mother (or themselves), you must realize that the attraction isn't just about who they happen to love. It's about WHAT they are looking for, and *why*. Because, I PROMISE you, something ain’t right within. Let’s break it down.

  Interracial dating is one of those areas that people like to point to as some sort of prime example of "reverse racism." However, this isn’t possible because reverse racism doesn't exist. Racism from Black people towards white people would require a system of power and oppression to enforce some sort of repercussions of their prejudice onto white people’s lives. No such thing exists. In fact, no where in the United States have Black people ever had the power to stop an interracial marriage or relationship, while white people, on the other hand, authored every single anti-miscegenation law ever put on the books in this country. I digress with facts, though (that damn critical race theory and shit).

  Let’s clear another myth off the bat too. Interracial dating does not indicate racial progress. The average African-American person in the US can trace about 24% of their DNA to Europe, and that didn’t happen spontaneously…WE BEEN FUCKIN’ (not voluntarily for some folks, but we’ll talk about white men’s systemic rape of Black women at another time). Loving vs. Virginia (1967) led to the ban of anti-miscegenation laws in the US. What’s happened with Black folks since then? Well, we can ride on the front of the bus, so yay. But also, the net worth of the Black family has not improved. Black people are still being targeted by our police state (crazy how George Floyd having a daughter with a white woman didn’t stop the police from murdering him in the street, huh?). Black people still face double the unemployment levels of white people in the country. None of these things have been improved by the growing number of interracial marriages, mysteriously.

  "Hatred" of white people is not what drives animosity towards interracial dating from Black folks. I’d argue that these negative attitudes are driven by three things: (1) safety (2) rebuke of whiteness as more desirable (3) culture protection that has been critical to our identity as a people.

  Historically, voluntary interracial relationships produced a high chance of bodily harm and hardship in life due to the extremely negative and often violent reactions of the white majority, not the oppressed Black minority. Emmett Till was murdered for just supposedly whistling at a white woman.

  Simultaneously, white women were put on a pedestal that elevated them above Black women both socially and in "desirability." It also meant that Black men were subconsciously taught to covet white women as a previously unattainable “prize.”

  Personally, I can’t even recount the number of times I’ve spoken to someone and immediately KNEW that they had a white partner – their attitudes about their own Blackness and the ways that they associate (negative) attributes with Blackness in general are so overt that it’s easy to tell. And when I can tell based on your aroma of anti-Blackness that you prefer white partners…bruh, you didn’t “just so happen” to fall in love with a white woman. There are plenty of people in interracial relationships who are not “self-hating” of course. However, there are very strong under and overtones of the ideology that has made white women higher on the totem pole of desirability in many of the sentiments expressed by those seeking white partners.

  Studies, such as the "doll tests" have shown us that Black people have internalized a negative ideology about themselves so much that they subconsciously view white people as better more desirable and "whiteness" is something to which they strive to attain. This plays out when choosing a partner as much as it does when choosing between dolls: for people who have been taught that their own features are ugly, and who have been told that white women are preferrable to Black women because they are more supportive and “pure,” that thinking manifests into our romantic attraction, whether we realize it or not.

  We survived this long as a people by sticking together in a hostile country. We’ve forgotten tribal and linguistic divides to come together as a monolith of “Black people” in order to form a new cultural center, where community has protected us as we’ve struggled against oppression in this country. The more that we intermarry, the more that we “lose the recipes” in some folks’ eyes. Those recipes that have kept us grounded and centered as a community with a modicum of pride still even after hundreds of years of persecution are important to people, and I fully understand why.

  But, it's easier to say everyone else is racist. Because we “hate” white people. There is some hatred afoot, but it’s not what they are yelling about online.