Regina King: More Black Women Should Date Outside Their Race

Of all groups of people, Black women are the least likely group of women that will date outside of their race. When you have everyone else who is willing to explore but a Black woman is like, "I want me a brother," well, if the brothers are out and they’re open to date everybody and the majority of Black women aren’t willing to look twice when a man outside of their race is sending them messages, then that makes our percentage rate lower and the chances of finding love, because we’re only looking in one specific place for finding love—with Black men.

Every single one of my girlfriends won’t date men that aren’t Black. I have maybe about five and these are people that I’m really considering my friends, not people that are associates or that you talk to or deal with at work. I have about five Black friends who date outside of their race. But all the other friends of mine, it’s either they vocally say that they won’t or every time an opportunity comes up for them to date outside of their race, there’s some excuse why it’s not going to work. They never really say it’s because he’s White, or because he’s Spanish or something like that. It’ll be more like, Well, you know he works at such and such, and our schedules don’t match.' But we’ll know really what it is. It's 'cause he’s White.

It’s more common here on the West Coast. I think in New York, you find more Black women that date outside of their race. But in L.A. not as many. I think Black women need to open up. A lot of Black women still carry a lot of pain when they see Black men with women who aren’t Black and that’s really unfortunate that that could make us so upset. It has to do with self esteem. With women on a whole, what a man thinks about us means so much to us. Does he think my hair is right? Does he think I look right? Does he think my ass is big enough? Does he think my titties are big enough?

 And 9 chances out of 10, that man didn’t even give a fuck. He couldn’t even tell that you had a pimple that day or that your hair wasn’t done. Most men don’t even give a fuck. And the men that do that are really paying attention that hard to your ass or titties or exterior stuff, that’s probably not the best person for you anyway. One of my friends was asking me if I would set him up with one of my friends and I asked him, "What do you like in a woman?" And his first thing was "exotic." I’m like, "What the hell does that mean?" —As told to Starrene Rhett

Catch Regina King as the voice of Huey and Riley Freeman on The Boondocks, which airs Sunday nights on Cartoon Network.