“I’ve dated interracially for years now and it’s just not a big deal for me. I find men of all colors, creeds, and walks of life attractive, and don’t limit myself to dating one particular race,” says avid traveler Oneika Raymond. “I am currently dating a white European guy, but before that was involved with a black man from the Caribbean. That being said, I have seen a lot more interracial couples outside of North America, particularly in London, where I live. I’ve seen way more black girl/white guy pairings here than anywhere else I’ve ever traveled.”

I have to admit. I found my experiences studying abroad in London to be the same, and in several other parts of Europe. Black women are enjoying relationships with men of many hues. And it seems like our interracial dating prospects are far more open. It’s one thing to be sought after as purely an exotic representation of Black beauty and potential sexual commodity. But it’s another thing to be admired for our physical exquisiteness, multifaceted cultures, powerful intellect, and unique personalities. Black women are being loved as multidimensional human beings abroad and by more than just our brothas.

Jennifer Poe, who once lived in Argentina, confesses, “I notice when I’m abroad, men that are of a different race than me are more vocal and bold about approaching me. When I’m back in the States, they will check me out, but not approach me. I think dating interracially is easier abroad.”

Many Black women who have traveled abroad have reported the same. In countries that we are particularly a noticeable minority, we often get more attention than in the United States. Call it coincidence or maybe just that we’re not paying close enough attention on American soil, but the flirting tends to be more apparent.

Nicole Blake adds her perspective, and reveals, “In Germany and many parts of Europe, there just aren’t that many Black women here. The men that have been curious about dating interracially don’t have the same access to Black women that the men in the United States have. I think this leads to a greater appreciation almost to the point of worship. It’s not to say that this lack of seeing Black women doesn’t also lead to a fair amount of sexualization and being the object of one’s fetish but this distinction is one I also had to make in the States, is he interested in me for me, or do I mark off the Black girl check box?”

It’s a fair question, one that makes many Black women think twice before jumping into the interracial dating arena. Of course, with any human interaction comes curiosity, but if we are indeed just a check box on a non-Black man’s checklist, it’s certainly fair for us to call foul.

Blake continues, “Dating interracially can also be more complex in Europe. As Chris Rock once said when talking about Black people’s relationship to White Americans, ‘we don’t got time to dice white people up into little groups.’ This is not an effective strategy for dating men abroad. In Europe, there are the French, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Brits, Scandinavians, etc. All these men, aside from speaking various languages, exist in different cultural contexts with different dating norms. Who makes the first move, kissing, sex on the first date, the definition of what a date actually is: these vary from country to country. It takes a bit of effort in trying to sort how it all works.”

Just as Black women are not monoliths, neither are our non-Black male dating prospects. While non-American cultures might facilitate easier introductions and more interracial dating opportunities, those of us who are interested should be invested in exploring different dating styles that may reign in a particular country. What you may interpret through your personal cultural references may not be your potential mate’s way of thinking. But all in all, it’s important to be open while dating in general, and for those open to interracial love, perhaps leaving the country is the perfect way to fill your travel craving and find romance.

Have you found more opportunities to love and date interracially while traveling outside America? Share your experiences! 

You know, I feel like kicking over a crate of kittens every time I see that stupid Ancestry.com commercial where the man is so tentative about exploring his history because he can kinda guess his roots as an African-American. His granddaddy was born a slave, he says—insert his dramatic pause here—but died a business man. And that made his research all worth his while. Here me booing? Because I don’t think there’s any part of our history worth being ashamed of. It all makes up the story of us, sad, heartbreaking and infuriating as some of it is. But it’s made us who we are. And so have these incidents, people and random nuggets about Black-dom.

1. Cathay Williams was the one and only female Buffalo Soldier, posing as a man named William Cathay to enlist in the 38th infantry in 1866. She served for two years before a surgeon stumbled on the fact that she was a woman and saw to it that she was discharged. And, true to sexist convention, she was repeatedly denied military benefits or a pension.

