Losing You

I knew some white girls who exclusively dated black guys back home. I didn’t think much about it. Since I dated white men, it didn’t matter to me who dated who. I figured it was all good if we just all dated each other and didn’t worry about what color we were.

But I noticed something that did bother me. A few of those girls came from little towns out in the country and once they started dating black guys, suddenly when they talked, they sounded more black than I ever did. What was that all about?

I expected to hear “,,,gurl, let me tell you…” or “….no he didn’t’!” from the black girls I talked to. Not from the white ones.

I finally asked one of them why she felt she had to change the way she talked. She blinked and looked at me like I was stupid.

“Cause I’m with a black guy. I want to sound like what he’s used to.”

“Chile, please,” I said, “if he wanted a black girl, he’d be with one. He’s dating you so I don’t see why you think you have to try to sound like me.”

“Don’t you speak different with the white guys you date?” she asked.

No, I didn’t, I told her.

And I had to think about that one for a while.

As most black people who live in an integrated society must, I did speak two dialects. I always liked to say I am multi-dialectical. Yes, I do speak one way with my black friends and I do speak another in mixed company. It’s not that I am trying to be white or sound white. I recognize that I have never really spoken with the “ebonic” accent many white people assume we all have.

I did, however, have southern parents and I of course learned to speak from listening to them. The way they spoke was comfortable to me and I felt secure with it. But I went to an integrated school and I had white teachers and they made sure I did not say “dem, dose and dat”  I said them, those and that and always have.

I did have a lisp, and truthfully, I still do but I know how to control it. I had years of speech therapy to correct it. Most of the time, my “sss” roll off my tongue effortlessly.  But when I am angry or upset, that “sss” sound does become more of a “th” sound.

My parents were on the job about it too. If my brothers and I got lazy and mispronounced a word, they would stop us and spell the word the way we said it.

Example: “Look, Mom, he’s buck naked….” only it didn’t sound like that.

Mom would glare at me and say, “Buck nekkid? B-u-c-k  n-e-k-k-i-d?? Don’t you know how to speak?”

Or “Ooo, look at that!” Which would sound like “lookadat!” That would really get her goat. She would spell it to Dad who would give us the look and say we sounded like ‘field hands.’

I explained to them that I knew how it was supposed to sound and I knew the right way to say it but if I was at home, I wanted to be able to say it the way that felt like home. I didn’t make those mistakes when I was out and about. When they recognized we did know the difference, they were all right with it. They were concerned that we would be held back in society if we didn’t know how to speak correctly. And so we learned.

I didn’t think much about the way I spoke for years until I was in college. I was having a discussion with a white friend and a black friend came up and I turned to her and spoke to her and then she left. When I looked back at my white friend, he had this look of amazed puzzlement on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“When you turned to talk to her, it sounded like you were speaking a completely different language. I didn’t understand a word you said,” he said, still staring at me with a very strange look on his face.

I hadn’t realized I had done that. It was such a second nature to me that I had never really paid any attention to it. But I became aware of it and knew it was true.

Part of me wanted to say, “You weren’t supposed to understand it.” There was that desire to have a conversation that white people didn’t get. Something of our own, you know.

But what it really was came from a desire to conform and belong. Most of the black people I knew did not speak the way I did. They accused me of being too proper, of putting on airs, of ‘ackin’ white” and other such rubbish. I wasn’t. It was the natural way I spoke.

If I was going to get along with black people, I was going to have to speak the way they did and so I used the dialect I was used to using at home with my parents.

And if I was going to get along with white people, I would have to speak English the way it should be spoken. It’s a fine line that most black people have to walk. Many of us learned when we were young that we had to be multi-dialectical in order to succeed. We had to be able to conform to the crowd we were with.

For some of us, like me, it becomes second nature. We go back and forth all the time without missing a beat.

Look, the way black people talk is rhythmic, musical and colorful. We have a way of describing things that is instantly understandable even if you have never heard the term before. And the way we speak becomes part of the daily lexicon.

Sounding black has become cool. And a white person who uses the terms we do almost always elicits laughter. Remember “Bringing Down the House” with Queen Latifah and Steve Martin? Eugene Levy stole the movie and had us all in hysterics with some of the things he said in scenes with Queen Latifah.

So in that case, for conformity, yes, speaking a different dialect is acceptable.

But I do not change the way I am for the men I date. I speak the way I speak and when I have been with a guy for a while, I have lapsed into my “Sistaspeak” with him. And every one of them has loved it.

They knew it meant that I was comfortable with them and knew I could be me and say whatever I wanted to and I wasn’t making a difference because of them. They took it as a form of acceptance and perhaps it was.

