Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo by Mark Mathabane, Gail Mathabane
Authors: Mark Mathabane, Gail Mathabane
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Twelfth called Rap-N-Romp. To avoid them I waited for the Number Six in a nearby post office, but even there I was not safe from the mildly retarded white man who daily tried to guess the color of my underwear.
I had heard of the 4Minnesota Pipeline”-the network of pimps who lure young blonds of Nordic descent from their wholesome lives in the Midwest, make them emotionally dependent on them or physically dependent on their cocaine or heroin, then funnel them into New York City to work as prostitutes. I was wary of all black men, but particularly those in flashy clothes who muttered lewd comments about my “lookin’ good, mama.”
For a long time I succeeded in forgetting that unwelcomed first kiss.
The taboo against associating with blacks was now firmly entrenched in my mind. I thought any white girl who dated a black boy was throwing herself away like a piece of garbage. She was crazy and needed a shrink. Who, in her right mind, would give up all her white friends and the love of her family for a black boy?
I took racial segregation for granted. It seemed only natural that blacks should stay with blacks and whites with whites. People were more comfortable among their own kind, and I was no exception. I did not miss Texas, did not miss the race riots, the “nigger jokes,” the underwater assailants, the terror of being part of the intimidated minority at school. Though I had adopted liberal, democratic political views from my parents and believed in the ideal of racial equality, I saw nothing wrong in having only two or three blacks in my private high school of four hundred. I felt it was justified by the fact that only two percent of the population of Minnesota was black.
I did not become aware of the black population in Minneapolis until I was seventeen. After doing some Christmas shopping downtown one day, I paused in front of the Orpheum Theater on Hennepin Avenue to examine a poster portraying a young white manor was he black? The poster read PRINCE-Live in Concert. I had vaguely heard of the twenty-one-year-old musician, knew this was his home town, and knew he had attended Central High, but I had never heard his music. I had no idea his latest hit album was called DirtyMind.
Curious, I bought two tickets, one for myself and one for a friend of mine, a painfully shy and sheltered Jewish doctor’s son who was cocaptain with me on the Blake cross-country ski team. The concert was like nothing I had imagined. I looked around the crowded concert hall and realized that, as far as I could see, my friend and I were the only whites.
Prince strutted around the stage, nude except for boots and leopard-skin bikini bottoms, moving his narrow hips back and forth like a piston. His bare-chested guitar player wore skin-tight black leather pants. The crowd was shouting something in time to the music, and I strained to hear what it was. With amazement I realized they were shouting, “Head!” and that the entire song was about oral sex.
I could not comprehend the blatant passion, the explicit sexual vibrations emanating from the stage that ran like electricity through the sweating, clapping, chanting crowd. My Jewish friend gasped, blushed, and covered his face with his hands in embarrassment. He could hardly wait to get out of there. I, too, barely out of puberty, felt overwheimed by the bold and bacchanal celebration of sex, by the primal beat and hip thrusts, by the chanting and moaning that filled the cavernous theater. That night I concluded that blacks burned with superhuman sexual urges that made them dangerous, threatening, and far more capable of rape, incest, and adultery than whites.
The image of the black rapist, influenced subtly by TV images of black violence, became embedded in my mind. Like many white women, I began to see black men as predators, capable of horrendous acts of crime and passion. Many white women become paranoid around black men after they have been mugged, held at gun point, attacked, or
I had heard of the 4Minnesota Pipeline”-the network of pimps who lure young blonds of Nordic descent from their wholesome lives in the Midwest, make them emotionally dependent on them or physically dependent on their cocaine or heroin, then funnel them into New York City to work as prostitutes. I was wary of all black men, but particularly those in flashy clothes who muttered lewd comments about my “lookin’ good, mama.”
For a long time I succeeded in forgetting that unwelcomed first kiss.
The taboo against associating with blacks was now firmly entrenched in my mind. I thought any white girl who dated a black boy was throwing herself away like a piece of garbage. She was crazy and needed a shrink. Who, in her right mind, would give up all her white friends and the love of her family for a black boy?
I took racial segregation for granted. It seemed only natural that blacks should stay with blacks and whites with whites. People were more comfortable among their own kind, and I was no exception. I did not miss Texas, did not miss the race riots, the “nigger jokes,” the underwater assailants, the terror of being part of the intimidated minority at school. Though I had adopted liberal, democratic political views from my parents and believed in the ideal of racial equality, I saw nothing wrong in having only two or three blacks in my private high school of four hundred. I felt it was justified by the fact that only two percent of the population of Minnesota was black.
I did not become aware of the black population in Minneapolis until I was seventeen. After doing some Christmas shopping downtown one day, I paused in front of the Orpheum Theater on Hennepin Avenue to examine a poster portraying a young white manor was he black? The poster read PRINCE-Live in Concert. I had vaguely heard of the twenty-one-year-old musician, knew this was his home town, and knew he had attended Central High, but I had never heard his music. I had no idea his latest hit album was called DirtyMind.
Curious, I bought two tickets, one for myself and one for a friend of mine, a painfully shy and sheltered Jewish doctor’s son who was cocaptain with me on the Blake cross-country ski team. The concert was like nothing I had imagined. I looked around the crowded concert hall and realized that, as far as I could see, my friend and I were the only whites.
Prince strutted around the stage, nude except for boots and leopard-skin bikini bottoms, moving his narrow hips back and forth like a piston. His bare-chested guitar player wore skin-tight black leather pants. The crowd was shouting something in time to the music, and I strained to hear what it was. With amazement I realized they were shouting, “Head!” and that the entire song was about oral sex.
I could not comprehend the blatant passion, the explicit sexual vibrations emanating from the stage that ran like electricity through the sweating, clapping, chanting crowd. My Jewish friend gasped, blushed, and covered his face with his hands in embarrassment. He could hardly wait to get out of there. I, too, barely out of puberty, felt overwheimed by the bold and bacchanal celebration of sex, by the primal beat and hip thrusts, by the chanting and moaning that filled the cavernous theater. That night I concluded that blacks burned with superhuman sexual urges that made them dangerous, threatening, and far more capable of rape, incest, and adultery than whites.
The image of the black rapist, influenced subtly by TV images of black violence, became embedded in my mind. Like many white women, I began to see black men as predators, capable of horrendous acts of crime and passion. Many white women become paranoid around black men after they have been mugged, held at gun point, attacked, or
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