This is just what I’ve been waiting for. Forget about getting Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act or waiting for comprehensive health care reform. I’ve been waiting for another book/article about how Black women need “something new.” The wait is over. Joy!

The Washington Post recently wrote about author Karyn Langhorne Folan whose book “Don’t Bring Home a White Boy: And Other Notions That Keep Black Women From Dating Out,” encourages Black women to date outside of our race instead of playing a game we’re destined to lose… waiting for the ever elusive “good” Black man to come around. I cannot tell you how tired I am of hearing about this. It’s gotten a lot of media play over the past year and enough is enough. Not that I have any problem with dating outside of one’s race, let me be clear. That’s your business and your love so I’m down with that. I just don’t see the need to go on and on about it as though NOT dating outside of your race is default some kind of pathology.

Folan and her husband Kevin

I have more than a few issues with Folan as reported by the WaPo. It appears that Folan implies Black women are just sitting and waiting. Waiting. Waiting. We are so lonely and desperate (with our educated, upwardly mobile selves) that we fill our lives with work and brunches with the girlfriends while pining for our Prince Akeem to ride us off into the sunset of Zamunda. Chile, please. I think I want to get married but I certainly am not sitting around just waiting. I’m LIVING.

I don’t date white men. I don’t have a rule against dating them; I guess it’s more accurate to say I haven’t dated any thus far. Truthfully, I don’t find white men as appealing as Black men or men of other races and that’s alright to say. One day, I’ll post up my official List of White Men I’d Do If I Were Into Doing White Men but you’ll just have to wait on that. My point is that while I can see a white men I think is good looking, I’m not especially attracted to him enough to want to make a love connection. It’s not just looks, but also about our common interests and backgrounds and lifestyles. Those are considerations you have to weigh when dating Black men too (since we’re not a homogeneous people).

Though Folan mostly talks about Black women’s aversion to dating white men out of some blind loyalty to the race or resentment stemming from slavery, she briefly touches on the possibility that one might not be attracted to white guys. She even admits that upon meeting her husband (whom she found on an interracial dating site) she thought he wasn’t her type of white guy,

Kevin was well-built but had that fair, reddening skin that just never appealed to me. I have been attracted to white men before, but they always had a little color to them: swarthy Italians and Greeks, or guys who worked outdoors and had tanned faces. By comparison, Kevin was so white.

Of course the more you learn to know and love a person, the more attractive they become in your eyes or maybe the less important it becomes how unattractive they are, I don’t know. What I do know is that this is a real concern that often stops people from getting to know ANYone, not just a person of a different race. I don’t want to make assumptions, but it could be that Folan herself was so tired of waiting on Black men (or had given up after her first marriage to a “devastatingly handsome” Black man didn’t work) that she made it work with a white man she initially wasn’t that into?

Maybe these articles should be more about the pros and cons of reimagining one’s standards or whether to settle or even which things are negotiable when looking for a partner. That seems to be the real barrier to most folks’ happy relationships… counting men and women out before getting to know them. Eventually, Folan learned that her internet date was indeed a good match for her and they raise two daughters together. Had she counted him out because of looks, regardless of race, who knows what would have happened?

Final word: At this point it seems like the “sistah, you need to get yourself one of these good white men!” articles, books and blogs are just to shock us into the self-help section of Borders. It sells. We talk about it. I’m talking about it. But whether it really helps anyone to have a better relationship? I highly doubt it.