Dating outside my race

What kind of man do you fall for? What’s your guilty pleasure? Are you drawn to the talkers who check every wrong box, the ambitionless projects you try to fix until you’ve burned through your sanity, your parents’ patience, and three years of your life? Or maybe you go for the polished, leading-man type, a real Idris Elba.

I ask because I’ve been staring down a real-life WTF lately. A situation so absurdly backwards it makes your head spin: rural white women trapped in the rigid, white-male-dominant paradigm of acceptable relationships.

A woman genuinely likes a guy, but she can’t comfortably exist with him because her family will lose their minds. Why? Because he’s Black. Doesn’t matter if he’s a decent guy, has a solid job, or treats her like gold. Cross that line, and she might as well have bought a front-row ticket to hell.

WTF.

Now, I find this hypocrisy laughable, so I’m going to lay it out plain. Here is my bitter non-factual local Dating Hierarchy for White Girls.

First, the values:

1. A Christian variant of anything below, obviously.

Then, financial standing:

2. A perfectly good white guy (with money). 3. An emotionally absent or verbally abusive white guy (with money).

Then, the usual options:

1. A genuinely cool, regular white guy.
2. A standard-issue, arrogant white guy.
3.  An unsupportive, ambitionless guy sleeping on the couch all day.
4. . A lying, cheating white guy who breaks your heart weekly.

Then, the complete train wrecks:

1. A dangerously impulsive white guy who screams at you for breathing wrong.
2. A guy who has put your life in physical danger. Twice.
3. Someone with a severe, life-altering substance abuse problem.
4. A guy who steals from your family to fund his habits.
5. A genuinely good guy from another country, as long as he’s “not like the others.”
6. And dead last: any Black guy whatsoever. Hardworking professional, saint, or total menace, it’s all the exact same to them.

Case in point: the last white girl I dated had an easier time getting her family to ignore an ex going through a radical, highly controversial life transition than she did explaining me.

When that situation collapsed and we got together, the panic set in. One night on FaceTime, she tried to fathom how she was going to tell her family she was dating a Black man. She broke into complete pieces. She wept and fumbled over her words like she was tasked with delivering an impromptu eulogy for a tragedy. Nobody was even in the room. It was just us on a screen, and she was in agony.

My first instinct was just to console her. But later, sitting in the silence, the epiphany hit me like a tsunami.

HERE’S THE FUCK: Look at the parade of toxic, destructive, chaotic men you’ve justified to your family over the years. Look at the trainwrecks society excuses. And here I am, hardworking, responsible, faithful, baggage-free, and you are having a full-blown mental breakdown trying to explain US?

She was staring at a generational, impenetrable wall. Guys of all backgrounds are equally capable of breaking a heart or ruining a life. Race doesn’t make anyone better or worse; individual character does. Yet here she was, facing the threat of being disowned simply for loving responsibly.

I’m a normal, solid guy. I’m actually pretty handsome – it’s not like she got caught committing a felony. But the choice in front of her was presented as a catastrophic gamble:

This could be the best decision of your life. OR This could be the absolute worst decision of your life.

We started picking fights over minor deflections, but we both knew the real source: a Blackness I can’t, and won’t, wash off. And honestly? I refuse to be the catalyst that tears someone’s family apart, or force a woman to live with the heavy regret of “making her bed and lying in it.” When someone I care about is in that much agony just for being seen with me, the only sane move is to walk away. I am not going to force anyone into a brutal war to prove my worth.

Strip away the absurdity, and race, background, or bank accounts shouldn’t be the ultimate filter. All that matters is how someone treats you. If a partner is toxic or destructive, stay away. Protect your heart from bad habits with extreme prejudice.

Judge the habits. Not the pigmentation.

Heartbreak knows no color.