“Babe be careful, your Black is getting on me!”

A look into racialized bodies within romantic relationships

Jonathan Dallas
Aug 22, 2017 · 5 min read

It’s 2017 and dating is easier now than ever. Popular “hook up” apps like Tinder and Bumble make the entire sea accessible for anyone to pull plenty of fish of their liking. With such access to hot singles, you are bound to see people of different colors and ethnic affiliations walking hand in hand or exchanging a lovable smooch in a public space.

Finding someone to potentially date is easy, but the hard part comes with building and growing within an actual relationship. A large part of the dating scene is public perception and acceptance, which compares individuals to dominate images of idealized beauty and what is “normal” (if it ain’t white, it ain’t right). This acceptance can come from friends, family, and even the ruling legislation.

Many couples are often discouraged from being romantically involved with someone of a different race or ethnicity, out of fear of embarrassment or other struggles in day-to-day life. Unfortunately, interracial couples face this throughout multiple facets of their lives due to stereotypes and racialized tropes. The juxtaposition of two people from different races within a romantic relationship projects tropes onto a different colored body, effectively blurring color lines and making someone take on a hint of their partner’s socialized struggle.

Vorris L. Nunley delves into tropes in his article, “George Zimmerman never saw Trayvon Martin”. The article revolves around how white America has created this trope of black men out of racialized fear, which ultimately lead to the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman, out of the need to monitor and suppress blackness.

Nunley describes tropes as, “ …an image, entity, symbol, speech act, or gesture — can emit dense concentrations of cultural, experiential, and political energy and effects — energy producing profound effects for particular audiences…”

He further describes the trope of African American males as being a criminalized form of blackness that whites enjoy in the form of film and other media. The African American male trope is the starting point for many of the stereotypes that surround black men.

Using Nunley’s words, I’ve formulated somewhat of a personal working definition of a trope that can be summed up as an affliction brought upon by westernized thought, that makes someone only able to see demonized images of others; these negative images are generally internalized through the constant bombardment of misrepresentations on behalf of media outlets.

Now how do tropes come into play within interracial relationships? I’m choosing to focus on black male/white female tropes because I am a black man dating a white female, which gives me the best insight into speaking on this topic on a critical level. As I mentioned before tropes lead to stereotypes due to white fear. From my experience dating a white woman, there is a sense that I am corrupting white womanhood and white femininity with my blackness. Zoe Samudzi’s article, “The Virtuous White Woman Trope”, elaborates how white womanhood claims to have helped civilize humanity.

A pillar of white womanhood, as described by Samudzi, is to be sexually pure and virginal, rejecting any sexual advance outside of marriage. A well-known black male trope/stereotype is hyper-sexuality. Therefore, a number of people project my stigmatized sexuality onto my girlfriend, painting her as being sexually deviant or promiscuous. In the eyes of some, she is a living example of “once you go black, you never go back”(until your family finds out and threatens to disown you) and will continue to be marked as sexually immoral and having a closer connection to blackness.

On the other hand, there are some who claim that my girlfriend’s white femininity is an attempt to quell my savage, black hyper-sexuality (as seen in the Vogue magazine cover of Lebron James and Gisele pictured above). So conversely I am perceived as being more articulate and mild mannered than other black men, essentially making me more white.

Another impactful misconception about dating a white woman is that I have an internalized self-hate and disregard of my ethnic roots. Being attached to white womanhood labels me as a sellout in the eyes of the black community. Dating outside of my race is perceived as me publicly declaring that my blackness is ugly. The open letter response by Charles Cole III, details his response to a man’s black self-hatred. The man of subject within the article highlighted how he does not identify with elements of the black archetype, such as sports and hip hop.

This man’s misalignment with black culture leads me to believe that my girlfriend’s whiteness thrusts another trope upon me, the feminized black man. The feminized black man isn’t necessarily an association with feminine traits, but more of a deviation from black stereotypes similar to the man in Cole’s article. Because of this, an outsider may assume that I am a fan of all things white, such as Nascar, rock music, and mayonnaise. In theory, this trope of an assimilated black man, or the colloquial “Oreo”, will help me move more freely within white spaces and up the social ladder.

On the flip side, another trope thrust onto my white girlfriend by my blackness is the image of white guilt. She can be seen as overcompensating for racial atrocities by being subservient to a black male. The basis of our relationship can be seen as one giant debt being paid off. The satirical article, “White Guilt: The WebMD Profile”, written by Broti Gupta and Mallika Rao, deconstructs white guilt by pointing out the “symptoms” of such a phenomenon; symptoms include:

  1. Reminding everyone that all of our genetic ancestors originated in Africa
  2. Live tweeting how different Master of None is from other mainstream shows
  3. Dissasociation when finding out Thomas Jefferson had slaves (and a black mistress)

The embodied white guilt trope would depict my girlfriend as having a misguided racial sympathy, stemming from social and cultural ignorance.

Dating and forming romantic relationships can be a confusing process. Establishing an identity as a couple is hard enough when others try to categorize both of you based on the colors of you and your partner. Different colored bodies in the context of a romantic relationship, assume stereotypes of their partner, forcing them to choose an affiliation between racial groups. However, love isn’t black and white; it is riddled with intersectionality that creates a unique identity for a couple.

My girlfriend and I

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade