LOST IN TRANSLATION

My wife and I are beginning to experience a very specific problem in our marriage. While I have been involved with WW throughout my entire life, I represent her very first experience being intimately involved with a BM. Something that she has struggled with and is still having problems working through is understanding that "going Black" means more than just "fucking or loving Black".

To me, crossing the color line means you have to start working on developing a healthy unnderstanding, empathy with, and sympathy for the issues that affect your partner on both a personal level but definitely also a cultural level, too. For example, dealing with WW means I have had to recognize that WW are more concerned with things like weight than BW are and that the gender expectations common in Black families are not so common in White families. My wife is one of those types of women who tries to deal with everyone as an individual, seeing beyond color, and while that is great...it also means she often has blinders on, or is plain callous about, situations that ARE completely about race and discrimination. She doesn't have the past experiences or the awareness that such experience creates to recognize or even effectively respond to racism directed at me, her, or both of us together. To better explain, she is the kind of woman who would go waltzing into all Black nightclub with me and then not understand why the BW in there were being hostile to her. She would assume it was everything and anything else BUT racially motivated. And, again, while that is great in some circumstances I think it leads to ignorance and ineffectual communication in others.

My wife comes from a very "lily white" background: suburbs, ex-hubby is the principal of the high school where they lived, middle class money and culture all the way. I come from a lower class background, inner city living, very much exposed to some of the ugliness of human nature that she was shielded from.

I always knew she was very "white" but never understood how detrimental that was until recently...

Have any of you BM experienced this issue with WW? Like, they don't have any understanding of what it means to be a BM in America, and all the difficulty that entails, but still struggle to be supportive partners? How do you address that?

 

PhillyLove,

I know that you have addressed your questions to the men here... but I would like to chime in to say thank you for starting this topic. Now, please note that I am only speaking for myself and in regards to my own experience.

As a WW who has been dating BM for the past 5 years, I have to admit that I have behaved like your wife on many occasions. I was raised in a community that was almost all white. So, questions of race were never really an issue. It was something that I saw on TV about other people who lived elsewhere. When you are a part of the majority, race is not something that you think about very much.

For example, I had not spent much time thinking about the fact that I am white until I moved to a more multicultural city when I was 25. And then... I caught the fever (oh... I say that completely jokingly, I mean no offence at all!) Well, I have to admit that when I was with my first black boyfriend I was very uncomfortable with addressing the issue of race. I tried to pretend that it wasn't there. I was under the impression that acknowledging the fact that he is black and I am white would somehow be seen as "racist". I thought that I was supposed to ignore that fact completely.

We did have cultural differences, but I simply blamed them on the fact that he is African and I am Canadian. It wasn't that I didn't want to understand him or his culture and heritage. On the contrary, I was fascinated by it. I just didn't think that the fact that he is "black" had anything to do with anything.

After we broke up, I dated a man who was raised in Canada and who helped me see just what it's like to be a black man in today's society. I just had no idea about what his reality was like. He viewed everything through what I will call "racial" glasses. At first I was very uncomfortable with him making racial references all the time, but eventually I understood why he saw the world that way.

And I have to say that it was only once I started coming to this site that I was able to gain a better appreciation of the reality that black men face every day. I have to say that at times I am still somewhat uncomfortable with addressing racial issues but as time goes by, I am getting more and more comfortable with it.

This is my experience. From what you were saying about your wife, it sounds like she may also be highly uncomfortable with addressing the issues. I don't know what the ideal solution is - as everyone is different - but perhaps you need to "educate" her about the issues that you find important - especially if the two of you have children together. I saw your post about books for/about WW in relationships with BM and that type of information is what I was looking for when I came here - I wanted to share and exchange with women in my situation, so maybe you should send her this way so we can get to know her too!

Cheers!

 

Pearl Girl I knew there was a reason I liked you, he he. I read this post earlier and had exactly the same reaction as you did. So Philly, hope you don't mind that another WW is answering or sharing some of her feelings about this. I completely co-sign with Pearl Girls post here

To me your post was a bit of an "eye opener". Growing up I just didn't think in terms of race or black and white, Germany was still very very white at that point (I believe we had 1 black kid in the entire High School). While I am fully aware of the racism I don't think I can always fully understand the gravity of it since I don't experience it to the degree you do. Women deal with sexism and all but one can't compare that so I won't pretend I KNOW what you are going through. Another thing is that to me racism is on a personal level such an absurd thought that I don't want to believe that Mr. Smith next door can be a racist or let his prejudice rule so I believe I might sometimes just be naive to the fact.
Your post made me think and I will definitely talk to my boyfriend about this and ask him how he feels about this.

