Tag Archives: gender

the first perfunctory race-specific entry

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panama and i are both aware that the url we chose, verysmartbrothas.com, is about as nuance-less as a typical tyler perry movie title. we chose it because we figured it would be easy to remember, and also because we’re, ummmm, two very smart-ass brothas. duh. thing is, despite the “brothas” part and the fact that the majority of our regulars are black, neither of us have written anything race-specific yet. sh*t, if you look at our entry topics, this site could have been created by worldlywittywhitemen.com and nothing would be any different.

this is not an accident. i don’t know about p, but for me personally, entries written from a “man who happens to be black” instead of from a “black man” allows for a bit more creative freedom and overall resonance. at the same time, i’m not so naive as to think that my experience as a black man hasn’t uniquely influenced my perception of everything i’ve seen and done, it’s just that i feel like i bring more to the proverbial table from the “man who happens to be black” angle

with that being said, i’m still not planning on writing any race-specific entries (ie “a smart brothas perspective on interracial dating“), plus, the people over at racialicious have probably covered it better than i would, but if i ever decided to put the “black mans hat” on and write a smart brothas perspective on interracial dating, i’d want to bring a couple new points to the table, points such as…

1. it seems as if black women occasionally forget one very important factor when thinking about black men: the fact that we’re, ummm, men, and, for the most part, we’re more loyal to the man part than to the black part.

***don’t believe me? okay, lets do a little exercise. imagine that there’s a gun to you head, and the only thing stopping the trigger from being pulled is a choice you’re told to make: you must either change your gender or your race. (ie, a black woman would have to choose between either becoming a white woman or a black man) without even reading the comments, i bet the majority of black women will keep their race, while most black men will choose to keep their gender. ***

this is paramount in the interracial dating discussion for one reason: men are generally less discerning when it comes to sexual partners than women are, and, since black men are men, physical attractiveness and availability typically trump racial loyalty. this is true for all men, regardless of race. i date black women exclusively because black women are the bangingest women and i’m surrounded by them, but not solely because of any perceived loyalty. sorry.

2. i’ve never bought the claim that white women are less sexually inhibited than other races of women (either i live in a vacuum, or the people who make these statements have just never met any of the women i’ve dated, lol). in my opinion, the basis of this myth all comes down to one factor: ubiquity. easily outnumbering every other demographic group in this country, caucasian women are literally everywhere. you can’t leave the house without tripping over a white woman. sh*t, i think theres one baking a cake in my kitchen right now, and this reality skewers sexual perception.

for instance, lets say theres 5000 incoming freshman at a university. of those 5000, roughly 22-2500 of them will typically be white women, as opposed to maybe 200 sistas. now, lets assume that roughly 10 percent of these incoming freshman women are super freak nasties, willing to do any and everything to any and everybody. this means that while maybe 20 to 25 of the sistas are freaking off every night, as many as 250 freshman white women are budding porn stars, a number which outnumbers the entire black female freshman population, a fact which can easily lead to all types of misconceptions. its not that all white woman are snizzles, its just that theres so many white women that the number of snizzles by themselves outnumbers pretty much everyone else

3. to all the sisters who are deeply ambivalent about stepping out and trying “something old”, its really not that serious. if you’re lucky you’ll be on earth for approximately 80 years, and I’d hate for you to spend a good portion of that time sacrificing your own happiness for some romanticized technicolor loyalty.

do. you.

and don’t worry, you can bring him to the vsb.com barbecue too. we’ll even make him a plate.

i could continue, but this “black man’s hat” is heavy as hell. no wonder i keep it in on the shelf.

—the champ

Eastside of Long Beach

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I’ll never understand for the life of me why two people who are dating will give one another the passwords to their personal email or voicemail accounts. There’s no way in high Hell that I’d ever give up that information. I really don’t see a reason or a need for a significant other to have it. Everybody is entitled to some semblance of privacy in a relationship and chances are that email and cell phones are the last bastions of privacy for both parties involved.

Now it can be said that if you have nothing to hide then it shouldn’t matter. And you’re right. Except you’re not. Just because you have nothing to hide doesn’t mean you should share everything. But of course, not everybody is as smart as I am and many people get duped into giving up their personal information under the guise of full disclosure. Which brings up two questions:

1) If you have your significant other’s password, does that give you freedom to peruse their accounts?
2) Say they didn’t give it to you, but you have it, if you find something that causes you discomfort, are you allowed to bring it up?

Oy vey. Can of worms? Consider yourself opened.

Somehow, in my brain of brains, I don’t think having passwords gives you the freedom to search as you please. But I also realize that temptation is a mother and if a relationship is having issues, the urge to surf thru email to potentially find a culprit is hard to fend off.

(Which is of course why I’d never give up my passwords. Why give somebody the keys to a car you don’t want them to drive? It’s like Halle Berry standing in your living room dripping wet with a condom in one hand and a bottle of Patron in the other with a sign around her neck that says “Don’t touch or I’ll disappear” – that just sucks all the way around.)

However, I think that if you do search through email, then you reserve the right to shut the fuck up about whatever you find and you should deal with it on your own. For one, you have no business going through emails. In the second place, you have no right to question somebody about some shit you found while you were doing something you shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. And I’m an evil enough bastard that I would hope you’d come across something that would drive you apeshit — so apeshit, in fact, that you’d have to bring it to me and hang yourself.

For me, once I’ve lost trust, you might as well just go on ahead and walk it out like an usher because I probably don’t want to see you again.

Babyface asked when could he see you again. Me? Give me the keys to the range and don’t forget to move, bitch. Get out the way.

I’m genuinely interested in responses to those two questions. I tend to think that women are more likely to go through their man’s shit than a man is to go through a woman’s…however, I know both men and women who’ve done both.

To snoop or not to snoop? That is the question.

–PANAMA JACKSON