Love’s easy this time around, almost

He's got this big wide-open grin he greets me with, and the warmth in his eyes grows as his smile spreads across his face. It’s the grown up version of how my nieces react when they see me – as though seeing me is the best thing that’s happened in their lives in a while. I blush and have to resist looking down at my feet as one toe kicks into the other in shyness that such joy is directed at me. He and I can talk for hours about what's happening in the news or how one of his research participants or one of my students raised a whole bunch of questions about gender or class or race or accessibility. That's as sexy to me as the way he folds me into a hug and then offers up his warm, ready lips for a kiss, as though he knows that's just where I want them, lingering on mine. He listens better than any other man I've met, better than I listen, and he catches not just what I'm saying, but what needs I'm talking about, and goes about quietly meeting them. He makes me want to be a better me.

There is so much ease and comfort between us that it feels like we've known each other for years, and the chemistry we share feels deeply connecting -- there's the passion I always seem to crave, but it's not crazy-making like it has been with other men. We've hung out for one short month admittedly, yet no red flags have been raised. Most of the time with him, I feel like what we're doing is all a formality, that we could decide we were a couple now, could move in together in a few months, be married in a year, and it wouldn't change how much fun we're having or the calm knowing we feel when one of us slips up and makes a reference some version of our possible shared future.

I know I've said this before, too many times, that it's so cliched, so unsupported by my own life’s history, and so silly to say after a month, but I think he and I may be onto to something real and lasting here. And if not, there's something rich and meaningful here for us. (Delete this paragraph?)

So what's the catch? For me, there isn't one. But two people I love most in the world, for different reasons, have taken issue with me dating him because he's black.

One, who has championed fairness and equality for all for as long as I’ve known her, has shared with me that she thinks a long-term relationship with a black man, would be a choice of a harder life for me, and any children I may have with him. I don’t disagree that having an interracial relationship or family in a society steeped in racism will bring with it challenges, but I do disagree that this should be the sole reason to end a relationship with someone.

After all, race is not a genetic disorder. Growing up biracial is not a disease I'd pass onto my kids. Barak Obama turned out just fine, despite so many obstacles, including race, any one of which could have led him to a very different life. What matters in a kid's success is that she is loved no matter what, that her family believes in her, and that her family never gives up on her. With that, any social meaning attributed to her identity memberships can be weathered.

For me, this argument, that I'd be making my life harder by choosing a black man as my partner is like saying I shouldn't have children at all because if one of them is a girl, or is born gay, their life will be harder. It's a choice to have kids or not -- so better to not so that their life and my life, isn't hard. It's just silly, so not a compelling argument to me, and it's heartbreaking to hear it from someone I love and respect so much -- someone who would, theoretically, be expected to one day love my (possibly) biracial, female, or gay children. Would she always harbor the wish that they were different?

Last week, while visiting her, I was scanning an article online, and she asked, “What are you reading?” I told her that Norval had been interviewed by a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle about some union organizing he’s been doing. She barely responded with an “Oh.” I wondered to myself, if he wasn’t black, would she have asked more questions about him? Would she have wanted to read the article herself? Would she brag to her friends at work about knowing someone who’s dating a guy who was interviewed for the Chronicle?

I have more trouble with my other dear one’s concerns. Given 200 plus years of racism in our country, there are fewer educated, successful black men in the dating pool, and more educated, successful black women in the dating pool. Is it fair for me, as a white woman to date one of these men, to get serious with him, and to effectively take him off the market for women of color who, sadly, get pursued much less by all men, including black men? For a fascinating breakdown of race preferences on one dating website – okcupid.com – visit http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/.

I don't have a response for this reality that feels great to me.