 

Thanks girl! And Ditto!! artyman:

I hear ya 100% on this one... It all seems so absurd to me at times that I just don't understand it. I remember the first time that my father explained to me what apartheid was. I was in grade 6 and had to do a project on a country in Africa - I chose South Africa. I felt completely overwhelmed that this was going on! It was - and still is - beyond my understanding that such a thing could happen.

I was obssessed (at 11 years old) with the idea of moving there and fighting for the freedom of the oppressed! Luckily, some brave fighters didn't wait 'till I was old enough to join them! But I will never forget the day I saw Nelson Mandela walk out of that prison on Robben Island in 1990! I was 15 and I wept in front of my TV.

Obviously racism has never made sense to me and I guess there are times where I just can't believe that it still exists in this day and age.

 

I appreciate your heartfelt responses, ladies. I apologize for not opening the initial question to you, as well. I didn't mean to leave you out of the discussion and your insights have been really valuable. We ordered the book that was recommended - "Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness" - and keep talking about it. Its hard to really get a grasp on sometimes because even I don't really know how to explain it to her. It's like trying to explain color to a blind person. But, with love, we'll keep working through it.

Thanks again!

 

Well, allow me to be the third woman to chime in with my story ...

Like Chigirl, I grew up in Germany, an almost 100% white environment. Therefore, my "race", or "races" in general or "race relations" was never something you actually thought or talked about. Antisemitism, yes that was always a topic, but not anti-black racism (at least not when I was a kid, that is changing now with increased African immigration and higher numbers of anti-black hate crimes). Anyway, in a matter of fact, the day I became "white" was the day when the "black" man I dated called me "caucasian".

And from this day on I went through different "stages" just like Chi and Pearl did. I started off at a level of absolute naivity and was quite often totally flabbergasted by his reactions in certain situations. For instance at the beginning it was quite a emotional rollercoster to go out for dinner in a restaurant together. It started already at the entrance, when he, as it is American custom, was waiting for someone guiding us to a table, while I, as it is German custom, went straight ahead to find us a table myself. He was convinced that the reason why we had to do that was because he was black. Then, we were not served right away. For me, that was totally normal, as it is custom in Germany to give the guests some time to settle down, to relax and to study the menue, but he got up and told me: "Let's go, they don't serve us. They are racists." Or another situation I will never forget was when we were on our way to a dinner party hosted by a company I was working for, and he found out that I didn't tell them that he is black. His reaction was so full of panic that I was seriously scared that he might jump out of the driving car. I asked him: "Why should I tell them that you are black? If you were white I wouldn't tell them that you are white either!" "That's something different" was all he said. I didn't understand. I didn't know how to react. Back then I was totally drawing a blank because I had absolutly not the slightest clue where he was coming from.

We were lucky that, dispite my naivity, we never had to deal with any dangerous situations, negative incidents, or racist comments. And after a while he relaxed. And he started to talk. We talked whole nights away. He told me about his childhood, his time at school, in military and about all the ghastly things he had to go through. I was angry, sad and disgusted, and I thought I understood, but if I look back now, I know now that I still didn't. All those things he told me were so far away from me. I felt like those things happen in a different kind of world, not in mine. And I wasn't capable to fully grasp the black vs. white problematic either. Eventhough I called him black because that's how he identified himself, and eventhough I knew that he identified me as white, for me he was simply an American. And I was simply German, I didn't feel white, I didn't identify myself as white, and what those "white" people do over there had absolutely nothing to do with me. The lack of racist incidents during our relationship reinforced this idea.

That changed abruptly when I came to the states the first time and suddenly found myself in the middle of this racial mess and witnessed first hand some of the incidents I were told about. For instance I will never forget how I once stopped a cab and the driver simply drove off when he realized that a black man was attempting to enter the cab along with me. I saw the women clutching their bags, felt the disgusted stares in my back when we went out together. But the moment of real enlightenment was when I experienced the first time the pain of rejection because of my own skincolor. First thought: "Asshole". Second thought: "That hurts" (Yeah, now, finally, I understood) Third thought: "Holy shit, they think I'm one of them".

From this moment on I tried hard, too hard, to prove how "different" I am. In real life, I actively sought arguments with "white" people I deemed to be one of "them". Online, I spend night after night to report "racists" I hunted down in chats and message boards. I wrote countless letters to newspapers, expressing my disgust that nobody did anything against them, until I realized that they are all protected by the first amendment. I started to read black boards and joined black chats, made myself notes about how I am supposed to behave and what kind of behavior I am supposed to avoid, and, now self-conscious about my "white" identity and vigorously determined to "earn" the approval of black people, I tried to act accordingly, not even questioning once if it even made sense or not. The head full of all kind of crazy "behavior rules for white people" I started to tip toe around issues (that's a "black thing" you don't understand), was scared to speak up (you might say something "racist"), I avoided to touch my hair when there were black women around (they might think you are "rubbing your european hair texture in their face"), I didn't look at black people (they might think you "stare" at them), didn't laugh (they may think you are "laughing about them") - in short, I was acting a total fool.

