The Trouble with White Boys

Just because something is racial doesn't mean it's racist.
                                                    — L.L. Etnach

Humor me as I attempt to suss out exactly what it is about the lighter side of the guy spectrum that is giving me a particular kind of pause.

Because of how I've grown up and the paths I've gone down and the situations in which my life has placed me, I'm pretty much resigned to the grand possibility of marrying someone who might not be black.  When I say resigned, I don't mean it as a negative thing.  I just mean it as recognizing it as a not-unlikely reality.

It's just when I examine my interactions with the opposite sex throughout the years, I've found that the white boy instances have been rather awkward, troublesome or drama-laden, and I'm starting to wonder if they're more trouble than they're worth.  The age-old question: Causation or correlation?  To be fair, I must recognize that the overwhelming majority of people in the Deep South, where my post-pubescent years unfolded, didn't have the European military brat upbringing that I did, so that had something to do with the "trouble," I'm sure.  The fact that a vigilant, overprotective black father was (and still is) in the mix probably added to the "trouble" as well.  My dad's the greatest guy you'll ever meet, but it wouldn't be unfair to consider the possibility that whiteness was perhaps an added reason for wariness and heightened vigilance where guys were concerned.  And, I must add that in a few of these instances, there were other factors that didn't have to do with race directly that were a larger part of the "trouble."

Now, all of this is not to say that non-white guys haven't caused trouble as well.  Lord knows I'm a lie if I led anyone to believe that.  My utter disavowal of the phrase "It is what it is," is a direct result of a couple of black guys employing it to justify their flakiness.  Naw, son.  It ain't just what it is.  And we shall skip over discussion of other non-white nationalities and ethnicities who have needed to sit themselves down at various points in time as well. Ahem.

But back to the white boy question. I guess I've been pondering it lately because white guys have been a little ubiquitous as of late.  They're my mild-mannered professors with adorable nervous mannerisms, my guitar instructors, my buddies, my FB wall posters, my texters.  And concerning the last category in particular, I'm just asking myself, Do I really want to go there? I just don't know.

I mean, maybe it's just my past experiences that are making me feel iffy.  I used to be one of those "color doesn't matter, love is blind" people, but my idealism has been tempered with reality.  Maybe part of me feels like they're a maddening mixture of presumptuous and oblivious.  Sometimes people don't think about things or consider things not because they're horrible, apathetic people, but simply because they don't have to.

It just seems like it would be easier and less awkward to settle down with someone else of color.  Probably so.  As my former students would say, that's real talk, cuz.

But in the end, one thing is for sure: Whoever he is, whatever color he is, wherever he's from, however he grew up, God is going to have to be all up in it.