R&B singer Jill Scott stirred up the interracial love debate last March when she described in an editorial piece in Essence magazine “the wince” she feels when she learns that a seemingly together black man is with a white woman (http://www.essence.com/relationships/commentary_3/commentary_jill_scott_talks_interracial.php?page=4). As someone who's spent a great deal of her life trying to learn enough about my privileges to avoid, as much as possible, making anyone wince from my ignorance, I'm not fond of the idea of being a trigger for any woman of color to wince when she sees me with Norval. I'm not interested in so suddenly bringing into another woman's consciousness the complicated nature of dating within her racial community, or even, as in Scott's instance, the whole history of the black struggle in America. But whether I want this role or not, I do understand that if "this" works out, for some women, I will be this kind of trigger. I know this, and I'm not excited about it. But should this be a reason to stop dating Norval? I’m not so sure.

Scott said in a follow up interview on CNN that she's not against interracial love, but that she shared her experience and opinions to open up debate, to talk about the lasting impacts of racism, and for that, I appreciate her honesty in bringing it up. I know I can never know what it's like to be a black woman, but I do remember my overweight years, before I lost sixty pounds.

I spent most of my adult life watching thinner women being hit on as I went unnoticed or was quickly dismissed. I'd wince every time the guy I thought I'd connected with in some way drifted off and ended up with a thinner, and therefore more desirable, woman. I don't have enough fingers to count the number of men I hoped would ask for my phone number and would end up asking for my friend's number instead. It was tough to feel rejected for who I was. But I would never expect my friends to not go out with or flirt with men I was interested in. If a man didn't find me attractive, I didn't want his number. But it still stung when it happened. So I get that, as much as I can anyway, as a white girl. If I can't know in my bones what Jill Scott's wince is about, I can empathize with it, and it does trouble me.

One reader responded to Scott's Essence commentary: "Jill's comments mirror what a lot of black women feel; sorry if it makes some of you uncomfortable." It does make me uncomfortable, but not because I deny that it's true (I think it is). I don't think being uncomfortable in conversations about race is a bad thing. It makes me think, deeply, about the impact of my choices. (Leave out? Find a more compelling response that captures the white women shouldn’t date black men position.)

Another says:
As an Afro-Latino married to a White Woman, color had no place in my selection. I have dated many women outside my race yet my selection for marriage had nothing to do with that... Although I never intended to marry someone white, we fell in love and it has turned out to be the best loving relationship I have ever been in. Our commonality is our education, beliefs, and the genuine love of each other irrespective of race.

I'd argue that race is never irrelevant in any relationship, and that education, beliefs, and love are all shaped by our racial (and other) identities. But in this man's case, they were compatible with his white partner. This is an important point for me. I did not set out to find a black man. I am under no illusion that his being black somehow makes him more or less desirable than any other man who can talk my socks off around social justice issues. In our first exchanges, he referred to equality and fairness being guiding principles for him, and mentioned other values I hold dear, and I couldn't stop talking with him because of our different ethnic backgrounds.

I do believe that his being black has shaped him in ways that make us compatible -- his experiences with racism pushed him to study and understand the way identity gets played out in the world, and he's spoken with sensitivity about his privileges as a straight man. And my being a woman has shaped me in ways that make us compatible, too, because it was through my experiences as a woman that I became interested in other identity groups that experience oppression, which led me to being interested in finding a way to be in the world that expands the privileges I do have to everyone. But it isn't because he's black, or I'm white, that we have been drawn to one another. And that very real fact is obscured when taking a social justice high road here, and I just can’t take it. Maybe that's shortsighted of me, maybe it is on overreach of my white privilege.

But love has somehow put out a green shoot of clear-eyed hope, and I stand there admiring it with Norval, wonder suspended in the air between us, and we can’t resist but water it with the nearly identical dreams we’ve carried separately, until now. With the almost primal drive to protect such new possibility, it's not cut and dry, it's not so simple.

I don't have a solution to this issue that will please my loved ones; at least for now, ending things with this man is not going to happen. I want them to be excited for me, to ask me about how things are going, to share in my joy. I also know that they may not be able to hold that space for me right now, or maybe ever. I will love them regardless of their support (or lack thereof) of this new relationship, and I know they will love me too, as best they can. I am grateful for that.

Rumi wrote, centuries ago, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."

My best hope now is that my loved ones will walk with me the length of this field.