2. Both Condoleezza Rice and Martin Luther King, Jr. skipped two grades and started college when they were just 15 years old. (What were you doing when you were 15, ya slacker?!) She studied political science at the University of Denver; he majored in sociology at Morehouse.

3. Journalist, activist and sistergirl-in-my-head Ida Wells-Barnett refused to give up her railcar seat for a white man in 1884 and bit a conductor on the hand when he tried to force her out of it. He called for backup and she was eventually dragged off the train. She sued the railroad and initially won, but the decision was overturned. The whole experience fueled her passion for justice and journalism.

4. In 2008, Jamaican wonderman Usain Bolt became the first man to ever set three world records in a single Olympic games. Loves!

5. The media made the Black Panthers notorious for their Afros, dark get-ups and willingness to defend themselves, but their Ten Point manifesto for change launched programs that benefited Black communities nationwide, like free dental care, breakfast for low-income children, even drama classes.

6.  Lincoln University in Pennsylvania is the first institution of higher education founded for African-Americans. (And don’t let nobody tell you any different—hail hail Lincoln!) It paved the way for the 104 other historically Black colleges, which have produced distinguished alums like Thurgood Marshall, Spike Leeand the almighty Oprah.

7. Black ingenuity helped devise creative—and effective—plans to escape enslavement. In 1848, husband-and-wife team William and Ellen Craft made it to the North and eventually England, when she dressed as a white man and he posed as one of her slaves. A year later, Henry “Box” Brown literally mailed himself to freedom in a shipping box during a 27-hour trip from Richmond to Philadelphia. He couldn’t keep him story to himself, however, and he ended up ticking off Frederick Douglass, who believed that other men and women could’ve escaped the same way if Henry had shut his yap. He eventually went abroad, married a white chick and was never heard from again.

8. Liberia was founded and colonized by U.S. expatriates, one of two sovereign states in the world founded by ex-slaves and marginalized Blacks. Sierra Leone is the other, but that was the handiwork of the British.

9. Jesse Jackson does more than make up words: he negotiated the release of Lt. Robert O. Goodman, Jr., a Black pilot who had been shot down over Syria and taken hostage in 1983.

10. Remember when Will Smith was The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff was, well, Jazzy Jeff? Together, they won the first-ever Grammy for Best Rap Performance, but they boycotted the awards because the category was barred from television.

11. The hair brush, lawn mower, cellphone, refrigerator and—thank you, sweet baby Jesus—the air conditioner were all the fruits of African-American inventors’ creative laboring. Every time I walk inside on a sweltering hot day, I’m happy to thank a brother for meeting the need.

12. Who knew? Baseball legend Jackie Robinson had an older brother, Matthew, who was also a star athlete in his own right. He won a silver medal in the 200-yard dash in the 1936 Olympics—coming in second to Jesse Owens.

13. Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to Congress and the first Black major-party presidential candidate survived three assassination attempts during her 1972 campaign. If Kanye was around to make “Stronger,” that could’ve easily been her campaign theme song.

14. Eatonville, Florida, the childhood home of writer and cultural anthropologist (and my all-time favorite author!) Zora Neale Hurston, is also the first town in the country to be incorporated by Black folks.

Sure, we’re waaay too secure for such emotional crises now. We’re self-actualized women who are far too busy chasing our own successes to pine after those of our friends. That’s childish. That’s petty. That’s small.

But it’s relatable. We’ve been there. On occasion, the fates align in such a way that we’ve reached a personal low while a loved one has reached an astronomical high. Don’t worry, though. You’re not automatically a hater if you privately wail, “Why not me?!” when you hear about your girlfriend’s engagement the same day you’ve broken off your own.

You’re only a hater if, after your knee-jerk spate of jealousy, you begrudge your girl her happiness. You’re a hater if, rather than processing your own insecurities and channeling them into personal growth, you mutter, “That ain’t gon’ last”–or even worse, you silently hope it doesn’t.

