Hair Intentions...

Hey Ladies and gents! I know I have been incognegro for a bit, but a big gurl has been out in the world enjoying herself. The weather in Chicago is finally acting like it might want to stabilize, the sun is shining, my life is beautiful and darn it, I am happy! It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood! My only complaint is the lack of stable warm weather! All this up and down is wearing me out. I'm walking out the house in the morning wearing a winter coat but by the time I get home, I'm wearing shorts, a tank top and flip flops? WTH?!?!

Global warming is real. 'Nuff said.

So I am over on one of my favorite websites reading and I just happened on a topic started by a young mixed race woman wondering where all the BM with locs who love sisters with the nappy hair have gone. This young lady basically is wondering why all the Black men she sees are in the company of white women. Now normally I would just play pass me by and keep it moving, but something about this one drew me in, so I started reading. Ok, so it started out with the same ole song and dance about all the Black men that ths particular poster sees have locs, but they aren't checking for her because they're too busy checking for the local White, Asian, Hispanic and other flavors. Needless to say, I almost choked on my Coca-Cola because this girl is biracial herself and yes her father is the Black in the equation.

Here's part of the post:

Whenever I've seen a brother with an afro or Locs, if there's a woman with him - she's white. Now, I might need to sit down and STFU since I'm biracial of the same mix, but I never saw my dad with another white woman after they broke up. He was only w/ black women before her and after her. So I don't think it was a preference for him. I don't have a problem with interracial relationships since, like I said, I'm a product of one and I've been in a couple myself. I'm usually color blind, but seeing that over and over is starting to confuse me.

I see other brothers with regular short cuts or whatever and who they're with is usually a sister. Even when they are with women of other races, the percentage is a lot lower than the brothers I see with afros or locs. Every time I see a brother(or sister) wearing their crowning glory I get all excited, then I don't understand why if you're so proud of yourself and your heritage why there seems to be this predisposition to only be with women of a different race? I have no problem with interracial relationships, but I don't get the Napptural men + white women every time I see them?

Okay, color me amused, but what the hell? She says her Dad was never with another WW after her Mom: he went back to Black women and stayed there. That right there should have told her what the deal was with that relationship, but whatever. But this young lady is just like the legions of BW sitting around right now angry as hell because "their" Black men are walking around with a white girl on his arm. They want to yell, scream and whine at Fate for taking "their" men and "giving" them to a White woman. You all know how I feel about that "hand full of dirt scenario", but that's neither here nor there. I'm really trying to wrap my mind around this lady's comment, especially since this girl is BIRACIAL. Now don't get me wrong, I understand where this young lady is coming from, and that might as well have been me a few years ago. I love natural hair and when I see a BM with his locs looking particularly luscious, a sister might need to fan herself a lil bit, 'cause I love a good looking set of locs no matter the wearers color.

But at the same time, I am under no illusions about how BM really feels about sisters who wear their hair natural. Sure you'll find a lot of brothers who might love it, but chances are they want a woman with a video hoe weave or some creamy cracked out edges. It doesn't matter how many metric tons of weave you wear or how many scalp fires you have endured, you better not let that man see not nan lil bit of the nappy you show or he will dog your ass out worse than a random fool in the streets. And heaven forbid you got that real nappy, straight from the jungle, bush b*tch hair!

*dead faint*

I know a young lady just like this one. Her favorite saying is "If it ain't Brown, it ain't goin' down", she is virulently anti-White and basically thinks that all white men are down with lynching Black people, all YT secretly hate BP, etc, etc. One of the very first things I wonder about biracial women (and men to some extent) who feel like this is: Are you wearing your hair nappy because you are biracial, but are ill-at ease with the white blood flowing through your veins and trying to show how blickety-black or ‘down for the cause’ you are so, therefore, that must be the motive for others who wear their hair natural? Or are you truly that into everything Black that you feel you must hate the part of yourself that reviles your so-called Pro-Black sentiments?

This is a whole other discussion, so for now I will digress and head back to my original topic.

As I kept reading, I'm wondering why she's so confused about the brothers with locs and 'fro's being with WW, but never seems to mention BW with naptural hair walking around with their White or other ethnicity SO's, but I digress, knowing deep within my cold, dark heart that there was going to be a sister like me, somewhere somehow who is into dating men of all colors who would come in and lay the smackdown on this thread, and my girl MissEmbrya surely did not disappoint.

Here are her comments:

To give the OP a serious answer...the reasons are complex and varied. Some might be instances of true love; others might be instances of over-compensating for self-hatred. Many *pro-Black* figures have an intense love for the White woman...James Earl Jones, Sidney Poitier, Frederick Douglass, Harry Belafonte, etc.

