How many of you have dated outside of your race?
How many of you would be willing to date outside of your race?
How many of you are not willing to date outside of your race?
All right, well, Serena Williams, Eve, Rihanna,
have all found love across the racial divide.
More and more black women, of course,
seem to be willing to follow in their footsteps.
Winnie Harlow, should black women date outside their race?
Black women and all women should
date whoever they want to date.
[APPLAUSE]
I was raised in a home by a single black woman.
My mom and my father, my whole life,
have had an amazing relationship.
They raised me separately but cordially.
In this time of my mom being single,
I've obviously met a lot of her boyfriends.
And they were multiracial.
She dated black guys.
She dated white guys.
So I think for me, it was something
that I was taught that, I mean, all-- all people are equal.
And everyone deserves love.
I've personally dated outside of my race.
I've dated black guys.
I've dated white guys.
And I don't think those aspects of them
altered what went right or wrong in our relationships.
I think whatever our disputes were
have to do with the type of person
that I am and the type of person that he
was as a person, not as a race.
Was it easier or harder dating inter-racially or not?
No, because I think everything is education.
I think, you know, the main thing is hair.
[LAUGHTER]
I think first of all, black men have a problem with learning
these things as well.
You know, like, you have to learn that, yea, I have
a beautiful wig on right now.
But you gonna wake up with me with a bonnet, right?
So-- [LAUGHING]
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah, I mean, I think all these things are just
an educational thing, whether it be race,
whether it be men versus women.
Whether it be whatever it is, all these things
just have to do with education.
Angelica, how do you think about interracial dating?
I agree that it's about the education
because I actually was engaged to be married to a white man,
to an Italian man, and we were together for eight years.
And I have not been in a relationship since.
I don't know if I would actually date outside my race again.
There is only really one time that I'm
against interracial dating, and that is when you are not
allowed to bring your full self to the relationship,
because I was in the relationship
where I did not challenge my white partner
on his anti-blackness.
And instead I internalized the way he looked
at the black community too.
And so we both were in our gated community house thinking,
this is what, you know, needs to happen, and blah, blah, blah.
When I realized that this man was not invested
in the liberation of my community nor--
in my black community nor my LGBT community,
but that I was passing--
so that means that I'm either going
to be with a black man who also is being educated
about his anti-blackness and about his misogyny and all
those things, or I'm going to be with someone who's not
black, who understands that.
Or I'm gonna be by my damn self.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Now, April, I know--
I know you are happily married.
But how do you think about interracial dating?
I agree with Winnie.
I believe that you should date who feeds your soul.
But who feeds my soul is a black man.
And I want to tell you why.
I feel like what I think about the trauma
that black men have gone through, along with the trauma
that a black woman has gone through,
we're able to heal each other because we
know each other's pain.
We know our ancestors' pain.
Black men need a black woman.
And black women need a black man to help us be better
and because-- because we know each other.
We need each other to heal those wounds
that were never really treated.