Diversity in dating includes dark-skinned

People who have reasons that do not support interracial dating are looked at as “haters.” But for me, interracial dating is not the problem. The problem is the reaoning behind why people do it.

I usually think of diversity, experimenting, generalizing, cultural differences and exclusivity when I think of dating interracially.

Diversity is cool, but since when is it diverse to date all women, as long as they’re not too dark? That is not diverse.

If you are all about being diverse, you will date from the darkest to the lightest, brunettes and blondes, Hispanic and Asians. Now that’s diversity. You can’t be diverse with exceptions and if you are, your reason is simply a cop-out.

Dating another race sounds cool to a lot of people because sooner or later all of the races have to come together anyway. But since when do people “try” other people?

We are not cases to be tested on. It’s okay to date a different kind of person than you would usually date, but dating a type of person as if they were an experiment dehumanizes them and creates bigger racial barriers because you consider them an object.

The last issue that I think should definitely be discussed concerning interracial dating is exclusivity. If you would look over someone who looks like yourself when dating for whatever reason, you should question what you think of yourself and your people no matter what your ethnicity is.

It is fine to have a preference, but if you would not even consider giving your own race the time of day, you are in a danger zone.

Example: If you are a dark-skinned black man who prefers only lighter-skinned women because you find them more attractive than darker-skinned women, what happens when you share a child with a lighter skinned woman and it happens to be a girl, who came out looking just like you.

How do you teach her to feel she is beautiful when you don’t consider women who look like her beautiful yourself?

When it comes down to it, it all goes back to identity, how we see ourselves. Speaking from the view of a black woman, I can say that as long as we do not like ourselves, we cannot expect for our men to like us.

When you begin loving yourself it becomes easier and more genuine to love other people like your self and then other people unlike yourself.

It’s a domino effect, but when you skip one or do them in the wrong order all you end up with is problems.

Crystyn Wright, 19, is a sophomore newspaper journalism student from Bronx, NY. She can be reached at akaanke@aol.com.