Interracial Love

My oil painting Star Crossed is a story of interracial love, which unbelievably is still controversial in the 21st century. I wanted to show that black men can be loved by women of any color. The painting presents a deep and abiding interracial love affair between two people swept up in the passion of the moment. Their deep feelings for one another won’t allow them to wait any longer as they share a kiss in public.

Interracial dating, though more or less accepted in most parts of the country, is still taboo parts of the deep South. Even though southern schools have been integrated for decades, there still exists a great cultural divide. I’ve seen this first hand. Crossing this divide was strictly a no no in the small Georgia town I grew up in. When it came to people of the “other” race you could sit in class together, work together, play together as kids, even attend the same high school dance, but a black boy could never approach a white girl for a dance, let alone a date.

Interracial marriage, was deemed illegal by many states as late as 1967. It was not until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated laws against interracial marriage in the landmark Loving vs. Virginia decision, that interracial marriage was allowed all over the country. These laws against interracial marriage were designed to play a role in forming and preserving racial identity among Americans, and enforcing the traditional racial hierarchy.

African American men have never been accepted by some or should I say most white families as suitable suitors for their daughters. White women who openly accept black men as partners are traditionally viewed as tainted , impure, white sluts who are ruined for white men . This attitude lead to the cliche’ once you go black, you won’t go back. They probably should have said once you go black, we don’t want you back.

My painting is inspired by these antiquated attitudes toward interracial love. I know Gone with The Wind is not exactly in the realm of beloved interracial stories, but in my painting it is. I have cast my story in post civil war America during a brief period of almost complete racial equality in the South. It’s been said that interracial love is more offensive to bigots than interracial sex, or even so-called race mixing. A women can only fall in love with someone she considers to be a man, so in a sense interracial love between black men and white women acknowledges the manliness of black men. In other words the black man she’s in love with is a real man in her eyes, and therefore equal to any white man. Interracial sex is different, because that can be forced, coerced, or even bought and paid for.

Star Crossed presents a symbolic interracial love affair, not necessarily an interracial marriage. Its been said, a few times that white women represent freedom to black men. This is a very controversial idea, but it’s an argument I can understand. This is not because one kind of woman is better for black men than any other kind of woman. I think this point refers to the freedom to choose to be with who you want regardless of color. I say this because in traditional racist southern society, the one group that enjoyed complete sexual freedom was upper class white males and to a lesser degree all white males. Black men were limited to black women, white women were limited to white men, while black women were rendered almost completely powerless in the sexual arena.

I think these tensions still effect our society today, manifesting themselves in different ways. Today’s entertainment industry is still very hesitant to tell interracial stories, at least of a romantic nature. Hollywood seems to be afraid of offending middle American sensibilities. They almost never explore the complexities of black male sexuality, in fact they struggle to even acknowledge its existence. I’ll give you an example. In the movie I,Robot Will Smith had a white woman as his co-star. At the end of the movie he saves the woman, her child, and the planet. But he doesn’t get the girl at the end, unusual for such a young, virile and heroic male.

It doesn’t make sense. If that movie was starring Brad Pitt and Halle Berry,we would have seen one of the hottest interracial stories ever, with at least one explicit love scene (directors love to get Halle naked). I believe Hollywood has a fear of black men’s sexuality as well as their romantic potential for white women. African American men have been stereotyped as savage, barbaric and incapable of relating to women in a socially acceptable way. So I think this explains why white men in the entertainment industry will do almost anything to steer clear of the the issue and play it safe by presenting black males as asexual eunuchs.

Of course the other extreme is played out in interracial stories in American movies and literature over and over. Every day we are bombarded with images of sexually aggressive black men in music videos, video games, movies, etc. Not surprisingly, interracial stories in the adult movie world feature the kind of savage African American male who is supposed to appeal only to certain black women and white sluts. Neither one of these extremes represents the realities of interracial love , nor the challenges of interracial dating in the 21st century.



Connect with me on Twitter: MichaelOwens@MikeOwensArt

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