Until one evening, I was in New York for christmas and I stayed with my then-life partner in an all black neighborhood. I was on my way to his apartment, when a black man walked towards me. And since my then-partner had told me that it is "saver" for lil "white" me to act that way, I didn't look at him, I didn't smile, I behaved as if he was invisible. And then, in passing, I heard a friendly voice "Happy christmas Mam". And as pathetic as it sounds now, but that was really the moment that made me pause. There was I, acting a total fool and like a total asshole, and this man still had the courtesy to show me friendliness. And I realized, that the more I had tried to be "different than them", the more I actually became like "them", while I had tried to do everything "right" I had started to treat people differently based on the color of their skin.

Today I might be a little bit less naive, and I became a little bit more sensitive when I listen to people with a different background than mine, but I don't try to prove anything anymore, I'm just trying to be my little ole self who refuses to treat people differently based on their skin color and who refuses to be treated differently based on my skincolor. So if I would be back in that car today, I would still tell him: "Why should I tell them that you are black? If you were white I wouldn't tell them that you are white either!" But this time, I wouldn't say it out of naivity, I would say it with the courage of my own conviction.

 

Great post, Silvercosma. Thanks!

 

I honestly believe that this is something all white women/black men couples tend to go through when battling against all the odds out there waiting for them, so it isn't something that can be changed overnight if it's hard for the white women to recognize every single incident which occurs that may have a racial stigma attached to it against the black men they're involved with, and I've never seen any white women elaborate on any of it as openly as the women in here did either.

 

Well, I can understand and accept that my wife may not recognize the cultural nuances of certain situations, but recently I went through a very hurtful experience involving my former employer and, while I was 100% sure it was rooted in very covert racism, my wife not only did not see it but also tried to convince me that I was being overly sensitive and too quick to assign racism as the cause. Later, after I had been royally ass-fucked by this employer, she finally said, "Maybe that was racism, honey. Now that its gone this far I can see how they purposely cornered you." Granted, its great that she recognized it but I was angry because, initially, she couldn't stand with me and be supportive. She still thinks, in many ways, like a White middle class woman and doesn't seem to realize that she has moved out of that paradigm by marrying a BM. Even if I were from a similar background, she still couldn't exist in the same culture as she did when she was married to a WM.

I am trying to be patient but, sometimes its difficult.

 

I know how you feel, bro. Sometimes, it's hard to get them to see right away what you already see staring you in the face, but hey, at least when things get out of hand, they come to terms with what we are facing and what it truly might be (the supportive ones of course).

 

I pleed guilty. I recognize myself so much in all the stories I read, especially Silver's. To further expand, when my then boyfriend was here we were getting stared all the time, and he was so sensitive about it and got so mad, one Sat night we went out and came home after 10 minutes because someone stared at him laughing in a malicious way, he said, and in a friendly way, I thought.

I was trying to explain him that people are looking just because its uncommon to see black people here and they are just being friendly, and calling him paranoid and overly sensitive. He must have felt very frustrated with me.

Anyway, his reactions have made such a lasting and powerful impression on me that, unlike you Silver, who has come over it, I'm still at the phase where, other then with my black men friends, who know me and I'm familiar with (mostly online friends) and who I know I could jump on their head and wouldnt think anything bad, with black men strangers I am self conscious about how self conscious they are (or might be) and I am afraid to look their way to not make them feel bad or like they are some kind of curiousity.

If I was in a country with many black people, I think it would be ok, but since it really is true that black people are so rare here, and Romanians tend to stare, I dont wanna be one more who does and make them feel like aliens.

 

I agree, SG, and I realize there are always going to be issues around understanding and empathy in a relationship, regardless of the ethnicity or culture.

 

Thanks girls for posting about your experiences! It is interesting to note that we have felt the same way in similar situations. It makes me feel better about my own evolution with this whole issue.

Silver, I loved your post!

I too went through a phase where I didn't know how to act because I didn't want to be seen as one of "them". I was completely self-conscious and ended up over-compensating at times to emphasize that I was "different". Until one day on the bus a very unattractive, smelly and dirty looking (dirty as in not clean - not "dirty" in the good sense! haha :lol: ) black man made crude comments to me and well, at the time I felt like I could not express myself completely and that I had to tolerate this behaviour - only because he was black! If I brushed him off I was scared that he would think that I was racist! I felt uncomfortable and got off the bus a few stops before mine and walked the rest of the way completely annoyed and angry with what had happened. As I was walking I thought to myself, screw it! If that man had been any other colour I would not have tolerated his rudeness! If some fat, ugly, smelly white guy made gross comments to me I would not hesitate a single second to tell him where to go! Maybe I had become overly sensitive to race, in a sense. I have to say that it probably came from reading a lot of the posts here and I NEVER want to be labelled as "one of those white women who would not give a black man the time of day", as many women are referred to here by some BM - even though they often have no proof that this is how these women actually think!

