Black men’s inter-racial choices reveal sexist double standards against black women.

Evidence

White males who desire friendships or marriage with black females often find their friendly overture rebuffed or dismissed by the woman in question. Male scholars, black and white, who have written about inter-racial marriage practices (Marriage in Black and White, Sexual Racism, Sex and Racism in America) fail to mention that more marriages do not take place between white men and black women because of the reluctance of black females. Black women who date or marry white men find that they cannot endure the harassment and persecution by black and white people. In some instances black men who are themselves involved in inter-racial relationships act contemptuously towards black women who exercise the same freedom of choice. They see their own behavior as acceptable because they view white women as victims, while they see white men as oppressors. So in their eyes a black woman involved with a white man is allying herself with a racist oppressor. But their tendency to see white women as innocent, as non-racist is yet another reflection of their acceptance of sexist idealization of woman. For white women have historically shown themselves to be as capable of being racist oppressors as white men. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 208

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the sexist idealization of white womanhood operating within black nationalism, complementing standard white feminist critiques. — connects to: Light-skinned Negroes reject darker blacks and seek whiteness through marriage; Interracial marriage can serve the colored spouse as a bid for deracialization and equality — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 263; Black male leaders treated gender equality as secondary to racial struggle — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 506 (+8 more)

Related

• Attributing black relationship problems to racism alone masks sexism’s impact (similarity 0.87)
• White men were encouraged to exploit black women but not marry them (similarity 0.87)
• White men created the race-sex hierarchy that black men accept and support. (similarity 0.86)
• White male-black female marriage would threaten white patriarchal rule unlike the reverse (similarity 0.85)
• White women’s racism targeted black women more intensely than black men (similarity 0.84)
• Black nationalist patriarchy would not improve black male-female relations (similarity 0.82)
• Whites feared legally sanctioned racial mixing of either sex (similarity 0.82)
• White men sympathized with black power because shared sexism overrode racism (similarity 0.82)
• Contraception’s spread converted black male sexism into open misogyny (similarity 0.82)
• Black men asserted dominance over women to compensate for losing to white men (similarity 0.82)
• Fear of being alone drove black women to accept black male sexism (similarity 0.81)
• Using ‘women’ for white women alone perpetuates both racism and sexism. (similarity 0.81)
• Negative images of black women persisted into the 20th century (similarity 0.81)
• Black men claimed sole victimhood and manhood rights while ignoring black women’s oppression. (similarity 0.81)
• White feminists dismissed black women’s attention to racial difference (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Attributing black relationship problems to racism alone masks sexism’s impact #expands (0.75) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 346
• Black men asserted dominance over women to compensate for losing to white men #complicates (0.40)