Jungle Fever

Interracial dating and marriage is the type of practice that right wing Republicans, Klan members, and religious maniacs point to as a sign that the moral fiber, and ethical codes of conduct that our founding forefathers supposedly fought so hard to establish and preserve have been diseased by "jungle fever." Which I find so ironically funny, because if memory of U.S. history serves me right, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on several occasions fathered more than just a country. Why do you think there are so many Blacks in the U.S. running around with the last name of Washington and Jefferson?

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 1.3 million interracial marriages in 1994. In 1970, there were 310,000 such marriages. Of the 1.3 million interracial marriages in 1994, 296,000 were Black and White."

Jungle fever is a term most commonly used to describe Black and White couples, but I would like to expand the term to include all interracial couples. Truth be told, recent studies have shown that when compared to Hispanics and Asians, Blacks are the least likely to marry outside of their own race. Try telling this to a black woman that wants to date exclusively black men, and believes Black men should only want to date Black women. If she sees a Black man with a White woman, she will swear on a stack of Bibles six feet tall that's the reason she can't find a good man, because they are all dating White women.

Closely associated with interracial dating and marriages are the myths that people do so out of rebellion, status gaining, moral degeneracy , and self-hatred, which is some crap as far as I'm concerned. I have never once felt ashamed about being Black, or thought dating someone outside my race was going to one-up my social status.

Psychologist Maria Root says this: "The fact is that individuals in interracial couples are attracted to each other for the same reasons that individuals in same-race couples are. They consistently state that they get married because they like and love each other." So to each his own, whatever floats your boat or blows your skirt up. Besides, whose freaking business is it anyway?

Now I don't want anyone to get the notion that I'm hating on my Black sisters, because nothing could be further from the truth. I love Black women in all their different shapes, sizes, and colors. Black women are full of life character, strength, cunning, and resolve, and their struggles, dreams, triumphs, culture, and origin are my own. So dating or marring a Black woman has always been a top consideration for me, just not the only one.

When it's all said and done, I'm open to diversity and choice, and there is nothing better in life than a choice. So what's mine? She's a 5 Ft. 3 inch athletic brainy Malaysian, with brown eyes, a pretty smile, a soft touch, and a nice figure, whose race and creed was not a consideration for me when we started dating, but her curves were.


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