I’ve got jungle feeeever…

“You’d better not bring home any white girls,” said a female friend of mine during a long distance phone conversation some years ago. “Of course not,” I replied.
At that point in my life, I couldn’t even conceive of the idea of dating outside of my race. In my mind at that time, black people had enough trouble to deal with in “white America.”
We didn’t need to bring trouble home with us to have dinner. Dating white women would’ve meant that I was losing touch with my roots and I was betraying my sisters.
Then the hard times came. I was a lonely brother in search of female companionship and I needed a friend.
All the black female friends that I had were either married, in relationships, or too busy with school to have time for me. I couldn’t buy a date. I was the invisible brother.
One day at a job I was working on, I had a conversation with an attractive white girl. She was a student at LSU, and I was considering going back to school but had several apprehensions. I explained my fears to her as she patiently listened.
I noticed her eyes as she rendered me her undivided attention. She applauded my quips with a warm smile that made me feel special. She gave me words of encouragement that I desperately needed at the time.
For a brief moment, there was a pause in our conversation followed by an intimate gaze and an echo of heartbeats that suggested one thing __–_ chemistry. This was completely new to me because I had never gotten the type of attention from a white female that I was used to receiving from black females. It was strange even feeling attracted to her in the same way, but her skin color didn’t even matter to me as did the support she gave me right then.
Did we exchange phone numbers and have deeper, late-night conversation as a result of this encounter? Did we go out and become romantically acquainted? No, we did not. In fact, that was our last conversation.
The experience, however, opened my mind and made me see outside of the racial box I had placed myself in.
I realized that by limiting myself to dating within the boundaries of my own race and by not taking into consideration the possibility that there could be someone of another ethnicity with a sincere interest and desire for me, I was missing out on a valuable experience that could have changed my life for the better.
It was then that I realized that love is something that must not be confined by racial or cultural differences. I learned that when hearts are concerned, preoccupations with skin color should merely be looked upon as a thin wall that needn’t be climbed because, by doing that, its height only increases.
That wall should be broken down and the affection for another human being should be allowed to be experienced, expressed and enjoyed with no barriers to impede its bliss.
Regardless of what race we may be, we all have something beautiful to offer one another. A person’s skin tone should not hinder us from exploring this notion in our search for emotional satisfaction.
Don’t get me wrong. My ideal queen is an ebony angel with deep, brown eyes and a summer evening smile.
I’m looking for an Eryka Badu, Jill Scott – type of sister to vibe with and carry my seed. But if a Christina Aguillera, Britney Murphy – type comes along and can prove to me that she sincerely wants to be on my team, I’m only one man with one heart.
Whoever steals it first will be the one. And if the latter mentioned type beats the sister to my heart, she’ll be my queen.
That means you’ll see us together holding hands at the mall with matching “dead prez” t-shirts on, or cuddling at the Bayou Classic feeding each other nachos, or sitting up front at the poetry readings like it’s our world.
I wouldn’t treat her any better or any worse than I would my black women. Her whiteness would not be considered a prize to me. That would be irrelevant to our relationship. And whoever I wind up with – Caucasian, Asian, Latina, Indian, whoever – black women will always be my sister, foundation and source of inspiration.
I’m her, she’s me and that’s the way it’ll forever be. We may not be bound together as man and wife, but we’ll always be bound by our plight as black people. I realize that the person I choose to love will never make me blind to that fact.
Love is a beautiful test. It challenges us to see past each other’s differences. It beckons us to embrace those things that separate us culturally and learn from them.
True love is a color-blind third eye that looks directly past physical differences such as skin color and outer pulchritude and sees only the beauty of the soul.