I went to my son’s middle school open house this week and scoped out the Black girls. There. I said it.
His school is predominantly Hispanic, and as we walked the halls, meeting teachers and finding classrooms, I noticed every little Black girl we passed.
Not because my son is dating. He’s twelve. He still needs reminders to put on deodorant.
But one day he will.
And I want him to date Black girls.
I’ve thought this for years. I want him to grow up seeing Black women as beautiful, desirable, worthy of being chosen before the rest of the world gets a chance to tell him otherwise.
I want the girl sitting at my Thanksgiving table one day to understand why somebody’s auntie wrapped her hair before bed. I want her to know the cookout is not the place to experiment with potato salad. I want her to understand the look across the room when somebody says something they had no business saying.
I want my future grandchildren to know all of it too. The music. The food. The language. The humor. The history. The stuff we don’t even realize is culture because it’s just how our families have always done things.
I want the Blackness to keep going. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Except.
If a white woman told me she was walking through her son’s school checking out the white girls because she wanted him to marry one and “keep their culture going,” I would have some fucking questions.
Actually, I wouldn’t have questions. I’d have conclusions.
Because I can explain why I think it’s different. Black people in America have had pieces of our culture stripped from us, forbidden, mocked, commercialized, and handed back to us as something cool once somebody else started doing it. Wanting to preserve something that has survived all of that doesn’t feel the same to me as wanting to preserve whiteness.
But I’m also aware of how convenient it is when the rule you’ve created makes perfect sense from the side you’re standing on.
That’s the part I can’t neatly resolve.
I don’t want to raise a son who thinks Black love is the only legitimate love. I don’t want him dismissing a wonderful woman because she isn’t Black. And if he brings home someone who loves him, respects him, and makes him happy, I hope I’ll have enough sense not to ruin a good thing because she didn’t look like the future I pictured.
But I also refuse to pretend I don’t have a preference.
I do.
I want him to love Black women. Not just romantically. I want him to value us. Defend us. See our beauty without needing it translated through whatever version of Blackness happens to be acceptable at the moment.
Maybe those are two different things, and I’ve been bundling them together. Maybe wanting my son to love Black women doesn’t require deciding who he should fall in love with.
I don’t know.
He’s twelve. I’ve got some time.
But apparently I’m already scouting.
And yes—I saw a few possibilities.