Here are three ways you can overcome your unease about the joyous news of your friends:

1. Let congratulations stifle comparisons.

It’s endlessly tempting to mark up a scorecard that tallies your accomplishments and those of your peers. You’re 30; she’s 30. She’s married; you’re single. You’ve got a master’s; she’s got an associate’s. Tally, tally, tally till you feel like you’ve come out on top. And though I know I don’t have to tell *you* this–what, with you being so much bigger than this–but coming up with an arbitrary set of criteria that measures where you should be in life against where other people are is crazy-making.

So sidestep the urge, ignore any voice that says, “How much longer before it happens for me?” and just offer the sincerest congratulations you can muster. Repeat them until they drown out your own as-yet-unfulfilled longings.

2. Offer a helping hand.

There’s no better way to get up out of your feelings that to focus on someone else’s for a while. You’ve wanted an oceanside wedding since you were eight, and it’s starting to look like it’s not in the cards? Help your friend plan hers. Look at it this way: if this is the closest you’ll ever get to your dream wedding, your plans for it won’t go to waste.

The same principal applies for your  younger sister moving into a home valued at six figures. Still in an apartment with no clue when you’ll be able to afford your own dream house? Help your sister move–and be cheerful about it. Sharing in her joy will make you so happy for her that your own dubious homeownership plans will seem insignificant. And proximity to what you want will redouble your desire to pursue it.

3. Hold up a mirror.

Figure out what’s going on with you. There’s a reason you’re taking your own slowed progress so hard. What is it? The sooner you find the root of your issue, the sooner you’ll be able to feel immediate, uncomplicated joy for the people you care about, regardless of your own life’s gains and losses.

Have you ever found yourself coveting someone else’s happiness? How did you handle it?

I remember the first time suicide prompted me to ask the elusive question “why?” As a twelve-year old girl, I was lost when a childhood friend from my neighborhood and church, whom I affectionately referred to as “cousin,” took his own life at the young age of 16. He was a superstar athlete and popular at school. Naturally, I questioned why this happened. It was explained to me that it was an accident and “the gun went off.” But I remember arguing about it with kids and teachers at school who did not accept it as an accident. I determined they were lying. They had to be. What other explanation was there? And why would someone suggest that he would do this to himself? Confused, I stood before a packed church of 300-plus mourners, above the casket of my “cousin” and read his obituary. The faces of the crowd, young and old, looked about as confused as I was. Less of a question and more of an entangled announcement, we all silently asked “why.”

Emphasis on silence. There is a code of silence around the topic of suicide in our communities; and not just suicide, but mental health as a whole, ranging from severe depression and anxiety, to mental illness like schizophrenia. The root of such issues can vary, but no matter the source, it is happening everywhere. Although some groups are disparately affected more than others, according to the CDC, no group is absolved from suicide or mental health regardless of race, class, or gender. Therefore, it impacts us all.

Yet, Black folks, and other people of color, are not given permission to work through their crap. This permission is not given by themselves or their community. Instead, we are instructed to be strong, to get over it, to keep it pushin’, or in the words of the late Tupac Shakur, to “keep ya head up” because it will all be okay.

When I was an undergrad, feeling like my life was tearing at the seams, I shared with a few close family and friends that I was going to see the campus counselor. Their shocked response: “Is that necessary? There’s nothing really wrong with you. You’re alright. You’ll be fine.” I was not alright. I was not fine. And sometimes, many of us are not fine either.

We are expected and encouraged to suffer in silence and privately move on because it is considered weak to do otherwise. When Ron Artest was interviewed in 2010 after the L.A. Lakers won the championship, he thanked his psychiatrist on national television, shocking the sports world of fans and commentators alike by sharing his open mental health process: therapy.

But hold up. Pause. Record scratch.

