Nice to find this tribe, though I seem to have stumbled upon it after the party has already ended. Not a lot of recent activity anyway.

I am wondering about two things and wanting to get other people's perspectives. Sometimes I notice that I am attracted to men of different races from mine at a purely physical level, and don't understand why that is. I certainly have been presented with many cultural images of attractive black men, but rarely get turned on by black male bodies the way I am by those of men of other races. I sometimes find a black man very handsome, but there always feels like there is something missing. I might see his handsomeness but still not actually feel strong desire for him.

A black male friend of mine once summed it up more bluntly than I would myself speak and I'm a little embarrased to even repeat it, but feel pressed to because it is so to the point. He said, "either you're into black d_#&*s (insert common phrase for male "members") or you're into white d_#&*s." To him it was an open and shut case and there was nothing more to say about it. I guess I might agree except that I don't want to just go with social programming and effectively accept racism within myself, if that's what it is.

On another note, I find that many times I'm not attracted to the white men who come on to me (usually with lines about my being a beautiful black woman or how they love black women), yet men in general seem to only take a woman as a serious relationship prospect if they approach her first. So that puts me in a difficult situation when it comes to meeting viable partners. I don't want someone who just likes black women and only sees me as that. Yet white men who don't seem to frequently (or exclusively) date black women don't approach me very often.

In both cases it strikes me as a type of racism. I am being seen as a black woman not as a woman and they either want a black woman or they don't want a black woman. Yet my self-identity is as a person with a number of characteristics, which among them is that I am black. My racial characteristic has a huge affect on my life and therefore on the content of my personality and my wisdom, to be sure, but it isn't my identity.

Is anyone relating to what I'm saying? Basically, I am wondering what affect racism has on my preferences for non-black men and what affect it has on my own difficulty in being related to as a potential life partner. Is it all okay, and to each their own, or is it worthwhile to look at these tendencies within oneself and try to overcome them in the same way we would want any type of racist to work at opening their minds?