My point is -- THESE BROTHAZ DON'T GIVE A F*CK ABOUT YOU. I REPEAT -- THESE BROTHAZ DON'T GIVE A F*CK ABOUT BLACK WOMEN PERIOD.

...Why do Black women continue to show blanket loyalty to a group of men who do not return that fidelity? It boggles the mind. Ya'll givin' these Negroes too much power. Black men do not belong to Black women.

Stop chasing after the tall, dark chocolate brotha who doesn't want your azz and accept that drank from rhythm-less Todd with the Ashton-Kutcher haircut.

When Black women in general show emotion/slight interest about their interracial conquests, their stock goes up, they start feeling themselves, and they treat Black women like trash. Black men have too much power when it comes to relationships. And this needs to change.

If Black women started giving a Todd or a Hector a chance and adopting a neutral attitude towards these relationships BM would be falling over themselves to get a chocolate gal. I am obviously pro-interracial love, but (IMO and experiences), most of these brothaz date White/Asian/etc. women because they hate Black women (or themselves), not because of a genuine connection.

*standing ovation*

I sat cheesing for about 20 minutes after I read this post and others that followed. The young ladies are finally getting it. They see that there are worlds of other men who would love to have them and damn it if they aren't starting to open their minds and hearts to accepting them, even if they do have a bird chest and look like a white Ethiopian! (You had to see the picture of Ashton Kutcher that was posted to get the joke.)

So ladies, slowly but surely those coming behind us are seeing that the world is a big place, and shutting themselves off is not going to work. One thing I have to say that Miss E. had 100% correct: when BW started becoming the “wanted” woman, our stock will go sky high and watch the very same sorry ass BM who left us come crawling back! Some people call those of us who advocate for more BW to date outside of their chosen boxes "evangelicals", but I don't see myself as a preacher or anything of that sort. I love my sisters with all my heart and I just want us as a group to do better. Does spreading the message to our daughters, sisters, friends, cousins that there're a whole planet full of beautiful men of every hue who would love to be a part of your life, make you his wife and build something special with you make me an evangelical?

Nope. It just makes me a woman who's seen for herself that the world is large and that there's someone out there for everybody!

Since I’m in a really, really good mood, I have decided that the video I’m posting today is going to be a tribute to one of the hawtest IR couples on daytime television that never was: Todd Manning and Evangeline Williamson aka Tangie or Tangeline. For those of you who don’t watch ABC Daytime, Tangeline was the biggest supercouple that never came to be completely. Todd was sent back to his white wife and Van was sent to a safer, ethnic lover in Christian Vega (played by the always smoking hawt David Fumero). Tangeline will live in my heart forever because they had it all: chemistry, friendship, love and enough heat when they kissed to melt all the plastic in your television. So to my fellow Tangies, this one is for you!


You all take care and see you soon… I think!

Rest Well Sweet Princess

The word has lost a hero for the ages. This just came across my desk from Yahoo News:

RICHMOND, Va. — Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

"There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause," the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero — just a bride.

"It wasn't my doing," Loving said. "It was God's work."

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers."

She became pregnant a few years later, she and Loving got married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Mildred told the AP she didn't realize it was illegal.

"I think my husband knew," Mildred said. "I think he thought (if) we were married, they couldn't bother us."

But they were arrested a few weeks after they returned to Central Point, their hometown in rural Caroline County north of Richmond. They pleaded guilty to charges of "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," according to their indictments.

They avoided jail time by agreeing to leave Virginia — the only home they'd known — for 25 years. They moved to Washington for several years, then launched a legal challenge by writing to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Attorneys later said the case came at the perfect time — just as lawmakers passed the Civil Rights Act, and as across the South, blacks were defying Jim Crow's hold.

"The law that threatened the Lovings with a year in jail was a vestige of a hateful, discriminatory past that could not stand in the face of the Lovings' quiet dignity," said Steven Shapiro, national legal director for the ACLU.

"We loved each other and got married," she told The Washington Evening Star in 1965, when the case was pending. "We are not marrying the state. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants."

After the Supreme Court ruled, the couple returned to Virginia, where they lived with their children, Donald, Peggy and Sidney. Each June 12, the anniversary of the ruling, Loving Day events around the country mark the advances of mixed-race couples.

Richard Loving died in a car accident that also injured his wife. "They said I had to leave the state once, and I left with my wife," he told the Star in 1965. "If necessary, I will leave Virginia again with my wife, but I am not going to divorce her."

As a woman who dates IR, I want to say thank you to this brave soul who fought so hard to be with the man she loved in spite of society, racists and the world. Love is a powerful thing, as well it should be. RIP Mr & Mrs. Loving. Know that the world is a better place for your having been here.