Between the World and Us: Why Black Men Won’t Love Black Women
There is a book by W.E.B Du Bois called The World and Africa: An Inquiry Into the Part which Africa Has Played In World History. In the book, Du Bois takes on the project of understanding the tragic impact of Europe on the African content. The book essentially posits that Africa is seperate from “The World” and that Africa was the price that the World paid to give rise to itself. By consequence, the more one enters the World, the further one moves from Africa.
No place is this phenomenon better illustrated than in the romantic pursuits of successful black American men. I had long wondered why these black men so desperately sought after non-black women. Sure, I acknowledged early on the existsence of a clear politic of desirability. The beauty of the World is packaged and perpetuated as the highest exalted good. This vision of beauty is no longer simply “eurocentric” as it once was, but has transformed itself into an amalgumation of all of the most exotic traits of the World — thick eyebrows, curvy hips, long loose hair, small feet, pouty lips, light eyes. To be clear, African women (much like African ideas, resources, labor, and land) are included in the face of the World Beauty, but in large part do not benefit from its propagation.
Ask a black man why they so desire non-black women, and many will tell you it’s a matter of preference. They will say black women are too aggressive, too demanding, too materialistic. Nevermind that any man that ventures enough into interracial dating will find none of these characteristics are racialized; it is the kind of convenient and absolute narrative that quels any demand for introspection.
The more daring brothers will tell you it is a matter of self-hate. To them, black women are so deeply and uniquely insecure that they feel the need to alter their outward appearances with hair extensions, butt augmentation, liposuction, etc. Nevermind that insecurity rears itself in varying (albeit similar) forms across races and is often bred out of an impossible image of beauty that places women at the mercy of the male gaze. Nevermind that many black women partake in these procedures in part to be more desirable to black men specifically; it is the kind of self-exonerating fable that makes the lack of black on black romance a black woman’s issue.
Besides these evident byproducts of misogynoir, the real issue with these narratives is that they always arrive at vanity and are vain in essence. The fact of the matter is that love itself undoes vanity, and if it was vanity alone keeping black men from loving black women it would not stand much of a chance. A bigger impossibility had to present itself somewhere in our history, wedging itself between us to the point of seemingly insurmountable distance. In short, the World came between the black man and woman.
Think of how love typically functions in the World. Communal interaction leads to courtship and courtship to marriage. Marriage is the solidification of the family unit. Marriage establishes rights and obligations between spouses, as well as between them and any children resulting from the matrimony. It is a well known fact that slavery functioned by and large by the seperation of enslaved families and refusal to recognize the matrimony of black couples. In light of this fact we see black love was the price the World paid to come into fruition.
This price is still being paid. In the modern day, if a black man is to amass property or wealth to establish a family in the first place, he will likely have to venture outside of his immediate community and into the World to do it, thus making it statistically less likely the possibility of courtship with a black woman. Given the fact that a wife is seen as a status symbol under patriarchy, only the World Beauty will do in marking his ascent. All in all the rule remains, the more one enters the World, the further one moves from Africa.
I once fell in love with a black man who was trying to enter in the World at a great cost to himself. He was a walking posterboard for the cliche of social mobility. He was the eldest son of three children who after ending a star athletic career ventured into industry hoping to build himself in the New World as a tech savant. He was the breadwinner, the big brother, the mama’s boy,— the pride of his neighborhood rife with survivor’s remorse. He dawned all the fixings of the self-made man — property, stocks, cars, suits, and yes, a non-black fiancé.
Despite successfully entering the World, our affair marked his clear desire for an exit from it. We were neighbors, and he would often stop by after work to lament the weight that accompanied the emotional labor of “playing the game.” The game was taking its toll: functioning as a token of diversity, subduing evident frustration as to not look angry, searching aimlessly and in vain for a familiar voice, a handshake, some affirmation of belonging.
I asked him why he did it. “Why sacrifice so much of yourself for so little?” His response, at first, was vanity. He told me he had been bred to be a success, poured into by the women in his family with private schooling and extra attention in hopes of escaping the life of imprisonment and violence to which the other men in his family had fallen victim. I knew, of course, this was a cop out. The real reason was ignorance. Like so many black men in his position it was not a choice but an ultimatum. He saw no other avenues — he believed the only way out was the way in. He would say “yes” to the World as many times as it was required even if it meant saying “no” to himself, and though he could recognize this was just another kind of imprisonment, at least he could choose his own chains.