In moments like these do you actually take the time to examine your partner’s male member? Have you ever worked an examination into your foreplay? I mean really take a good long gander, lifting the scrotum sacks, looking at the head and the shaft to make sure that all is in tact from what the naked eye can detect? Would you or have you ever required an STD screening from a potential or current partner? In the throes of passion, admittedly these thoughts are not necessarily on the forefront of our brain and could severely dampen the mood, but the conversation is an important one to have nonetheless.

According to the Center for Disease Control 1 in 16 black men will contract HIV in their lifetime (and 1 in 32 black women). Moreover, 1 in 5 American adults and adolescents are infected with Herpes, and it should also be noted that HSV 1 (herpes in the mouth) can be transmitted during oral intercourse, causing genital herpes. Neither of these sexually transmitted diseases are curable. Other common sexually transmitted diseases as Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and Syphilis, which are also very prevalent, particularly in the African American community, can also all be carried in the mouth.

Ready to broach the conversation now?

For better or for worse the initial conversation could be a bit awkward, but the potential long range implications of being infected with a STD can be totally preventable by initiating the idea of getting tested early on in a relationship before sex even occurs.  But before delving in headfirst into this conversation understand that 1 in 2 sexually active adults will contract an STD by the age of 25, and although all STDs are treatable and most are curable, some are not. Approaching the discussion from this vantage point can ease the awkwardness.

In case you haven’t heard, Long celebrated his coronation during last week’s service at New Birth Missionary Baptist, when Messianic preacher Ralph Messer instructed Eddie’s henchmen to wrap him in a ritual shawl, which Jews call a tallis, saying, “He’s a king. God’s blessed him. He’s a humble man. In him is kingship. In him is royalty. In him was a land of Israel.”

But that wasn’t all. Long was then hoisted on a throne like a pharaoh by four dutiful congregants. “He now is raised up from a commoner to a kingship,” Messer continued during the almost 15 agonizing minutes of the ceremony.

What does a Baptist megachurch pastor have to do with the 312-year-old scroll he was wrapped in? And why again was he sitting pretty on the shoulders of four other Black men? We could all churn out a crap shoot of guesses on that one, particularly since the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau has about as much to do with Eddie Long and his opportunistic tail as this Messer fellow has to do with the Middle Passage.

All I kept thinking was, this sure is a lot of prophetic speaking over a man who, not even two years ago, was caught taking pseudo seductive pictures of himself in biker shorts and a jheri curl hair piece and imposing them on young boys in his flock. Seems pretty common to me.

You can’t judge a religion by the people who claim to follow it and, on some level, you can’t even judge it by the people who profess to lead it. We will get it wrong at least some of the time—hell, even Dr. King jacked it up. That’s not God or the faith at fault. That’s just the fallibility of humanity. In theory, though, we should be striving to be the best sin-filled, shortcoming-subjected people we can be. And that’s where big ticket preachers like Eddie Long do the church and the whole Christian community a disservice by giving disenfranchised folks even more reason to be disenfranchised, critics even more reason to be critical and disillusioned folks even more reason to keep on keepin’ on in their disillusionment.

Newt Gingrich has decried the lack of work ethic in low-income, particularly black, neighborhoods. He has recently come under fire for his attempts in South Carolina to brand President Obama as the “food stamp president,” claiming that Obama has put more people on food stamps than any other president (which is actually false).

Since food stamps remain one of the few federally administered welfare benefits, calling Obama the “food stamp president” is tantamount to calling him the “welfare president.” So if President Obama is the “food stamp president,” is Michelle Obama the “food stamp first lady”? Or “welfare first lady”? Or “Welfare Queen”?

GUESS WHO’S BACK!

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is. The monster beneath this rhetoric is the Welfare Queen, the fabled boogeywoman of the 1976 Reagan presidential campaign.

“She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veterans’ benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands,” Reagan told enraptured crowds at stump speeches. “Her tax-free income alone is over $150,000.”

As the narrative developed, she was, of course, black. She was promiscuous and she was lazy. She was also a lie.

