I was inspired to bring this question up myself because of a recent conversation on our fan page. A rainbeau took his black girlfriend out wine tasting and noticed about the second or third swig that the attendant didn’t pour any wine for his date. Being the chivalrous man that he is, he stood up for his girlfriend’s honor and set the guy straight. After that tongue lashing, she got like, 52 free tastes.

This scenario seems like a legit snub. Nothing so overt has ever happened to me and The Hubster, but we’ve gotten the, “Will you be dining together?” question from hostesses, even though he and I were practically French kissing in front of them. It happens less when we’re out with the kids and one or two of our little ones are crawling all over him, because Daddy is a rock star to them, so much so that The Babster shoos me away when she’s having her alone time with him. She’s become quite territorial, but she still allows me to kiss him in her presence but draws the line at tongue action.

Back to the subject. I’ve noticed lots of stories of mixed couples–mainly black men and white women pairings, in which one or both of them scan the room at some social setting or another, lock eyes with black women longer than what’s comfortable and even deliberately bump into them in order to…what? Encourage a confrontation?

But…why?

This behavior goes both ways. You have non-black men and black women craning their heads all around a setting to see who’s watching, all the time having their guard up and their fists balled. They hardly notice each other because their so busy looking to be offended in some way. So my question is, if you’re always on hyper-alert when you date interracially, and then constantly whine about how hard it is to swirl, then why even bother? Isn’t it just easier to date within your race and call it a day?