Though black men did not manufacture this fictious ultimatum, they religiously ascribe to it. I, however, recognize it as exactly that — a fiction. You see, him and I have a very similar story. I too had risen out of poverty to attend the Ivy League and was expected to bring honor to my family by amassing capital. I tried and failed at this, quitting Wall Street only three years into a budding career as a financier in order to pursue full-time my art and quest for intellectual honesty. When I first met him he thought I was crazy. But then he began to witness my life, living on the edge between the World and my world, compromising only when absolutely necessary, emerging from that painful invisibility, saying something when I had something to say, and still getting paid while maintaing my dignity. My journey exposed his journey for the fraudalent pursuit that it was. This exposure was not out of judgement but love, as I invited him into my world he saw just how high the price of the World actually was. What I offered him was love, the complete defeat of fear. I did not desire to trick him into thinking there was a way out, but rather a way into something greater, a way around the absolute theft of self the World requires, a choice to say “no,” and a choice to say “yes.” I loved him, and that love like all love was an invitation into possibility.
He denied the invitation. The deeper I took him into my world the more undone he had become. He began to become evidently frustrated with his professional life coupled with an increasing avoidance of the topic of his home life marked by a stark unwillingness to deal with the reality of all he had compromised. So what did I do? I demanded he get out of the World, and when he said he could not, I gave him a way back in.
“Tell me the truth,” I demanded. He shook his head frustratedly, “But I don’t know the truth.” I held firm, “Then tell me the truth you do know.” He paused and looked at me, “The truth is we cannot be together in the way that we want us to be.” I led him to the front door, “Then go home. Go home to her.” The entire scene was rife with cliche, because I recognized so clearly that he was not choosing between her and I, but the World and me. His loyalty and devotion were obviously not to her, as we would have never intimated in the first place, but rather all that he gave up to achieve her, to achieve himself, to build his own World.
In his book In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou argues that to proclaim ‘I love you’ is to exist at the birth of a new world, a world that transforms difference into a singular vision. Out of this vision possibility is bred — a possibility for newness and an inevitable destruction of the Old. Love in its essence is the production of truth. And the truth is, there is no safe place for him and I in the World. An entrance into the World would mean a complete destruction of ourselves, our neighborhoods, our history — an epistemological death. The truth is, the only refuge we could ever find was right there beside each other. The truth is, despite what we had been taught, our chances for survival were better when we were together on the edge of the World than they ever were standing inside of it searching for something more. The truth is, the World was built on a fantasy of safety from death, and only those who have suffered violence to maintain this fantasy understand how fragile that World truly is.
When a black man loves a black woman, the World that wedged itself between them, that insisted its existence upon the destruction of their interface, comes undone. Along with this destruction comes all the pillars that have so long upheld it — patriarchy, capitalism, individualism, gendered violence, heteronormativity. If the World offered him a chance to be a man, the same World that at one point insisted he could never be a man, then what I offered him was something beyond that, the chance to be more than a man.
And though he declined that chance, I love him still. Why? Because I understand that he will first have to become a man to understand the true price of manhood. The World demands that women mature faster and in more ways than men, so understand I have already paid that price, and I have already recognized that price is too high. Furthermore, my belief in his possibility exceeds my desire to own him. This is the greatest irony, as black men often shirk black women thinking that what black women truly desire is to own their life. This is the pretext of more than a few black films and novels, in which the black man feels he must reliquinsh himself from both the black woman and the white man in order to find true freedom. But the black woman, when she is most honest with herself, knows better than anybody the black man cannot be owned. This fact is as old as the World itself.
So what is she to do? Left without her own place in the World, abandoned by her cosmic counterpart, how is she to find love? Well, I do not know. But I can tell you where I’m looking and it’s not in the World. In fact, I’m looking beyond it, despite it, into a realm of greater possibility. This realm is the only place where true love exists. Someone please let him know I am waiting for him there.
