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Am I Black Enough?
That is the question — one I’ve been asking myself for nearly my entire life.
“Can You Be Pro Black & Date Outside Your Race?”
I recently came across this question while conducting a routine Google search. It was posed in a title link to a YouTube video, and it got me thinking about my Blackness, in my own eyes and in the eyes of other people.
It wasn’t my first time down that road. As a Black man married to a White man, a Black man who dated predominantly White and Latino men in my single days, I’ve trod the path so many times my shoe prints must be tattooed onto the gravel. My trips down that rocky road to nowhere started eight years ago when I began writing about race and sexuality, with an emphasis on sexual racism. Sometimes I’ve been in the driver’s seat (personal growth requires uncomfortable reflection and exploration of subconscious biases and motivations), but just as often, I’ve been dragged along the gravel by commenters. They may question my Blackness because of the scarcity of Black guys in my dating past or because something I’ve written — typically race-related, even if only tangentially — has triggered them and sent them into fight mode.
Whenever the self-appointed arbiters of Blackness weigh in en masse, I feel as if my Black card has been revoked, or severely…
