last night, someone asked J and i a really stupid question in my opinion:

"do you find it difficult to be in an interracial relationship?"

when the person asked it, i was thinking 'who the fuck asks shit like that?'
that's just ignorant to me, but i was just like "no, we don't find it difficult. it's people who don't know shit about us who do. now somebody better get me another shot of patron if this is the shit i'm gonna have to deal with all night."

generally speaking, when J and i are together, the first thing people notice about us has nothing to do with our love for each other.
they don't give a fuck about us having grown up together, being each other's first and only love, the shit we've gone through to be together, or anything that actually counts.
all they see is he's white and i'm black [or something close to it].

whether or not you wanna admit, when you're on the outside looking in any situation, everything boils down to what's tangible- what you can actually see with your own two eyes.
in this case, it's melanin or lack thereof.

although we're more likely to hear disapproval from white people as we live dead smack in the middle of the south, black people have some negative shit to say about us too.
it's really stupid and unnecessary.
i don't really give a fuck what either side has to say us or any other interracial couple.
it's none of their damn business.

i do wish people would recognize that racism and prejudice [amongst blacks and whites] isn't just something black people have experienced from white people.
there has been a massive oppression of blacks by white people because of racism and prejudices and ignorance.
i'm not denying there isn't racism and prejudices alone, but the complaints from blacks are moreso about the oppression than anything else.

but please believe there are black people who hate other blacks because of their skin color.
there are dark-skinned black people who don't like light-skinned people.
i have been a victim of this type of prejudice.
i've also been somewhat guilty of it as well.
i made a conscious decision to never date a black person because i've never wanted to take the chance of having dark-skinned babies with have nappy hair.
it's unbelievably stupid and pointless and shallow of me, but there are other people who think the exact same way.
i'm just one of few with the balls to admit it.

i can't say the black vs. black thing is without merit though.
you can trace that shit back to slavery.
if you were a slave working in the main house, 9 times out of 10, you were light skinned; either a) you're lucky like that, as we do come in different shades of black, or b) ol mas'er liked that dark meat and you were a product of his "jungle fever".
granted, they were still slaves and treated as such but they had some privileges because of who their pappy was.

so, in that mindset i can understand why their would be some hostility amongst the blacks.
if you're dark, you had to work under inhumane conditions while some half-breed got to sit in the air-conditioned house and sip on lemonade while washing master's linens.
if that were me, i'd hate them fuckers.
i'd whoop their asses and steal their lemonade too.

but it's 2006.
there is no slavery.
there are no field or house niggers.
there's education and opportunity and whether or not you utilize what's available to you.
obviously, there's a little more to it than that, but that's really what matters.

the only situation where there is competition like that is in the entertainment industry.
i guaranfuckingtee you, if you have an unknown Angela Basset and an unknown Halle Berry audition for the same part, that Halle is more likely to get the role just because she's lighter and easier to sell to mainstream audiences/white america than the dark-skinned Angela.
Halle couldn't act her way out of a paper bag if you gave that bitch a flashlight, but she's guaranteed to sell more of whatever you're pushing just because she's light-skinned.

the same goes with music.
how many mainstream, dark-skinned, female singers can you name?
i'm sure very few, yet you've got a fifty dozen talentless beyonce's out there shaking their asses all over MTV and BET and getting paid plenty of money they don't deserve all because they've got the "right look".

it's really sad.
shit like that is the reason i don't think racism or any 'ism' for that matter will ever cease to exist in this country.
we have too many people teaching their children to hate others for being different and too many people with money selling everything that isn't real but advertising it as if it and telling people that's what they should strive to be.

i'd move to canada but i'm pretty sure the barbecue isn't the same.

Labels: this is who i am

--i refused to spellcheck @ 3:40 PM | |