Sportin’ Your White Girl

Black Men, White Women and Self-Hate
OpEd by Adeeba Folami

In 1998, the poem “Sportin’ Your White Girl” was written as a commentary on a phenomena seen often in Denver, Colorado: Black male/White female couples. At the time, the topic of interracial relationships was one the author, (me), could get very upset about. Fourteen years later, however, it’s a topic I could almost care less about …. or so I thought.

Over the years, you learn to let other people do whatever floats their boats in relationships and mind your own business, especially when it comes to the relatively few Black men, out of the whole population, who choose to date, marry, and have sex with White women.

I had a flashback to this poem this week after corresponding with a Black man from Denver who said the reason he isn’t married is because he plans to “do a little traveling to determine which country I want my next wife to be from.” Really, brother? Thinking he was cleaning his comment up, he later clarified that the countries he had in mind were Brazil and Colombia, which he said are full of Black women.

Regardless, it still highlights the devastation the Black family in the hells of North America has experienced. When you look at the Jewish holocaust and how that is attributed to Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Germany, the world is repeatedly told and reminded that Jews will never forget their history, nor will they let anyone else forget it. Jewish men, or women for that matter, have not, regardless of how their traditions have changed over the decades, taken on the habit or adaptation of marrying or developing intimate relationships with Germans.

The Japanese were bombed in their home country by (white) America during World War II. In the USA, at the same time, thousands of Japanese were rounded up and placed in interment camps because they were viewed as threats to national security, even though most of them were American citizens and many were children. They did not suffer to the extent the Jews did in German concentration camps, but they did suffer emotional stress, unjustified imprisonment and some even died. It is certain the nation of Japan has not forgotten the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and their people, like the Jews, have not, (for the most part), gone on to adopt the practice of marrying and establishing sexual relations with individuals of the same descent as those responsible for a great travesty in their people’s history.

When it comes to Blacks in America, however, it’s a totally different story. The Black Slavery Holocaust, in numbers of deaths, at least, far exceeds the loss of life that resulted in Germany and Japan. The brutal, inhumane treatment Blacks received during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and in America at the hands of White men, women and children, is documented and known, yet, odd as it is, despite this horrific experience, several Black men have gone on, over the decades, to engage in relationships with White women, some/many who are descendants of some of the same White men and women who used to enjoy watching the lynching of a “nigger” in their good ole Dixieland.

Some Black men in America have even seemingly turned completely on the Black women who descend from the same circumstances as they did. Some of these men feel there are no good Black women in America, or that Black women here don’t know how to treat a man, or that Black women won’t do certain things sexually that White women will, or whatever excuse they have come to accept that justifies their choice to pick any other woman over the one who, for the most part, still has a high degree of loyalty to her people and men, and doesn’t want a family life with any other man than the one most like her.

In keeping this short, it’s hard to even explain or fathom the depth of this kind of self-hate, particularly from the Black men described above. Of course, they don’t see it as self hate, and that’s their prerogative, but what in the world else can you call it? Sometimes the term “sell out” is used but that’s just another manifestation of self-hate.

So, even though this topic of BM/WF relations no longer gets under my skin like it used to, the correspondence with the brother the other day brought this poem back to the forefront of my mind. It was, 14 years ago, and still is today, my poetic commentary on this mind boggling trend that (some) Black men in America are part of.

Sportin’ Your White Girl

Sportin’ your white girl without any shame
That’s the way they do it in Denver, Colorado

“Ebony & Ivory”
we’re all the same,
“We Are the World”
that’s your every motto

But once upon a time
they would lynch your behind
for looking at a white girl’s panties on the line

But now you’re mystified
with those blue and green eyes
Then to ease your mind
you invented the lie
that
“Ain’t no sistas that can treat a man right.”
Man Please!
The only good women you seem to find are white

With your color-blind self
living in “Another World,”
a soap opera fantasy
You!
With your white girl

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