When reporters investigated this story, they found only one case that even remotely supported Reagan’s claim. The woman’s name was Linda Taylor, from the south side of Chicago. She had defrauded the state of only $8,000 and had only four aliases.

But facts be damned.

YO MAMA

As a child of the 80’s, the image of the baby-popping, Cadillac-driving welfare queen was seared into my mind. But so was the image of my mother: an educated black woman who waited for marriage and her 30’s to have children. My mother embodied four generations of higher education and even went on to earn a doctoral degree*.

She was also a welfare mother.

And, according to Reaganomics, she was the bane of society. By their calculations, my mother’s predicament was her fault, and her fault alone. Never mind the nationwide recession or that my father (well into his 30’s and with his own set of degrees*) left her alone with two small children. Never mind her dogged attempts to find work and the racism and sexism that waited for her at each interview. She was part of a plague rippling across the country. Part of a racialized, sexualized—but faceless—army.

Now that army is back.

Isn’t that great.  Not only are you battling the constant side eyes and fake smiles from the ‘porcelain gods’, but now you have to watch this chick’s every motive.  Reality check ― you’re back to square one. You’re reminding yourself everyday to ‘dot’ your I’s and ‘cross’ your T’s, because its every woman for themselves now.

I can remember my ‘office hater’ vividly ― for protective reasons, let’s call her “Bonk.com” ― I admired “Bonk.com,” we had tons in common: fashion, men, natural hair, and professional/personal goals.  She even went so far as to promise me a mentee/mentor relationship.  Nevertheless, as soon as I excelled in my entry-level position without her assistance, she found some way to throw “shade” to my supervisor.  Thankfully, my supervisor’s keen interest in my future outweighed this chick’s motive.

Sadly my situation isn’t rare; it’s quite common.  In 2009, Wall Street Executive Clara A. Harris commented about black women’s office relationships in Essence.  Harris claimed “she had noticed that in the workplace Black women are sometimes the ones derailing other sisters.”  Hmmm…so, maybe ABG was right, “B*tches be tripping?”

Growing up I was consistently surrounded by those who looked like me.  I went to a black owned, predominantly black private school, and went on to attend diverse middle and high schools.  However, in college I was abruptly hazed into the “raisin in a bowl of milk” society.  I was either the only or one of three blacks in my classroom.  As a result, I yearned for being and having a support system to my fellow brothers and sisters.  But for whatever reason people such as “Bonk.com” and other ‘office haters’ have demonstrated the opposite.

Maybe you don’t have the holy oil at your desk or a ‘devil flee’ chant such as I.  Nonetheless, the ‘office hater’ could be your reality, whether she’s black, yellow or blue.  You may not have one today, maybe not tomorrow, but you sure as hell don’t want to be caught off guard.

Have you ever battled an office hater? How do you cope with negativity from individuals in the workplace?     

That wasn’t a typo.

And as we sat there, amid dirtied snow in a black car parked under a streetlight that illuminated his face as his slightly slanted eyes pleaded with me to understand why he didn’t want to fall in love with me, one of the things that stood out to me is that my parlevous OPI nail polish was chipped.

Because it didn’t make sense. Here, we were coming from a great time watching the game. He told me I looked nice, that my freshly straightened hair was a nice change from my usually unruly curls, and he had kissed me after squeezing the tip of my nose between his middle and ring fingers. Everything was magical.

Nothing made sense about that night. Especially not the way that, two seconds after admitting that he was resisting his feelings for me, he put his hand on the curve of face and pulled me in for a soft kiss. There was no rationalizing that, equipped with the information he had just given me, I climbed the stairs to his apartment, and eventually climbed into his bed. And the fact that this situation occurred an estimated 20 times in the following two years makes me pretty sure of the fact that I am committable.

I’m sure you’re asking why I stayed.