And this goes for this weight thing too. We have gotten in a total kerfuffle about this. Here’s the deal:

Black women are built different from white women. Yeah, we have the same basic equipment, but there are subtle differences. We tend to be a bit rounder than white women. Our thighs are rounder, most often our butts are and we can carry weight better than they can. A black woman can weigh more than a white woman and look just as good as she does.

Now let’s be realistic. There is an epidemic of obesity in our country. Way too many of us are overweight. We love our 72 ounce Cokes, our super size fries and those big Hershey bars.

We do.

Admit it.

Not enough of us like to exercise and we sit at our computers or at our desks at work and we don’t move around like we used to.

You know it’s true.

It’s not just black women who are overweight. White women are too. And yes, black AND white men. So let’s not make this thing all about us because that’s not true.

The truth is we all look better when we are not overweight, regardless of our race or sex. Men like to look at women with a trim waist and long shapely legs. We like to look at men with buffed bodies with a six-pack. So let’s not get our undies in a bundle if someone says he or she prefers us to be in shape. We ALL look better when we’re in shape.

Being fat is not sexy. It’s not attractive and it’s not healthy. Too many black women have let their weight go and still want to slide into a skin tight dress and 6 inch heels and think they should still be able to “pull” the best looking men.

Yes, there are exceptions to every rule but it’s not the norm. Most of the time, the big girls who think they are sex kittens will find that people are laughing at them behind their back. People can be cruel to fat women.

White men like women who make them look good. If a sista wants to date white men, she needs to look good for the one she wants. But mostly, she needs to look good for herself. That’s true no matter who she dates.

But for someone to say that all white men like skinny women and expect for black women to all be skinny is a damn fool. There are a lot of plus sized sistas walking around with white guys who love that big booty more than anything on this earth.

And yes, there are a lot of white men who like skinny athletic women and God bless ‘em. If that’s what he wants and you know that’s not you, pass him right on by. Leave him for the skinny woman.

And trust me, I’ve had more than my share of fat white men drooling at me. No thanks. While I don’t expect all the men to look like Gerard Butler, I am not turned on by men who look like John Candy. At. All. A few extra pounds is fine. Chris Farley is not.

A man who loves you loves all things about you – even the way you speak and especially the way you look. He knows there are things different about black women and it is perhaps because of those things that he loves you.

The biggest mistake a woman can make is to lose herself trying to please a man. Who are you when you are trying to be someone else? You’re not the person he fell in love with and you are not the person you are. You soon become uncomfortable because you are pretending. And you find you are in a relationship that doesn’t work because nothing is real about it.

I realized a long time ago that I had to be me and if that is different, so be it. I was not going to change for anyone. I didn’t care what anyone said. I will speak the way I want. I will dress the way I want. I will move the way I want. I will dance the way I want. I will sing (off key) the way I want.

All those things make me the unique being that I am and you either accept me or you don’t.

It’s all the same to me. 

That Awkward Moment…..

I’d known ever since I first realized that boys were kinda cute. I had dealt with my own demons about it. But no one had ever asked me and I had never actually expressed the fact that I preferred white boys. I just knew I did.

I tried to pretend that I liked a couple of black guys I went to school with. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. Both of them were on the basketball team and they were like the Big Men on Campus and they had their choice of almost any girl they wanted.

I had known one of those boys for years. Our parents had been the best of friends and I suppose they thought we would end up together. Nope. He had his eye on a girl who was much lighter skinned than me and she already had womanly curves and most important – she had “good hair.” She had long thick wavy black hair down to her shoulders that never needed to see a hot comb or a perm kit. No matter that she was dumber than a box of said hair. She had what it takes and I didn’t.

The other boy’s mother thought I was “too dark” for her son and not cute enough. (She regretted that later when I matured.) But it didn’t really bother me. I heaved a big sigh of relief and figured that this was a sign that I should not try to pretend any more. So at that point, I said to myself, “I like white boys.”

I thought about it for a long time. Was I missing anything when I heard other black girls swooning over some guy and saying, “Ooh, damn I love me a chocolate brother!” or “Oooh, that n&*%a is so fine!”

Was there something about black men that was alluring that I was missing? Did my preference set me up to not get along with other black women? I didn’t really have any close friends that were black at that point in my life. I didn’t share their enthusiasm for “bruthas.” And did it make me some sort of “race traitor” because I didn’t like “my own kind?”

Was there something wrong with me?

Over the years, a few people including my mother tried to set me up with guys they thought I would like. I didn’t.

