The other day, I went to the movies with my step-dad. We went to watch One Love, the Bob Marley biopic. A trailer for this new movie came up that caused me to raise my eyebrow. The movie started as a comedic commentary of how Black people always feel the need to please white people, and then it took like a complete 180. The movie then became this dramatic love story about a Black man and white woman who couldn’t be together, and the Black man risked the lives of all the Black people for this white woman… I was gagged. Completely and utterly gagged. Still to this day, there are barely any words to describe my disappointment.
As a Black woman, I feel like in every movie I watch there’s this white-woman-Black man love dynamic. I know that this isn’t an absolute, but that’s how I feel.
The media has been using this Black man-white woman trope for decades. We see it a lot during the Jim Crow Era. Back then, this trope was used to say that Black men were animals and wanted to rape precious, white women. This trope is used in movies like Gone with the Wind and King Kong (and yes, King Kong is the Black man in that movie which hits an entirely different level of racism). During and after the Civil Rights Movement, this dynamic starts to shift though as the media starts to accept this trope. Black man-white woman love stories start to appear. White women are deciding to marry and date these Black men; they aren’t being held against their will. Today, this trope is used in a good portion of movies and television, and I’m tired of it.
In the Black community, dating outside of your race can be a problem, depending on where you come from. For example, my mom could care less about the race of the person I date, but my aunt hates when my cousin brings home guys that aren’t Black. Unfortunately, the greater Black community supports a Black man dating a white woman more than it does a Black woman dating a white man. The strangest thing about that is the fact that Black men who date white women are more likely to trash talk Black women.
It happens quite frequently, actually. A Black man gets with a white woman and feels the need to comment on the character of Black women. Usually, Black women are called nasty, ghetto, and ugly by these Black men. Of course, these hate filled comments towards Black women are ignored like most issues affecting Black women. The community continues to give their support to these Black men because we’re taught to support Black men. Now, say this situation was reversed; say a Black woman said those nasty things about a Black man, she would be burned at the stake, hypothetically. The Black community nearly annihilated Serena Williams when she got pregnant by her white husband but supported Kanye.
I know you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this — what point I’m trying to make. I’m trying to say that I’m over it. I’m tired of seeing the Black man-white woman trope in 90% of the movies I watch. There are other forms of interracial couples, why is this all we, as Americans, focus on?
To me, as a Black woman, it seems that we want to promote the Black man-white woman relationship for some greater purpose. Honestly, to be a complete conspiracy theorist, it could be to wash the Black out of people. It may sound crazy, but this is something that has happened before in Australia. Think about it, Black mothers are more likely to teach their children Black culture than Black fathers. If we create a world where all the fathers are Black, these Black children no longer have this cultural education. The number of fully Black people will continue to decrease, though this doesn’t answer why we don’t see other interracial couples.
I think there’s something about other interracial couples that the Black man-white woman couple doesn’t have. I have never heard an Asian person talk down to people of their own culture. I don’t see Latino men talk down to Latina women in favor of white women, but I do hear Black men talk down to Black women. Black men act as if every action Black women make is negative. They act as if Black women’s only purpose is to treat them badly. Could this be a reason why we see this relationship? Do we see this relationship to promote this disunion between Black women and men?
I don’t exactly know, but I do know this is a problem. The media isn’t reflecting all of America; it’s just reflecting a tiny part of the country. We have Black and Latino couples, Asian and Black couples, Latino and Asian couples, Arab and Black couples, etc. Love comes in a lot more colors than those we see on the screen.
