Oakland, California, just below Berkeley, is the center of black/white couplings as far as I can tell. It doesn't seem like a hippy thing anymore.
Living in an area with a relatively large number of black/white couplings is probably a good idea if you are in a black/white couple. You would get fewer stares and your friends would know how to act.
I find some black women attractive but back in my dating days I was worried about cultural differences and making a mistake.
I can't help but wonder if this is somehow related to your worst moral transgression ever.
I hadn't thought of that, but I don't think so.
I don't know if the famously conservative Orange County, CA works as a "hippy haven", but I dated a gorgeous black girl (easily the best looking girl I've been with) there for about five months and never had a problem. The thought of her brother, a 290 pound noseguard for Northwestern, might have scared me, but I always considered potential societal disapproval, well, cool. I was a cocky high school senior, sure, but my attitude was very much, "if people have a problem with it, then good, those kinds of people deserve problems". It was never, notably, my problem, at least not in my head.
Regarding Oakland, Berkeley, etc: are black men-white women couplings more common than the reverse? That seems to be the case elsewhere, and it seems like that might make black women feel worse, not better.
JP,
Here is a somewhat disreputable interpretation of the perfectly reputable census data on interracial marriage. I couldn't find a breakdown of this data by region.
My guess would be that the disparity is not so distinct in Oakland, although it is still not 50%/50%.
I had a major falling out with a h.s. friend because I inadvertently let his mother know that he dated a black girl. (I mentioned her in a post card his mom read.) She apparently had a fit.
I was genuinely surprised. I didn't think Manhattan parents flipped out about that sort of thing. My mom certainly wouldn't. But then, she also wouldn't admit to reading my postcards.
What's notable is not just how social your qualms were, but how much they appear to be rooted in unfamiliarity with black people.
how much they appear to be rooted in unfamiliarity with black people
This is certainly true.
Aren't a lot of barriers to the black community actually class barriers? Fear of black guys killing you seems like a class thing--you don't think middle class black boys would beat you up, do you?
But would he have a similar fear of lower class white guys?
Not as pronounced, no. But I think lower-class masculinity is generally more overtly tough. You'd probably be aware of guys who might beat you up if you were, say, dating someone whose brothers were cops or construction workers. Clearly it's more of an aggregate effect in perceptions of the black community, but that equation has wider application.
You're right ac, a lot of it is about class. Like Michael says, I just don't know that many middle-and-up class blacks, and I'm much more aware of the class issue now that I was then.
AC's comments about class make sense to me. In Oakland, black/white couplings are in the context of a relatively large black middle class.
I like Dickerson very much but about this -- "There isn't a white boy in America who doesn't do a jerky cabbage patch when he's happy and pronounce himself "dissed" when angry...."
I don't even have a clue, absent Google, what the heck a "jerky cabbage patch" is (my bet is it's some sports thing, but I really have no idea), and I'm fairly sure I've never said anything about "dissed" and me in my life.
But, then, I've always found the whole "you're hip if you adopt stuff from urban African-American culture" thing largely as inexplicable (unless it's liking jazz and smoking dope) would be someone trying to sell me on acting Tuscan, or Australian, or Mongol, or like the Italian pizza guy at East 15th St, or any other thing that ain't me.
Word.
So much for Google. Anyone want to explain to Mr. Whitebread Square?
Gary, didn't you tell us recently that you're nearly the same age as Matt Yglesias's father? When she says "white boy," she doesn't mean you.
Here's an explanation.
Here's what you'd look like if you tried it.
ogged beat me
>The cabbage patch dance was introduced to the world courtesy of Gucci Crew II in 1987 but popularized by the San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jerry Rice in the 1990s. The cabbage patch dance is so simple; all you need to do is stretch out your arms, put your hands together, and move them around a bit on a horizontal plane.
I'm 46, kiddo, but don't worry, I'm still very childish! Er, child-like. Er, probably the first is correct.
And, by the way, the Dickerson piece was very interesting; thanks for calling it to our attention. (I tend to be lazy about looking at Salon unless someone points to something specifically intriguing, due to the whole Day Pass tedium.)
Thanks for the clue. I don't do happy dances; I'm too out of shape and lazy. I do a happy twitch.
Also, I'd probably look like that picture, but with a short beard.
Don't worry, Gary. I also had no clue what the Cabbage Patch dance was, have never done it, nor ever applied "diss" to my own situation.
So how did the CPD get its name, anyway?
Yeah, I dated a black girl in high school, and shared some of Ogged's concerns, particularly:
2. Dating an attractive black women feels a bit like "poaching." As if their attractiveness is a way out of their blackness. It seemed like the world would be better if attractive black women were found with black men.
and
4. I thought black guys would kill me.
A few black guys tried to, actually. Well, not kill me, per se, but whip my ass for sure.
This was in Texas, in 1980, mind you. Killeen, Texas, the armpit of the state.
I really liked her, though. Dated her for quite awhile, until it became obvious that the dating situation was untenable. There was only one thing I could do...
I married her. I'm still married to her, and hope to be forevermore.
Awesome! Very belated congratulations, Donnie.
22: The motion is reminiscent of a 17th century tool used mainly in Slavic countries which was used for the harvesting of cabbages.
Tragically, the name of the inventor of said device is lost to time.
I wonder if the dance was named for the dolls (Cabbage Patch kids)? I don't recall the dolls dancing.
I always thought that dance had something to do with the witches in MacBeth stirring their cauldron.
Unsurprisingly, I've noticed many more black/white couples among the gay community than in the straight community. Many, many of the hangups ogged mentioned above (some which I shared when I dated a black woman in college, ps) are superseded by the normal stigma most GLBTs feel on a daily basis, I would presume.
4 is over the top, but there is a kind of logic to it. I don't get 6 at all. Wouldn't you expect more hostility from *white* women?
About 6, I meant regularly being outwitted in normal social interaction.
Well, all right. I thought that was a pervasive male handicap.
Having been hit in the head by a guy who objected to what he interpreted as my "poaching," because I was riding on the subway with a woman of color, I can tell you that this can really happen. You get bad looks, you get attitude.
But I never saw intra African American female issues. (The relationship -- such as it was -- ended when she went to a much better college than me, she was slumming)
BUt I also think that NYC is better about this now then it was back then. Although that might be because I have a more bourgeois/bohemian set of choices when I'm home.
When I dated an Asian girl earlier in high school and she didn't show up for school for a week after someone told her parents about us, well, I'd like to just think that too was the racial/ethnic divide. Or perhaps they really thought she was slumming.
When I was in San Francisco last year I too noticed, particularly after being stuck for so long in instiutional/sanitized dc that there were all these people who looked different and who mixed in matched in ways that made them happy. I like San Francisco.
I know I'm pretty late to comment on this one, but I have to say that it's funny, having grown up in a place like, say, Berkeley, California, the existence of interracial couples never actually seemed remarkable until it was pointed out that it was.
