After some consideration, I’ve decided that the posters here at BB&W fall into two camps on the issue of encouraging black women to consider dating non-black men. Camp One believes in the active encouragement of getting black women to expand their options; Camp Two thinks showing is better than telling, and while they will speak of their own relationships with non-black men they rarely, if ever, go out of their way to tell black women they have options.

Camp One people will deride a black woman who says that she could never date a white man because of slavery or Jim Crow. Camp Two people just sit back, think about how crazy the speaker sounds, and then go back to making plans to go out that night with their non-black beau.

Personally, I think I fall into Camp Two. While I’m pretty open and vocal about my preferences (in large part because the closer I get to 30 the less I give a hoot about what other people feel about my personal choices; and, the less I care about the personal choices of other people as long as those choices don’t directly affect me), I can’t remember ever calling another black woman ‘stupid,’ ‘dumb,’ or ‘brainwashed’ simply for not wanting to date a non-black man. Yes, I think some of this stuff about not wanting to date ‘massa’ is silly and yes, I mock the craziness, but at the end of the day, if another black woman cares so much about having a black man as her mate that she is willing to forgo all other companionship in pursuit of that goal, who am I to judge?

Do you think that the media–and individual black woman–have gone too far in mocking those black women who don’t want to date non-black men?