I got this note from, well, let’s just call him “Cory.”

Hello Christelyn,

I am a black gay man and I find your site a very useful tool in helping black women empower themselves and realize that love comes in all colors.  Being a gay black man I have black female friends and I do hear many complaints about dating and finding a suitable black mate.  I have actually recommended your site to some of them.  I am a black gay man that is a college graduate with a law degree and starting his own business. I can in some ways relate to how difficult it is to find a successful black man that I’m compatible with.  I do date interracially, but I will not date a white man.  I think that your site has caused me to think about my own biases toward white men and feeling like a white man would never truly understand and appreciate me for who I am.  In my mind I would be nothing more than a fetish. I have thought about dating a white man and I get offers for dates all the time, but I turn them down.  [Chris interrupting for a sec: That statement alone is 90% why I wrote Swirling. So many, many black women feel this way, and it literally paralyzes them from seeking love outside of their race.] I’m not there yet but maybe one day your site will help me get there (unless it was Chris Hemsworth from the movie Thor that mofo is FINE!).

Yes, Cory, yes he is. Viva the “V”!!!

The only problem that I do have with the site is that sometimes I think it can go borderline; “ALL black women should date outside there race, white men in particular, because they have been brainwashed by the black community to settle for black men that have oppressed black women and continue to oppress black women and one form of oppression is by limiting black women’s options only to black men, who do not appreciate them or help them achieve a fulfilled life, but black men by just being black men psychologically hold them back from achieving their full potential, which is elicited by the dynamic of ALL black relationships, which is that a black woman is automatically supposed to support and help a black man be fulfilled first and only after that will she be fulfilled because the black man has been fulfilled.”  I know, a huge run-on sentence, but I think that about sums the problem that I have with the site.  I’m a black man and for that reason I fell very offended by some of the comments and tone of some articles on the website.  I want to reiterate that I do not think beyondblackandwhite is a black man hate site or I wouldn’t visit it, but there are times that some articles and conversations veers toward that.  I’m simply pointing this out.

I know that the site is not meant for me, but meant to empower black women.  I think I am offering a constructive observation because black men don’t always need to be depicted as the oppressor that black women have to escape from and only in the arms of a man from another race will she be saved.

Here’s my take…

To some degree, I agree with you, Cory. Some of us really go hard on the BC, I know I do. But the reason that it may appear that we harp on these issues is because there really is no safe place to have discussions about legitimate problems going on in the black community without being shot down, cussed out are called a sellout. Many of the women on this site have been so deeply hurt by people that look like them, are related to them, and supposed to love them, and talking about (okay, venting ha ha) these issues with others who have had these experiences is healing. When you can talk about it, you can seek help and healing. Then you can move on.

As for this site encouraging black women to date interracially and not feel beholden to “uplift” a community (namely the men of that community) that largely does not reaffirm their beauty and femininity?  I am guilty as charged. I wrote a whole book about my desire for black women to move beyond race and choose character about color and disabuse themselves of preconceived notions (that you even have yourself) that only black men can love and understand them without exploiting them. By the by, there’s plenty of exploitation of black women within the community and compared to that, fear of being fetishized by a white dude should be on a black woman’s radar about .00000000001% of the time.

No one is saying that all black men are conceived in the debbil’s womb, and no one is saying all white men are knights in shining armor. I do think we need to do a better job in communicating a balanced view of interracial dating (the good, the bad, the ugly) without piling on irrational paranoia about that one time, somebody’s uncle’s cousin’s sister’s son-in-law thought he heard his neighbor’s white husband call their black puppy the n-word.

There’s enough of that mess online as it is.