mischka
shrinkage.
Ok, I’m not making this post for people to agree with me or for people do disagree with me, I’m just thinking aloud here and I think this is interesting. I grew up in a pretty segregated city and wasn’t really around white people until I went away to college. Even then I went to a college that had a large black population so I still didn’t have to interact with white people like that unless I chose to - which I didn’t, lol. So up til that point every relationship I had was with a black man. Well I use the term relationship loosely. I would describe myself as never having been in love (I have recently revised that opinion, it turns out it happened, once) because every guy I dated wasn’t interested in a relationship… or he was trying to be a cheater… or he was a liar… you know, basically that a relationship never really got off the ground because the guy was playing games one way or another, and so there was never really an opportunity to get to know one another in a real way. So things never clicked like that.
Once I went to grad school, the environment was almost wholly ‘other’. There is a very small population of black students where I go to school now, and I had to adjust to being in that environment. It was really hard at first. You are aware of racism in terms of ‘I hate black people’ but it was a new experience for me to see racism in terms of a systemic, institutional type thing. Not that the people I met were racist, but this was the first time I had really been exposed to white people and their ways of thinking, what they do and don’t know about people who are different from them. They mostly are harmless if not ignorant from time to time.
Initially while I was confronting having to be a part of a culture that was different from mine I didn’t really know how I felt about it. This was after the election when there was a lot of – racist – stuff in the media about black people, and online there was a lot of talk bashing black men and bm/bw relationships. I thought, I don’t know why people are complaining so much because most of us are going to end up with a black man at the end. I was redoubling my efforts to create my own Obama style family in the future… I felt it was my responsibility to help create ‘good negro images’ to model for everybody… black people and white people…
And then, at some point during the school year, I just totally changed my mind. I think this was the result of two things. One, the field I was studying included a lot of research about poverty and inequality, and I started growing more and more pissed off at the historical evidence of black men abandoning their families and responsibilities and how that trend seems even worse these days with no sign of turning around. I started to wonder if maybe this – ‘elite’, private, WHITE – university was subconsciously brainwashing me. Because slowly black men just started to seem like my enemy. They won’t grow up. They run around impregnating woman after woman and not caring for the kids. They don’t stay in school. They aren’t ambitious. They don’t even give a f8ck about us and are quick to run to the first white woman who will have them. They play the victim. They still blame the man. They want to be babied, they are spoiled, they are so ****** entitled. I know this doesn’t describe all black men, obviously, but it seemed to me it was accurate for a pretty large chunk.
The second thing was that, it bothered me that there were so few black men around me these days, at the graduate level, and the few that were were hardly a great example of positivity. One dude was like 30 plus and had four kids by the way, chasing after this obese white girl who was the same age as me. One dude had a girlfriend back home but made it clear he was interested in sleeping with me. One dude still spent a lot of time talking about ‘thugging.’ And the other dude was so whitewashed I could hardly believe we literally had the same segregated, blacks only type background. There were so few black men around, period. But when I left campus and entered the city, I was right back around the ‘regular’ black men… yelling at me from cars… calling me a ***** when I didn’t respond… living with their parents… had a kid or two… were too damn old to be trying to talk to me… just, you know, the regular sometimes disrespectful stuff you have to deal with from every random dude thinking he can just walk up to you and ask for your phone number (ROOD).
And I just got sick of it. I felt like I was making a lot of progress in my life and resented that I was still being treated like some random broad on the street that dudes could just talk to any way they wanted. And I felt like if I had made the effort of trying to secure a better future for myself, I shouldn’t lower my standards to try to ‘work with’ some guy who couldn’t be bothered to do the same. I’m not rich, I didn’t go to school for free either, you know? So there was nothing about what I did that someone else couldn’t have done. Maybe in some ways even though it sounds bad, I felt like those kinds of guys, those nothing guys not doing anything with their lives, didn’t deserve me. So I decided, I’m not on the market for black guys anymore right now. I’m mad at y’all, and I don’t want to reward y’all behavior with my availability. I haven’t ever dated a black guy who particularly mistreated me, but I hadn’t dated one who treated me particularly well either. Like I said, it was always a bunch of games…
So I decided, I would see what it was like dating other types of men instead. Not that I will never be with a black man again or that it isn’t possible that I will marry a black man – because that option is still on the table – but just that I made a conscious choice to see what else was out there. It wasn’t something that came naturally to me, like it probably would be for someone who grew up in a more diverse, integrated lifestyle, so it is something that I have to adjust to. There is a lot to chew on, for me, when thinking about this whole issue…
So I have gone on long enough, sorry lol, before getting into even more issues. I’ll see first if anyone is interested in having this conversation. But I want to pose some question as a jumping off point for those who are. Has anyone ever been through something similar?
