I love women.

Everything about them just screams sex appeal. You know how Scorpios love sex, right? So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that most men on this campus are either trying to find someone to spend one night with or one lifetime with. But I’m not the type to just run around like a dog in heat, trying to get whatever color that comes across my palette.

I love my black women.

I just can’t fathom myself O.J.’ing it up with a Nicole Simpson. This is not to come off as being holier-than-thou or even racially elitist. I just find that there are more commonalties between myself and women who are categorized as a “minority.” A woman of color can understand more deftly the struggles a man like me goes through. Am I being closed-minded? Am I not taking into an account that “love is blind?”

No.

I understand that love is Stevie Wonder’s twin and that whoever finds it would be a fool to let a good thing go. But I am akin to brown skin and don’t really understand why anyone would step outside the box.

On Sept. 5, Black United Students had one of its best meetings ever when associate professor Francis Dorsey came to speak. The room was nearly full, but nowhere near half of the 2,400 black students who are on this campus.

During the meeting, Dorsey mentioned how his wife was his best friend. That, to me, is beautiful. I believe that the white women on this campus are scared of black men on this campus. So, why take the chance of risking your career (sports or whatever), reputation, and life on something that you’d be worried about taking home to momma?

Black men and women aren’t perfect. We accuse one another of being disrespectful, callous, gold-digging and anything else negative that you can think of. I just couldn’t see myself bringing home “Becky” to my mother. She’d have a conniption, and for the record, I never had the inclination to do something like that.

White women, as far as a relationship goes, don’t really have much to relate to when it comes to their black male counterparts. Regardless of your locale, be it from the ghettos in East Cleveland to the nice suburbs of Pleasantville, USA, the skin tone (not the content of character) will be dominant.

This was exhibited in a scene from the movie Crash. A female character, played by Thandie Newton, said that a police officer, played by Matt Dillon, pulled her car over because he thought that she was a white woman giving “lip service” to a black man.

In June 2004, Jelani Dorsey and I were held at gunpoint, arrested and detained by police for fitting the description of two car thieves. When we were released, a teenage white girl who was our colleague asked, “What’d we do?”

She was totally oblivious of the situation and the racial overtones it presented. I couldn’t walk down the aisle with someone while knowing that.

Kevin L. Clark is a junior magazine journalism major and guest columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].