What you’re really saying when you call black women undesirable.
Tags: Black Men, Black Women, Racism, Sexism, White Supremacy

The weaponization of dating preferences in white supremacist patriarchy

Ari Lennox is just one example of black female dehumanization by larger society

Dating preferences in the black community is a hot button topic that everyone has an opinion about. The conversation about who gets to have them and what grounds they get to be founded on is never ending, mostly because of the black men online who refuse to end it. More specifically, cisgender, straight black men. For whatever reason, many black men feel compelled, not only share their dating preferences but to share the racist/sexist reasons why black women are not and never will be included in them.

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Just last week another black man decided to do just that. While 50 Cent is known as the OG troll, his latest comments placing ‘exotic women’ on a pedestal while perpetuating racist/sexist stereotypes about black women have backfired. Hard. So much so he’s had to ‘double down’ on his comments by… not doubling down. Despite making peace with the fact that there will always be black men who will use their dating preferences to undercut black women, his comments made me feel a type of apathetic anger that is all too common for many of us. But nothing about what 50 Cent said is new. Many celebrity black men have built careers and personas around misogynoir for decades, constantly inventing and reinventing new ways to humiliate black women. Dating preferences have become one of them.

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From Twitter to Instagram, straight, cisgender black men have continued to pull out their soapboxes and declare to the world about the type of women they like. Not only do these declarations tend to be completely unasked for, but they also tend to be inclusive of most women who are not black. At this point, most black women have made peace with not being the most desired. We’ve come to expect it even. But there are still a few of us who approach these men with curiosity. These women are put in a position to ask ‘why don’t you want me,’ ‘why don’t you protect me,’ and in the wise words of Beyoncé ‘why don’t you love me.’ In turn, black men have unraveled pages worth of detailed misogynoiristic explanations about why we are deemed undesirable. We’re too belligerent, too poor, too struggle hungry (but we’re golddiggers when we want a partner of a higher economic status), too ugly, too angry, too bitter, and just too much. Black men have weaponized these ‘flaws’- as well as a few backstories about how black women have inflicted deep trauma in their lives- in order to justify their desire for lighter skinned, less black looking women.

When black women are constantly being put down to uplift non black women, when we are told over and over again that we are just undesirable, we are put in a position to defend said desirability. But looking at how desirability and dating preferences function in a white supremacist patriarchy, it’s time to take a step back and ask what we are really defending. Despite the fact that women’s rights have come a long way, her value is still based on how attractive and desirable she is in the eyes of men.

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At this point, most black women have made peace with not being the most desired. We’ve come to expect it even.

Black women have had racism and sexism screw us over in cruel and soul crushing ways, forcing us to defend our humanity, our beauty, and our validity as women. We have watched Serena Williams be denigrated for her body, even being compared to a man on several occasions. We have seen Blue Ivy be bullied and ridiculed for her looks since birth. We have witnessed beautiful women like Teyana Taylor and Ari Lennox be compared to dogs. We have been dehumanized, deemed too masculine and too ugly, and our apparent ‘lack’ of beauty and femininity has been used to devalue black women as women. As people. Black men have used this to dictate how they choose to navigate romance in a white supremacist patriarchy, making sure they run over all the black women they can. All the while, these men continue to uphold anti black beauty standards by uplifting non black female beauty at the expense of black women.

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At this point, dear reader, you may have run to the safety of excuses many black men fall to when their treatment towards black women is critiqued.

“Well, black men behave this way because of traumatic relationships with black women” “As a black man, black women we’re the ones who weren’t attracted to me so excuse me if I return the favor.”

And to that reader I have to say that I don’t care.

There is a quote that says that your past explains your actions but doesn’t excuse them. Black men have gotten into the habit of placing the blame of their misogynoir on the heads of black women. Doing so absolves black men of their responsibilities to recognize that it exists and do the work to deconstruct it. These excuses tell black women that if they were ‘nicer’ to black men, they wouldn’t feel compelled to perpetuate the same systems that actively work to kill us.

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Black men make these assertions by refusing to single out the black women who are responsible for their trauma, confront those women and work through their emotional baggage. Instead, they generalize us, taking out the pain they felt when a black girl made their life a living hell for them in high school on the black woman who they had a disagreement with the other day as if they’re the same person. This also doesn’t seem to account for the many black men who grew up in stable homes and were nurtured by stable black women but continue to go on to harbor deep seated misogynoir towards their female counterparts.

The truth is that in reality, many of these black men’s hatred for black women was learned from a culture that told them that black women-and everything about us- was unworthy. White supremacist patriarchy taught them that black women’s emotions were mere overreactions at best and manifestations of stereotypes at worst and they were better to not be taken seriously. It taught them that our bodies were to be objectified but those same bodies were worthless. It taught them that we are too masculine to be women. Too undesirable to be worthy. But black men can’t recognize this, no. For black men to acknowledge this would mean that they would have to acknowledge they have internalized a racist/sexist bias and thus, also function as an oppressor. For a group of people who have been portrayed as the most oppressed group in America, coming to terms with that would be too much.

But looking at how desirability and dating preferences function in a white supremacist patriarchy, it’s time to take a step back and ask what we are really defending

The conversation around dating preferences all too often boils down to desirability of black women who, in a white supremacist patriarchy, have been designated as the bottom of the barrel as black people and as women. Because a woman’s value in a patriarchy is determined by her desirability to men, the debate on black female desirability is essentially a debate about black women’s value. Because a person’s worth in a white supremacist society is determined by skin color, the debate on black female desirability is essentially a debate about black women’s worth.

This is a debate that, in these constructs, we can never win.

Black men are continuously presenting laundry lists explaining why black women are unappealing. They make sure to remind us that ‘ain’t nobody want you’ and asking us ‘who will love you if we don’t?’ despite the fact that they’ve made it clear that they don’t. In the context of these constructs, what these men are truly saying to black women is that ‘you are worthless,’ ‘you are invaluable’ and more resoundingly ‘there’s nothing about you worth loving.’

When I see black women in the comments section defending our desirability and our beauty against the colorists and misogynoir, I understand that this defensiveness isn’t coming from a place of vanity. It is coming from a perfectly human desire to be seen as wanted. To know that there is something about us worth loving. What black women are really defending is our worth, our value, our womanhood, and our humanity.

Regardless of the fact that you may not be a black man who has perpetuated misogynoir, there is no denying that dating preferences have been weaponized in order to wound the spirits of black women. They have been manipulated into a sort of coded language, a tool used to denigrate and oppress us. This is ultimately the reason why black women are always on the defensive on the battleground of dating preferences. It’s why black women will swarm the comments section of any one who excludes black women from their dating preferences. It’s why black women side eye black men who are constantly defending their right to their preferences. In these situations, we are forced to ask ourselves: is this man really fighting for his right to ‘like what he likes’ or is he fighting to ensure that the idea that black women are worthless and unlovable is recognized as a valid one?