Once I went to grad school, the environment was almost wholly ‘other’. There is a very small population of black students where I go to school now, and I had to adjust to being in that environment. It was really hard at first. You are aware of racism in terms of ‘I hate black people’ but it was a new experience for me to see racism in terms of a systemic, institutional type thing. Not that the people I met were racist, but this was the first time I had really been exposed to white people and their ways of thinking, what they do and don’t know about people who are different from them. They mostly are harmless if not ignorant from time to time.
Initially while I was confronting having to be a part of a culture that was different from mine I didn’t really know how I felt about it. This was after the election when there was a lot of – racist – stuff in the media about black people, and online there was a lot of talk bashing black men and bm/bw relationships. I thought, I don’t know why people are complaining so much because most of us are going to end up with a black man at the end. I was redoubling my efforts to create my own Obama style family in the future… I felt it was my responsibility to help create ‘good negro images’ to model for everybody… black people and white people…
And then, at some point during the school year, I just totally changed my mind. I think this was the result of two things. One, the field I was studying included a lot of research about poverty and inequality, and I started growing more and more pissed off at the historical evidence of black men abandoning their families and responsibilities and how that trend seems even worse these days with no sign of turning around. I started to wonder if maybe this – ‘elite’, private, WHITE – university was subconsciously brainwashing me. Because slowly black men just started to seem like my enemy. They won’t grow up. They run around impregnating woman after woman and not caring for the kids. They don’t stay in school. They aren’t ambitious. They don’t even give a f8ck about us and are quick to run to the first white woman who will have them. They play the victim. They still blame the man. They want to be babied, they are spoiled, they are so ****** entitled. I know this doesn’t describe all black men, obviously, but it seemed to me it was accurate for a pretty large chunk.
The second thing was that, it bothered me that there were so few black men around me these days, at the graduate level, and the few that were were hardly a great example of positivity. One dude was like 30 plus and had four kids by the way, chasing after this obese white girl who was the same age as me. One dude had a girlfriend back home but made it clear he was interested in sleeping with me. One dude still spent a lot of time talking about ‘thugging.’ And the other dude was so whitewashed I could hardly believe we literally had the same segregated, blacks only type background. There were so few black men around, period. But when I left campus and entered the city, I was right back around the ‘regular’ black men… yelling at me from cars… calling me a ***** when I didn’t respond… living with their parents… had a kid or two… were too damn old to be trying to talk to me… just, you know, the regular sometimes disrespectful stuff you have to deal with from every random dude thinking he can just walk up to you and ask for your phone number (ROOD).
And I just got sick of it. I felt like I was making a lot of progress in my life and resented that I was still being treated like some random broad on the street that dudes could just talk to any way they wanted. And I felt like if I had made the effort of trying to secure a better future for myself, I shouldn’t lower my standards to try to ‘work with’ some guy who couldn’t be bothered to do the same. I’m not rich, I didn’t go to school for free either, you know? So there was nothing about what I did that someone else couldn’t have done. Maybe in some ways even though it sounds bad, I felt like those kinds of guys, those nothing guys not doing anything with their lives, didn’t deserve me. So I decided, I’m not on the market for black guys anymore right now. I’m mad at y’all, and I don’t want to reward y’all behavior with my availability. I haven’t ever dated a black guy who particularly mistreated me, but I hadn’t dated one who treated me particularly well either. Like I said, it was always a bunch of games…
So I decided, I would see what it was like dating other types of men instead. Not that I will never be with a black man again or that it isn’t possible that I will marry a black man – because that option is still on the table – but just that I made a conscious choice to see what else was out there. It wasn’t something that came naturally to me, like it probably would be for someone who grew up in a more diverse, integrated lifestyle, so it is something that I have to adjust to. There is a lot to chew on, for me, when thinking about this whole issue…
So I have gone on long enough, sorry lol, before getting into even more issues. I’ll see first if anyone is interested in having this conversation. But I want to pose some question as a jumping off point for those who are. Has anyone ever been through something similar?
