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March 16, 2004
Spike Lee Could, I Dunno,
Make a Movie About This, Huh?
by Ron Hogan
The New York Times catches up with Alice Randall, who's come out with a followup to The Wind Done Gone, as she bonds with a group of African-American women about how men who should be in relationships with them are all running off with white women.
This apparently has something to with the plot of Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, in which "a Harvard-educated professor of Russian literature, a black intellectual snob, whose son has gone lowbrow by becoming a professional football player. Worse, he is engaged to a young white Russian émigré, a lap dancer." I haven't seen word one of it yet, so I'll refrain from judgment for now, but has this umbrage at interracial relationships really endured so strongly after the media buzz about it back in the '90s died down?
Until they let some of the black men out of jail, black women are going to be irritated when white women, in the parlance, "steal our men".
This may sound weird coming from a mulatto avec a white father. But until white men become MUCH more interested in dating black women -- and believe me, just scroll through a dating service to see how many white guys put "Caucasian" instead of "no preference" -- it's fucking slim pickens out there for black women looking for a black man.
Someone had an interesting article about this in the Atlantic about a year ago. Oh, I could go on forever.
Posted by: O.H. at March 16, 2004 08:42 PMWhile there are genuinely crass reasons that some african american men date white women, this " steal our men" mentality drives me, as well as millions of other people, up a goddamm wall. As well as being crass racialism, it says a tremendous amount of your opinion of african american men in the margins.
Personally, Im a human being with idiosyncratic needs and wants. And while the image of the virile black mosntrous sex machine can be a vulgar crippling stereotype, so is the mindset that im being stole like america is some great nigga plain and white women are herding me off like cattle. Either way i'm reduced to a being some kind of beast, unworthy of the genuine human love.
Posted by: Robert at May 24, 2004 07:25 PMyour PayPal donation
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