When I left home, I met some other black girls who felt the same way I did. We all preferred white guys. I had never met any other black girls who felt the way I did and it was great. We might have felt like we were different with other black folks, but we were totally comfortable with each other. We didn’t have to explain or say anything. It was all right to like white guys.

One night I was in a bar back in my hometown with friends and one of the guys I grew up with came and sat at the bar next to me. We started talking because we hadn’t seen each other in years. He asked that question that you know is going to preface another question that you probably don’t want to answer: “Can I ask you a question?”

I said yes.

“What did us brothers do to make you hate us? I mean I know we kind of gave you a hard time in high school, but was it enough to turn you against us all forever?”

I suppose it’s simple to always think there is a reason or that you’re turning against something. But that wasn’t it at all. There was no reason. I don’t hate black men. There was nothing political, no cultural or revenge based reason why I like white men. I just do. That’s all. I just do.

I laughed and told him that I just preferred them and that was all. And then I asked why he would ask me since he was married to a white woman himself. I guess it was all right for him.

I went on never really putting voice to it but handily getting out of dating any black men who crossed my path. I am sure all my friends and family knew it but since I didn’t say anything, they didn’t either.

I noticed that some of my white girlfriends were actively dating black guys and seemed happy. But some of them were friendly with black men but never got serious or even considered dating them. So I asked one of my friends why she didn’t. She hemmed and hawed and said that she didn’t want to do anything that would upset her father.

I knew that was a crock. Her father would have been just as pissed if he knew some of the things she was doing with white men and I said that to her. And did that mean her father thought he was better than me? I recalled a conversation I had had with her father a few years before when I went off to college.

While she and I had been friends for years, she had been the one who got pregnant when we were teenagers. She had been the rebellious one who had started drinking and sleeping around with various men. Not me. I had gotten a job and had stayed with it for over 10 years. She had been unemployed just as much as she had been employed. And I went back to college and got my degree. She had dropped out of high school.

He smiled at me one night and said, “There must have been a mistake when you were born.”

I asked what he meant.

“YOU should have been my daughter,” he said.

All this was leading up to the moment when my Mom and I finally brought it out in the open. We were arguing over something and she brought up my only dating white men. She couldn’t see it at all. She grew up in the Jim Crow south and she had had a hard time at the hands of white people. While she had raised my brothers and me to be tolerant, she didn’t like the idea of us dating or marrying outside our race.

I told her I could do whatever I wanted to do.

She said, “No white man is going to marry you. They will sleep with you but they won’t take you home to their parents.”

“Maybe I don’t want to meet their parents. And maybe they won’t care. Everybody isn’t a bigot,” I said.

“They just want to use you,” she persisted. “They will never love you. It will only be sex. You will get hurt and I don’t want that for you. You deserve t be loved. You are loving and sweet and you need a man who will love and cherish you.”

I could have made some comment about how her first husband beat her till she left him and my father cheated on her constantly. I didn’t. Not yet anyway.

But then she said, “Don’t you ever bring me some peckerwood and tell me you are going to marry him. Don’t bring me some zebra kids either.”

I didn’t want to fight anymore so I said, “Fine. When I do get married, I will keep my husband away from you and my little zebra children too. I don’t want any of them infected with your hatred.”

She went to my father in a huff and told him what I had said. He got very angry with her and came to me and said, “Don’t you think for a moment that you can’t come home no matter who you marry. You are my child and I will always accept your choices. Your mother is wrong.”

She grudgingly accepted the fact that if I did get married, it would certainly be to a white man. We never argued over it again.

Years later, I overheard her talking to a family member. One of my cousins was dating a white guy and nobody in the family liked him. He was unemployed and lived in her apartment and was so broke he was wearing her clothes.

My mother said, with some measure of pride in her voice, “My Brenda dates white men but she has never dated any trashy ones. I know I will never have to be ashamed of any man she chooses. She has good taste and she is very classy and I trust her to not embarrass us all like your daughter has.”

Ouch.

Mom took a trip to Scandinavia with some of her friends and she came home telling me about the gorgeous men she had seen there and that I should go there because I’d be sure to find a husband there.

By then she was hinting almost daily that she wanted me to get married and have a granddaughter for her. My brothers had had only boys so far and it was my job to give her that precious little girl she wanted so badly.

“Mama, you trying to set me up with a Viking?”

She grinned and said, “Why not? I need a son in law kind of bad. A Viking will do. Some of those guys are so big and gorgeous! I showed a few of them your picture and they wanted to meet you.”

My Mom, the Matchmaker.