Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race Culture and Creed

Here’s the sorry truth: Successful, educated black females are the loneliest women in America. The odds of most black women having a traditional courtship, marriage and family with a black man of equal stature are about the same as winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning on a sunny day when pigs fly.  Black women outnumber black men by a whopping two million!

Got a college educated, professional and marriage-minded black man?  Great!  You can just sit back and watch the other 95 percent of African American women engaging in a knock- down, drag out fight to the death for the puny five percent of marriageable black men on their socioeconomic  bracket. Or better yet, when the book is finished, hand it over to one of those women — your girlfriend, your sister, cousin, auntie. Your hair stylist, manicurist or the woman you share a pew with every Sunday morning.

Now, for all my single sisters, chances are you’ve felt community and familial pressure to edit “The List,” which is code for lowering your standards for the kind of man you want and settle for anything just to get or keep a black man. Never mind that he never went to college, or that he’s only been arrested once and has only two ‘baby mammas.’ Do we really have to settle?  I wasn’t going to, and neither should any of you.

The good news is that things are changing.  Fifteen years ago I knew some black women, out of some misguided loyalty, willing to let their ovaries to shrivel up to nothing before they would ever date a white guy, or for that matter, any non-black guy.  New census data shows biracial children are the fastest growing minority in the U.S., with the highest percentage of reporting individuals under the age of 20, all point to an intriguing cultural phenomenon that is likely to continue. Obviously, our society has come a long way in accepting interracial and intercultural unions since Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case ending  miscegenation laws  in America – and allowed Mildred Loving, a black woman  and Richard Loving, her white husband, to live their happily ever after.  But not everybody is ready to sing Kumbaya.  Couples should be armed with knowledge about the potential kinks along the road if their relationship is to survive.

Anyone who has ever been tempted to, been curious about, or is now engaged in an interracial or intercultural relationship should be educated about the unique rewards and challenges it entails.  While it’s still controversial and taboo for some, the reality is that interracial relationships are continuing to rise, and there are still too many black women sitting on the sidelines, perhaps curious, and more than a little daunted about how to pursue such a relationship.  Since most black mothers had little experience to draw upon to pass to their daughters, Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race Culture and Creed is the open secret to all the nuances involved in navigating the dating scene and perhaps, ultimately, marriage and parenthood.

Authored by Christelyn D. Karazin with Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn

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