“Can You Be Pro Black & Date Outside Your Race?”
I recently came across this question while conducting a routine Google search. It was posed in a title link to a YouTube video, and it got me thinking about my Blackness, in my own eyes and in the eyes of other people.
It wasn’t my first time down that road. As a Black man married to a White man, a Black man who dated predominantly White and Latino men in my single days, I’ve trod the path so many times my shoe prints must be tattooed onto the gravel. My trips down that rocky road to nowhere started eight years ago when I began writing about race and sexuality, with an emphasis on sexual racism. Sometimes I’ve been in the driver’s seat (personal growth requires uncomfortable reflection and exploration of subconscious biases and motivations), but just as often, I’ve been dragged along the gravel by commenters. They may question my Blackness because of the scarcity of Black guys in my dating past or because something I’ve written — typically race-related, even if only tangentially — has triggered them and sent them into fight mode.
Whenever the self-appointed arbiters of Blackness weigh in en masse, I feel as if my Black card has been revoked, or severely restricted. Maybe I never had one in the first place. My standing in the Black American community has been challenged since my family moved from the Virgin Islands to Florida in the early 1970s, and the kids in the Black neighborhood where we lived trained their scorn and ridicule on our Caribbean accents. The message: I didn’t talk right. I couldn’t be one of them.
Later, after I hit puberty, my lack of traditionally masculine qualities made my Blackness debatable among some of my Black classmates and in the Black churches I grew up attending. My middle school years, in particular, played out a lot like the middle section of Moonlight, in which the Black kids at school taunted the main character mercilessly, presumably because he set off their gaydar. (If he wasn’t man enough, I didn’t have a chance — or maybe the bar was just a lot higher after the ’80s.)
I came to Black activism somewhat later in life (in the last decade or so), but despite the work I’ve done since then, I still sometimes feel like I lack real Black cred in the community. This week I hosted a Black History Month panel for my company’s LGBTQ+ group, and it featured four Black, queer guests — Australian-based activist/advocate Hikaru Freeman, Hacks actor Carl Clemons-Hopkins, RuPaul’s Drag Race star DJ “Shangela” Pierce, and Dr. Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, daughter of the esteemed late poet and activist Audre Lorde. I was surprised to find that we all had overlapping formative experiences in Black communities that sometimes, for various reasons, deemed us not Black enough.
“One thing we as a people must get together about is taking away the false measure of ‘enough,’” Clemons-Hopkins said toward the end of the discussion. If we had all been in one room with a live audience instead of on Zoom, I would have stood up and led a standing ovation.
“The false measure of ‘enough’” has been the bane of my existence since my arrival on the U.S. mainland at age 4. My voice still sometimes takes people, both Black and White, by surprise — and not just because I’ve retained my Caribbean lilt. It’s happened on dates. It’s happened in work meetings where I’ve had to speak to rooms full of strangers. It happened years ago when I was an editor at Teen People, and I met R&B singer Sisqo during his “Thong Song” superstar phase. The first thing he said after we were introduced was “You’re very well-spoken.” He didn’t say it in a patronizing way, but he also didn’t say it to any of my White colleagues, none of whom were any less well-spoken than I was.
I knew what he was getting at, though. I didn’t talk the way one might have expected a Black guy in New York City to talk. I don’t think Sisqo was necessarily questioning my Blackness that day, but other people in my community still do, either because of how I talk or what I say. It may start with an essay I write about dating White men, or an op-ed about rappers using the N-word, or a TV appearance where I refuse to brand Liam Neeson with the dreaded R-word. A reader once Google searched me and posted several photos of me with White friends on Twitter to prove I was anti-Black. Others have posted videos of my television appearances: “Listen to how he talks. He’s not Black.”
Yep, decades after my bumpy landing in Kissimmee, Florida, the judgment about my voice still follows me around. But what exactly is the Black voice? How does it fit into Black culture and Black identity, both of which have evolved significantly since the ’70s and ’80s? Back then, they were defined largely by magazines like Jet, Ebony, and Essence and reflected on TV series from Sanford and Son to The Cosby Show. In the ’90s, In Living Color, Martin, and Living Single held up the mirror while Vibe and Source called the shots.
Black culture/identity is more complex than ever, informed and mirrored not just by print journalism and TV, but by a mix of cultures: hip-hop culture, pop culture, celebrity culture, LGBTQ culture, geek culture, online culture, social media culture, and political culture. The increase in interracial marriages/relationships and cross-cultural exchanges have made the ways to talk Black, to act Black, and to be Black, as vast and varied as the shades of black skin.
Regardless of how Black folks present themselves, we all get to experience racism. Many White people will always look at us and see, first and foremost, black. Perhaps they’ll feel less threatened if we talk more like they do. (To some White people, comparing a Black person to an Oreo cookie — “Black on the outside, White on the inside” — is the highest compliment.) But that’s their problem, not our shortcoming.
I grew up being told America is a melting pot. Black American culture is, too, but no-one ever brags about that. There’s no right or wrong way to be Black. It’s not about how you talk or how you walk, how dark- or light-skinned you are, or if the person you’re in love with looks more like Idris Elba or Chris Evans.
I don’t have to talk like a brother or be married to a brother to be one, or to love Black men. I’m connected to Black Americans because of our shared experiences as Black Americans. That’s what connects us all, not the way we talk or the way we walk. We’re connected in our pain. We’re connected in our strength. We’re connected in our beauty. And most importantly and profoundly, we’re connected in our Blackness.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Jeremy Heligar's work on Medium.