The Black

The first lesson I learned about dating while Black is to never underestimate my partner’s ability to be racist. I had never met my partner’s mom before. I had no relationship with this woman who determined me too risky to be a roommate. Regardless, my partner allowed their mom to judge me and my entire race, and they sided with her anti-Black conclusion. When my partner proceeded to defend their mom despite her crude racism, it really hurt me.

Here was someone I was supposed to rely on, a person who was supposed to love and care about me, openly letting their mom call me diseased. I had grown way too comfortable in the fantasy that my partner’s white silence wasn’t violence. I had made too many excuses for their racial failings. I made myself OK with the fact that they weren’t the most vocal when it came to race issues. I continually excused their problematic behavior and jokes they made when it came to their whiteness, comments like, “I can do  because I’m white.” I gave them slack when it came to less kosher comments on race or when they lacked the curiosity to ask about my black experience.

Looking back, I was selling myself way too short. As a Black woman in America, I know that racism isn’t always obvious or undisguised. I’ve been hurt by all sorts of macroaggressions: weird questions from “friends” about my hair and other “Black” topics, backhanded compliments, and other acts of violence. For whatever reason — poor self-esteem, being conditioned to expect and accept less — I expected so little from my white partner. In the future, if I date white people again, the bar will be much higher.