It's difficult to know sometimes what the "appropriate" reaction is, but I have come to the conclusion that I know what is in my heart and I know my true intentions and if I am respectful with everyone, I cannot be responsible for how people react or how they interpret what I mean.

 

Not trying to be rude, but...

For the record, not only does the title of this thread explain this comment from you, but your post speaks for itself regarding the matter we are addressing, and actions speak louder than words, therefore, we know from our own personal experiences whether or not many white women would or would not give a black man the time of day, and to deny it, but acknowledge racism against black men in America at the same time is a total lack of correlation if you think about it. Along with your story, many white women in America will go out of their way to give us 'special treatment' just for the sake of masquerading their own bigotry against us, or in a situation similar to yours, now if you put all of that together with your acknowledgement of American anti-black male racism and our experiences alone, then how much proof do you need?

Plus, too many of the foreign women in here neglect the fact that we aren't even comparing them to American women, and some American women can vouch for us on American anti-black male racism in here also.

 

Wow! :shock: this is a very good thread. I commend everyone for putting out their honest opinons and experiences out there. I wonder ,Phillylove, does your wife have a especially tough time in the "black world" lol I mean does she not know what to say and how to really interact when she is the only one of her "kind" in the environment. It is very interesting to see how some white people act in a setting were their the minority. Personally I try to test a woman's racial awareness right away while iam still in the initial dating phase to see just how "blind" or atleast somewhat aware of things that she be of. Overall this thread makes me glad that I grew up in a multi-racial area, cause its help me tremendously to understand more about white people like your wife and some of the other female posters here. White people who maybe good people lol but just OVER compensate like all hell and try too hard to be accepted by black people. There are MAD white people who are straight intimidated by black people, when you talk to them, they don't know whether to "shit or go blind" lol :lol: dammit I'm not a Klingon!!!!!!! :smt021 PLEASE WHITE PEOPLE NEVER USE SLANG EVERRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

My wife doesn't really struggle in situations where she is the minority. If anything she displays a profound degree of curiosity and empathy. The problem is that she still tries to view and understand "Blackness" from her own, White, suburban platform. I understand that we all try to connect to the world from where we stand but sometimes we have to realize that our own experience and knowledge is limited and, perhaps, inappropriate. For example, I once believed that women who stay with abusers are fucked up and obviously want to be abused. A very ignorant and uninformed opinion, to be certain. After years of maturity and experience, however, I came to realize that women who stay with abusers or seek out abusive relationships are suffering from a score of different issues, not the least of which are low self-esteem, fear of abandonment, and the wounded development of their own perception of love, intimacy, and belonging. My original perceptions weren't malicious, but they were made from a purely male position; when I stepped out of myself and started trying to see the world through different eyes, I was able to connect and translate more accurately.

 

A lot of times people hear that BM are always whining about race to "hold on to their victimhood status" whatever the fuck that means..

You'd be surprised how often white people say and hear shit like that..

AM radio is full of shity comments like that

As if that 60 year old retired school teacher in New Orleans that was beaten by 6 white cops got his ass kicked so he could hold onto being a victim :roll:

Many European WW have a better sense of the shit we endure than these stateside mofos..

I remember there was white guy on Oprah that disguised himself as a BM for 6 weeks to prove to his Black friends that racism was over and they were exaggerating..

Well...

After THREE DAYS he took that shit off.. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Homeboy couldn't walk in our shoes for THREE LOUSY DAYS :lol: :lol: :lol

 

:lol: :lol: *at my man, hetero*

Still keepin' it real, bro.

 

Well, don't be too hard on our American WW. They have been born and raised in a system designed to villify and oppress the very object of their desire - the Black male. I sympathize with WW in many aspects and I recognize that it takes a great deal of strength and courage for them to really make the journey over the color line that has been drawn by their forefathers. Add to this the hostility they deal with from BW, the judgment of WM, and the ridicule that White society heaps on them for loving a BM...no...I respect the efforts the American WW makes when she decides that loving a BM is what she really wants. They may be less progressive than European WW but, shit, our entire nation is less progressive than most of Europe.

 

Yeah, they've got us licked when it comes down to the personal relationships between their friends/family, since like I said before in another previous thread, they have it MUCH WORSE than we do with the people in THEIR lives, and you've already summed it all up as to how, not to mention the fact that their friends/family members are usually FAR MORE EXTREME and dysfunctional than some of ours.