I’m black or brown, depending on who you ask, and I mainly date white guys. I have no idea why and it’s definitely not a conscious choice.
I grew up in a small town in the 90's, where I was the only non-white girl in my class at school and my skin colour was a curiosity rather than a threat. There was no racial tension, but then again, no sense of black community. There were quite literally no black people at all. All the boys I crushed on were white; my first “boyfriend” (aged 10) was white and my first boyfriend (aged 14) was white.
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There weren’t any mixed race families on EastEnders and the most famous black pop star in the world was referred to in mainstream media as the "Scary” one. When people asked me about my ethnicity, I would often just mumble something about tanning easily and change the subject, and I brushed off racist slurs like any other insult.
It wasn’t until relatively recently that I started to embrace my otherness. And nowhere is it more of an issue than in the world of dating and relationships.
So what’s it like to date white guys when you’re not white? Well, it’s exciting and intense and awkward-in-a-good-way for the first few months, and then it gets weird and annoying and you split up and then you see them on a date with someone else a month later and you die inside and have to drink all the wine to get over it.
Oh. You want stuff that’s exclusive to the whole brown girl/white boy scenario? I dunno about that, but here’s some stuff I’ve noticed.
Tinder offers a soul-destroying glimpse into the worst and most racist of humanity.
Just block them. Block them all and don’t look back.
READ MORE: Things You Only Know If You're A Black Girl On Tinder
A first date will ask you where you are from because they’re not allowed to talk about ethnicity.
‘So where are you from?’
‘I grew up in Yorkshire’
‘No but where were you born?’
‘London’
‘No but where are your parents from?’
‘My mum’s from Manchester’
angry confused face
Some people fetishise non-white bodies. It’s a good idea to stay away from these people.
I’m curvy. I have no idea whether that’s the African thing or just because I eat a lot of lasagne but it doesn’t matter. It is never okay for a guy to compliment me on my ‘black ass’ the first time he sees me naked. Like, never ever. I know I have big lips. I’m black. But there’s some cool words coming out too, you know. I am more interesting than my lips! And seriously, whoever came up with the term ‘blowjob lips’? What a lot of people don’t realise is that when they start talking like that about lips, they’re not just being sexist fuckwits. They’re being racist sexist fuckwits, which is the very worst type of sexist fuckwit.
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Some white guys have their own stupid ideas about race and will want to share them with you.
Often a guy will say something along the lines of, ‘There was no racism where I grew up, we all just got along!’ or ‘I don’t even see race, when we first met I didn’t even notice that you weren’t white!’ Just smile and nod. Whether you want to see him again depends entirely on whether he’s more attractive than he is annoying.
I went on a disastrous first date recently with a guy I met on Tinder. Let’s call him Adam (that’s his real name but London is a big place, I’m sure he’ll be fine). Adam informed me that blackface wasn’t actually offensive, it was just people pretending to be offended because they love a good argument. Like, err yeah, thanks Adam for that nugget of ignorance, you absolute bell-end.
Adam also told me that he enjoyed watching Top Gear and was allergic to dogs so to be fair to him, it was never going to work out between us, even before the racism. I guess the lesson here is to have a more thorough screening process, maybe a set of questions that a guy has to answer via WhatsApp before you agree to go for a drink with him. ‘How do you feel about blackface?’ is a great place to start.
He will not know how to describe you.
Say you arrive at a restaurant separately and he describes you to the maître d' to see if you’ve been seated already. Is he allowed to say ‘I’m here with the black girl’? Probably not. And maybe you don’t even identify as black, you haven’t discussed it yet. So maybe ‘tanned’ is better? (It’s not). ‘Mixed race’? Probably best just to skirt around it and be vague ('she’s average height with brown curly hair'). You’ll end up sitting at opposite ends of the restaurant but at least no one’s been racist. Phew.
Shit will get awkward for him.
If your boyf is not a total douchebag, it will have occurred to him that he has a massive economic and social advantage over most of the rest of the world. Check him with all his white male privilege, right? But is he supposed to feel guilty when you tell him about something racist or sexist that’s happened to you? Is he supposed to get as angry about it as you do? How is he supposed to react when you refer to something as a ‘white boy’ thing? I dunno. Life is hard.
He will look to you for opinions on stuff.
So what do you think about FGM? The riots in Ferguson? The lack of brown characters on Girls? The appropriation of black culture in the mainstream? Anything remotely race-related, he will want your perspective and expect you to have insight. Which is a bit annoying, but he just wants to make sure he’s not just looking at a situation from a position of white privilege, which is a good thing, right? Right.
No one will assume you’re going out.
Unless you’re sucking each others’ faces off, people won’t guess. They see a white man and a woman of colour walking down the street and no matter what the body language, people will act surprised when they find out they’re together. It’s kind of the opposite of when you’re out with a brown friend and everyone thinks you’re related.
Most of the time, it won’t even be a thing.
All of this makes it sound like race defines my dating experiences, which is obviously not true at all. Going out with white boys is just as frustrating and fun as dating black guys or white girls or black girls. We’re lucky to live in the UK, where most people don’t have a problem with inter-racial relationships, and the minority that do are mostly too aloof to say so in public. That’s definitely something to celebrate. So get out there and date who you want! Except Adam. No one date Adam.
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Follow Yasmin on Twitter @yasminlajoie
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.