ClueChick: real clues from a real chick

My post on race generated a flurry of responses, in comments and in my inbox, and I'd like to address the primary question that a couple of people asked me: Why do I think I haven't dated a black guy?

I suspect I'm not the best person to answer this question, but I'm not going to call my therapist for her insight, so you'll have to make do with my self-analysis. I have, of course, received responses from black men to various posts on CL, and to a couple of my profiles on dating sites, and there have been some instances where I was interested enough to email back, and, a handful of times, to meet up, but it's never gone beyond the coffee date. Why not?

First, and possibly most impossibly lame: I feel a certain amount of embarrassment about my theoretical interest in black guys, and this makes me distrust my evaluation of the attractiveness of any particular black guy I meet, because, gosh, is he actually hot, or am I just in love with the idea of fucking a black guy? I mean, I think about it, and I imagine how my pale hand would look touching his dark shoulder, or my tongue on his nipple, or my mouth on his... well, you get the idea. I'm not comfortable being hot for an idea and projecting that onto an actual person, even if the person in question wouldn't actually mind, and, needless to say, I've never actually brought it up in a conversation with one of my potentials (though a reasonable argument could be made that I ought to!)

Second, I know I'm racist. (And you are, too. If you think you can be free of racism in this society, you're fooling yourself.) And I worry about how that might play out in a relationship, even a light one, with a black man! When I spend time with a black guy in a setting with a lot of potential, I feel shy, that I might say the wrong thing (more than usual; despite the blog, I'm not actually all that smooth) or do something silly, or just generally prove what everyone already knows: I'm a white girl who mostly hangs out with white folks.

I'd like to get over these hangups, and I like to think that I will, eventually, but I hate to think about dragging some poor guy along with me for the ride. And that's the main reason I've yet to date or fuck a black guy.