Until I Get Married

For those readers who pay attention, they may notice the lengths I go to to avoid talking about relationships and dating through the prism of race. This is intentional not because I’m colorblind to the factors race plays in dating, but because I honestly believe when it comes to matters of the heart, the only two groups that really matter are males and females; that what truly separates people from falling in love is more about gender, less about skin color and ethnicity.

But every now and then, I can’t sidestep the race issue. Every now and then, I must go in and acknowledge race matters. Today is now and I hope you all pay attention to what I’m going to say a little bit closer than usual.

Last week I was interviewed for a news magazine show on CUNY, one of New York City’s local channels. The story was a response to a story Nightline did earlier this year on this large number of single (beautiful!) black women. During the interview, the question was posed to me (I’m paraphrasing here), “A lot of black men feel they were portrayed in a negative light when this story came out. Do you feel that way?”

Of course I answered the question as succinctly as television allows, but if given the room to say more, here’s what I would have said.

Read more…

I’m not even going to attempt to answer the question I pose in the title because I can’t. Even though I am a stew of Puerto Rican, Black, and Japanese cultures and bloodlines, I have no idea what it’s like to date women of different backgrounds because 97 percent* of the women I’ve dated are Black**.

But this post isn’t about me and what kind of women I prefer to date. What I want to do is get to the bottom of the question: How do people of different races date?

If I did a search on Google, I’m sure information like this can be found in some scientific study, but I don’t want “data”. I want testimonials from real people who date exclusively within their race, which is something I believe is perfectly fine. The way I see it, if we’re exclusive to our own groups, we shouldn’t hide it. We should be comfortable with sharing it.

I understand for some, race is a difficult topic to discuss and I have no idea how to start this conversation, so don’t expect any instructions from me, but I do have one suggestion: Ask simple but direct questions.

For instance:

• Would a white man ever take a white woman to a poetry slam for a date? I see white people at poetry slams, but they never look like they’re on a date. They’re always in large groups, and most of them are the support crew for their white friend who’s performing that night***.
• One thing I love about dating Black women is we usually have a mutual love for soul food, and we don’t even have to ask other people where to go, because we already know our favorite spots, which begs the question: Do Japanese men and women have that same connection over sushi spots?
• When a Latin woman says her ideal date involves dancing, should I assume she means going Salsa dancing?

I understand these questions may seem basic, elementary even, but hey, what can I say? When it comes to learning how people of other races date, my curiosity is kid-like.

I rarely will ever take up space in my post to ask readers to pass my blog around to other people, because you all do that anyway, right? Right. But I am going to ask anyone reading this to send it to their one friend of another race (some of us have a lot, but everyone has at least one), because I would love for them to comment and hear their own thoughts on this topic. Leave a comment on the blog or message me on Facebook (facebook.com/jozenc). White, Latin, Asian, even Black people I have never met and talked to, no matter where they’re from in America, I just really want to hear what dating life is like for people from different backgrounds.

And to be clear, I have no hidden agenda here outside of learning about others. People interest me in a variety of ways, and this is one of them. At the most, maybe I can learn about a couple of good sushi spots.

Discuss.

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* I went through an exploratory phase in middle school and high school.

** Please understand this doesn’t make me a racist, though I am a preferist (yes, I just made that up), which means, I prefer to date black women.

*** I attend enough poetry slams to feel comfortable making this statement.