Sometimes your girls can tell you more about yourself than you’d ever realize. A few weeks ago, my friend Monie pointed out that she thinks I have the dreaded light vs. dark skin complex. “What’s that,” you ask? She thinks that I’m not comfortable and confident with my dark brown hue.

“You only crush on fair skinned guys, white guys or Hispanic guys,” she said over coffee. “You realize that it’s because you have an issue with yourself, right?”

Umm, what? At first, I was taken aback. I think I know my own issues – all 456,930 of them. But then I really took some time to think about what she noticed.

When I attended elementary school in New York, my skin color was never a problem with my peers. I was never self-conscious about it. New York City is the melting pot, after all – I had classmates that represented all corners of the world. Besides, the kids picked on plenty of other things. When I moved to the South, everything changed. I was introduced to offensive terms like “redbone” and “midnight.” The most popular girls happened to have light skin and long, “good” hair. It was a trend that stayed consistent until I graduated high school. I never realized that the preferential treatment of those girls affected me until now. Read More »

Would you date an African-American? How about an Indian? Or a Caucasian?

Online dating services want to know. When you fill out a profile, they’ll often ask you questions about what kind of people you prefer to date, including questions regarding ethnicity. They seem innocent enough…but are they?

I had a really thought-provoking conversation about it with a friend the other day. “I was sitting behind somebody who was filling out an online dating application,” she said, “and they put down that they preferred not to date Asian people.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“I couldn’t believe it!” she went on. “I thought that was the most racist thing I had ever seen!”

And I couldn’t believe she thought that. “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “People are allowed to have preferences about the looks of the people they date. It’s not racist.”

I can’t remember what the results of our discussion were, but I do remember how intrigued I was by the thought that ethnicity-related preference questions were such a hot topic. She really got me thinking. Were the questions themselves racist? Was somebody who didn’t want to date people in a specific ethnic group really racist? Read More »

Sometimes, when I go out with my boyfriend in public, people stare…and stare…and stare. Unfortunately, it’s not because I’m drop-dead gorgeous or because my boyfriend is a total stud (although to me he is). It’s because his skin is brown and mine is white.

Before I go any further, I’m going to offer up a disclaimer: a lot of people don’t stare. Most people don’t even give a second look. And I don’t assume that those who do are staring only because we’re an interracial couple…but it sure does seem the most likely reason.

Honestly, when I started dating him, I was expecting the most conservative of the conservative white folk to be the ones who stared. As much as we’re living in the 21st century here, interracial relationships are still a little too futuristic for some people.

So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be all the Indians who stared. Read More »