Race, Relationships, Decisions

I think the most telling thing about yesterday’s entry is the overwhelming number of people who basically said “Yeah, my parents feel the exact same way.” I actually did a bit of research on inter-racial relationships and it’s stunning how skewed the U.S. statistics are towards black-white relationships. There’s twice as many Asian-white marriages as there are black-white marriages, even though there’s way more blacks in the U.S. than Asians. There’s nearly ten times as many hispanic-white marraiges as black-white marriages, even though there are only slightly more Hispanics in the U.S. than blacks. So, basically, this seems to imply there is a much, much larger divide with black minorities than any other minority group. Right, I probably didn’t need to do research to realize that.

I’ve really been exposed to this stuff since I was a kid, so I don’t know why I’m suddenly surprised by it. I remember my first day of school, in kindergarten, I was told by one of my fellow 5-year old classmates that “there ain’t nothing here but a bunch of niggers.” I suppose I’ve thought that I just lived in an especially backwards area and that it wasn’t like this in the rest of the U.S. And why is it like this? Because blacks have a more different look than other races? Obviously there’s lots of history and complexity behind the reasons people have the attitudes they do, especially in the South. But the white supremacy type comments I hear on a daily basis at work – even if half of them are done in a “joking” manner – have been pretty shocking to me. I didn’t realize people were really like this. And don’t get me started on people who make belittling comments towards blacks only to follow with “don’t get me wrong, they aren’t all like that.” The implication that blacks as a group are below whites and that some can rise to the standard of the superior race is so disgusting. Between starting my job and going on a date with Calesha, I’ve really been reminded of the world we still live in. It hasn’t been a very pleasant reminder.

Which, to actually defend my mom a bit, I think one of the reasons it upset her that I took a black girl on a date (even though it was just one stupid fucking date and meant nothing) is that she’s aware of the consequences of inter-racial dating. That it’s defining of a person. That you become the guy who is in an inter-racial relationship, that people actually look down on you for it. That it’s going to hurt my ability to relate to my co-workers and move up at work. That everywhere I go, I’m going to get dirty stares and very possibly worse. That I’m going to be the white boy who is dating a black girl.

As for Calesha, I’m unsurprisingly still not sure what direction to take our relationship or whether to keep pursuing it. I feel like I’ve waited so long to actually have this, to have an intelligent person who I feel real attraction towards who is actually here who I can see anytime I want to and have a real relationship with that isn’t all in an IM window. And I feel like I would be such a fool to just say no to it. But at the same time, I’m beyond wary of getting further into a relationship with a girl who is so clueless about how the realities of relationships work. I think she wants/expects me to be her boyfriend and make her life more complete and make her a happier person. I don’t want that burden. I can’t do that for her. That’s not how any relationship should work.

We have another date tentatively planned for Friday. I’m going to see how that goes and go from there. I know, I said that last week too. I can’t string this girl along forever.