Two different worlds

I was watching that movie Something New. If you don't know what it is about...it's about this black woman, she is young, successful, beautiful and has a stick wedged so tight in her ass it would take a 12 hour surgery to remove it. She has a long list of things that she wants in a man...a black man...that she is unwilling to compromise on. When she meets a man that makes her laugh takes her out of her comfort zone makes her feel beautiful....the problem becomes he is a white man and not her dream black man.

I love this movie but it always reminds me about when I began dating when I was 15 years old. I was never in style with black boys. I was always called an Oreo. I am not good with Slang I listen to various types of music I am not a fan of fried foods. I mean I am all over the map. But for young black men I did not seem to be interested in what they were interested in, which meant that I was an Oreo.

But this movie is something else for me because with the different men I dated I always assumed I would marry a black man. It's just what I was raised to think and want for himself. 15 was a special year because it was when I developed my own feelings on subjects and when my mother and I began to drift apart. She is the type of mother that SAYS she wants us to have our own mind but what that really means is she wants us to have her mind and agree with her. I began to realize that I had to choose my boyfriends based on how they acted and treated me not their color. The boys I tended to like were very polite and sweet but they were everything but black. When I did like a black boy he only liked me as a friend. So I began to change my outlook and decided that I needed someone who was going to treat me right and in order to not fall into relationships not good for me I was going to need to broaden my outlook and develop my critiera for a good man outside of the color of ones skin.

This is hard for a 15 year to relay to their mother though. I mean that age is not known for their ability to express themselves in a rational manner. After the initial disaster of dating a white boy and my parents treating me like a pariah of the family I decided that I would stick to my guns and not let them make me question myself. I knew that I had to keep my standards high and my opinions open. By the time I reached 17 my mom had stopped making comments and my father pretended I didn't have dates or crushes. I made many mistakes in my dating life and all of them lead me to the man I would finally marry.

He met the standards I set and would not compromise and he loved me and I loved him. He is white but when I think about how much he means to me and I to him it's silly to think that I could have missed out on this if I had continued to listen to what I was taught while growing up.

You can not blame my mother the time period she grew up in it just was not something to think about..dating outside your race. In the end I am still having the color fight with my mother my husband and I joke about it but it is not something that affects our everyday lives and I want our children to live this way also. I do not care who they date what they call themselves as long as they know the most important thing in a relationship is if the person is good and right for them. Color makes no difference because a persons color can not predict their character.