Rose Colored Glasses, Post Racist Thought and Dating

Race isn't something that I'm usually conscious of; I've had on rose colored glasses concerning race for most of my life. I'm blessed to have parents who have always encouraged me to judge and love people based on character and integrity instead of something silly like skin color. I definitely remember being a younger and having crushes and my parents letting me know that their only requirement in my choosing to date someone had to deal with how they treated me. 

Being older, this conversation has morphed from who I choose to date to who I will choose to marry but the thread has been the same....who I choose. This weekend I was confronted with someone imposing their opinion about said choice in a backhanded way and frankly, it both jarred me and pissed me off. 

The Backstory: A friend, who I have an on-again, off-again crush on came to visit me for the holidays. Said friend happens to be white; I, as you know, am not. Well an acquaintance of a friend, who happens to be a black male, must have picked up on my interest in my friend and made a few comments that I honestly could have choked him for because I perceived that they were meant to make me and my friend feel some kind of way about our relationship were unnecessary. I was ticked because I feel that dude only saw it as me, a black woman, being interested in a white male. What he doesn't know is why. No questions were asked about how we got to be so good of friends, that would have resulted in us sharing anecdotes from over 4 years of friendship. No inquiry made as to why this man piques my interest - I'd have to note his integrity, thoughtfulness and how he makes me smile. Instead someone who barely knows me and only just met him spoke from his hind parts and sounded like an ass (pun intended). 

Is this the worst situation that could have happened? Of course not...however, it did serve as a reminder that we, as people, are not as post-racial as we like to pretend to be. There are people who still take issue with seeing two people from different backgrounds show that they care for one another, whether that caring be based in platonic love or be of the romantic sort. 

End of the day, love should be given with no respect to color, creed or whatever other form of labeling we try and implement. And folks need to stop judging interracial friends, lovers and whatever falls in between cause you don't know who they are, what they're about or their story. 

No Love, I Reserve The Right To Disagree and I Will Not Accept Your High 5

Every once and again you happen to have a day where some of your peeves decide to conference, converge and morph into an unholy Megazord of annoyance (a la Power Rangers). For me, yesterday was such a time as this.

Let me try to put this into lyrical form: 'Twas the night of my homegirl's birthday and all through the restaurant, the churchy people wouldn't stop talking about things that were inconsequential to humanity and tried putting words in my mouth.  Ok, that didn't quite rhyme but I think you get my point.

The topic of conversation was abstruse at best (something about the moral agency of celestial beings) and the parties were nice enough people. I would even say that I genuinely like and care for one of the people I was speaking with. My issue is this - I say what I mean to say and if I have not expressly stated something, it is probably not what I intended to say. I will rephrase: DO NOT PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH. I made statement X, statement "whatever the hell you just said I said" is not applicable because I didn't say it. If I meant to say what you said that I said, guess what...I WOULD HAVE SAID THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. I use the capitalization for emphasis as this irritates the crap outta me. I understand implications can be made from statements but I try to choose my words carefully, especially in debate, because I don't like room to be made for people to infer I meant something other than what I stated.

My second issue would be this...If you are at a point in a conversation, find yourself at an impasse and the person you are conversing with shares that you should agree to disagree (especially more than once), let it go. I myself have been guilty of this in the past and I pledged to myself last night that I would seriously ward off doing this as I know how being in such a situation made me feel. I think last night would have accounted for one of those times where folks could have benefited from having a personality overview of the other parties present. At the top of my list, under the subheading Things to Avoid, the line item may have read something like "Rarely changes mind especially in debate; refrain from pushing as it will result in her not wanting to converse with you".

If you take the above noted irritants and combine them with excessive distribution of high 5s and the highly churched, you have created a mental cocktail that I will likely pass on indulging in again. I love my Jesus  people but sometimes I don't like the real churched out ones because they have a cliche or bible verse for EVERYTHING, often misapplied. I'm far from being biblically literate (I'm such a bad PK lol) but I do know enough Bible and have a store of common sense that lets me deduce that a) this conversation has no bearing on my salvation or yours and b) there are some things that exist in such complexity that finite minds should limit their investigation of them. I'm ok with knowing the limits of my humanity and get that sometimes God doesn't tell us things (like a detailed breakdown of the history of non-earthly beings) cause it doesn't really affect us. Unfortunately, not everyone is in that boat and it causes debate and frustration across the board.

So no more Megazord for me, I will keep my opinions to myself no matter how illogical I find certain lines of conversation. It is so not worth the cerebral hangover I'm experiencing right now.