Black women - white men: what's goin' on?

Ebony, March, 1989 by Laura B. Randolph

BLACK WOMEN/WHITE MEN

Until recently, the phrase "interracial couple" usually meant one thing: a Black man and a White woman. Not today. As evidenced by these recent real-life personal ads, all across the country there's a brand-new wave washing over our traditional notions about interracial love.

Like it or not, no longer is it just Sidney Poitier coming to call on Katharine Hepburn's daughter. On the eve of the 21st century, guess who's coming to dinner now?

Alfre Woodard and Roderick Spencer. Whoopi Goldberg and Eddie Gold. Diahann Carroll and Vic Damone. Shadoe and Beverly Stevens. Opal Stone and Ron Perlman. Anne-Marie Johnson and Marty Grey. Deniece Williams and Brad Westering. Leslie Uggams and Grahame Pratt.

To be sure, all of these couples are members of the Hollywood glitterati. But make no mistake about it, this is much more than the latest new-wave celebrity trend. The fact is, interracial love and marriage are touching the lives of everyday working Black women. Take a look at the statistics. Government figures confirm that the number of Black women marrying White men is both substantial and growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, in 1987 there were 56,000 Black women married to White men. That's 11,000 more than were married to White men at the decade's beginning in 1980. Interestingly and provocatively, many of the White man involved are formulating their own definition of beauty, even when it goes against traditional White standards. Many are choosing beautiful Black women who don't look like Lena Horne, not to mention Marilyn Monroe and Brooke Shields.

And while most women of color still choose to marry inside their own race (98.5 percent of all Black married women are married to Black men), increasingly, they are dating and marrying White men. And it isn't one-sided. Many White men are challenging fundamentalist notions of love and matrimony, in the process of dismissing long-standing social taboos by asking Black women to love and wed them, not merely comfort and bed them.

A quintessential example: the first time Shadoe Stevens, star of Hollywood Squares and host of American Top 40, the most-listened-to pop-music radio show in the world, saw his wife, Beverly, a former international model, the fireworks, he says, were explosive and instant. "The first time I saw her," says Shadoe, 42, "I couldn't move. She was so beautiful and I don't mean just physically. She had this incredible aura about her, it was in her eyes. When I looked at her there was this great blinding flash in the universe. I kept staring at her and thinking, I've got to get to know her. I never thought about color and had no feeling about it one way or the other. I guess the feeling was mutual. Beverly later told me she had to get out of there because she felt like she was 14 all over again. It was quite overwhelming."

Overwhelming may be the understatement of the year. Beverly and Shadoe's initial meeting occurred during the day at Shodoe's L.A. production studio, Shadoevision. However, he was so taken with her, he couldn't let even a single day pass before seeing her again. And so he devised a plan. "I told a friend of mine he had to get her back there," he recalls. "I told him to ask her is she could sing and invite her back that night. He did, Beverly said yes, and that evening we ended up singing a song together I'd written called 'Oh, You Make Me Perspire.' It was hilarious and intense. Basically, we've never been apart since then."

"Since then" means 1985. He and Beverly were married in 1986 and have a two-year daughter, Amber.

ADMITTEDLY, no place loves a glamor romance like Hollywood. So this unique love story aside, what exactly is going on here? When it comes to the lives of ordinary working Black women, what has so drastically shifted traditional attitudes on love and marriage? Experts say the reasons are as individual and diverse as the couples themselves. For many Black women, it comes down to the lack of availability of what they consider "marriageable" Black men. There just aren't enough Black men, they say, in their educational, financial and professional levels. The numbers would suggest they have a point. According to the Census Bureau, in 1980 the total number of Blacks employed in professional occupations was 829,648. Of that number an overwhelming 66.5 percent (551,701) were women.

Issues of professional parity aside, experts agree with Barbara Miles, publisher of Chocolate Singles, the publication in which the above personal ads appeared, that a primary factor behind the increase can be summed up in a single word: opportunity. "More and more I am meeting and talking with Black women who tell me they are dating White," says Ms. Miles. "Each has uniquely personal reasons for her decision, but opportunity certainly seems to be a major factor. Only recently have Black women been able to enter the workforce as professionals. Consequently, they're interacting with White men on a whole new level--as peers, as equals. Often such interaction leads to a kind of chemistry that just doesn't respect racial barriers."