I could attribute it to being a stubborn Leo, and say that it is my nature to stick something out and make sure I get what I want. I could argue that my penchant for seeing something through to completion got in the way of my better judgment.  I could lie and tell you that he was so good to my body that I just couldn’t bear to be separated from that feeling.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, he was good. But ain’t no one in the world that good.

The truth is, I stayed because I loved him. And I was so sure that, if I kept on loving him with all that I was, that he would come around to feeling the same for me. And so I put all my effort, every good and loving part of me, into loving him. And as seasons changed and his stance remained, I became bitter and nasty—somewhat intolerable.

In my quest to make him love me, I had forgotten that I had to love me, too. As much as I worried about his well being, I had stopped worrying about mine. In efforts to prove my love to him, I had forgotten to prove to myself that I was worthy of love. I let the idea of him not wanting to love me seep into my cranium and convince my mind that I wasn’t worthy of being loved.

And perhaps, the biggest lesson of them all, was that if he didn’t want to love me, I couldn’t change that. Nothing in the world I could ever do would make this man wake up and say “I’m so in love with her.” That was a decision that he would have to make on his own.

So I made the decision to put myself first. To work on my body, pursue my love for writing, and to mend friendships that I had let become broken while I was so busy chasing after him. And once I started loving myself again, it didn’t matter whether he loved me or not.

Because I loved me enough to leave him alone.

“That makes you a slave. You did what somebody else told you to do so you’re a slave” were her exact words to my seven-year old. In a situation where a child behaved in a way that made him “a follower,” he somehow became a “slave.”

When he got home, my son passionately recounted the story to me, saying:

“I’m not a slave, I’m a human being and I deserve to be respected like one. She might as well have just called me a nigger. It’s like back in the day during segregation when the white people would say whatever they wanted to black people and call them names and hurt their feelings. That’s what she did to me, she hurt my feelings.”

And I was enraged. How dare she? My son’s teacher is also African American, but that brings no comfort. It does nothing to negate the fact that she demeaned my son in front of his peers, degraded him or made him question, even if only for a moment, if the fact that he is black is a horrible thing. In an instant, much of the hard work that has been put into making sure he remained positive about who he is was diminished.

My child is a brilliant young man who doesn’t take many things at face value. He challenges popular opinions and theories, and thinks outside of the box. He is also very much aware of what being a young black boy means, and what people of color have overcome in this country. He acknowledges the fact that, because of this, he may face some challenges in life. Therefore, it is my constant struggle to keep that knowledge, those ideals, our history, and his sense of self away from negatively affecting his development and growth.

When I spoke to the offending teacher about her words to my son or the impact it had on hm, she felt no regret. She actually told me, “Someone has to instill some fear in these children and keep them out of jail,” as if she was doing him a favor. I was flabbergasted! For an educator to think that the only way our children will be productive members of society is by scaring them in this way is ridiculous.

I send my son to school to be educated so he can be successful. I do not send him to school to be harmed or degraded in a public forum, or for him to be hurt by a poorly-chosen words that cut him down. We have a responsibility as parents and educators to build children up, keep them informed, cultivate conscious and responsible individuals, empower and arm them with knowledge. We should never say things to break them down, dampen their spirits, or be offensive to them, even in the spirit of saving them from themselves.

What I learned from this experience is that the system does not necessarily work for children and their parents. It’s not truly set up for our children to be supported and encouraged while they are away from us. I’m disheartened, but not discouraged, and as long as there is breath in my body I will fight for my child and be his biggest advocate.

We are to be reminded though, that every child doesn’t have an advocate, or a voice as loud as my own, but they deserve the exact same respect. It is when we take that into account that we realize this system is flawed, needs to be reviewed, and change needs to come quickly. Indeed, “It takes a village to raise a child” but when the village chief breaks them down, we’re left to build them back up.

My son is not a “slave” for making a mistake in hitting another child. He recognizes his wrongdoing and apologized to both the other boy and his teacher. But this experience left a bigger scar on him than he deserved.