00:00Feminist and co-host of the Black Joy Mist Tape, Amber J. Phillips.
00:08Hey, Amber.
00:09Hey, how are y'all?
00:11Good to see you.
00:12Good to see you.
00:13So this is a very hot button topic.
00:16We've been talking about this at the brand for years.
00:19So while we cannot verify whether the tweets were actually sent by Woody himself,
00:24we still got a lot of comments on our social pages about the story.
00:27Why do you think this issue of Black men dating outside their race still gets people so riled up in 2017?
00:35I think it still gets people riled up because it's never like these comments don't necessarily come out with them being like,
00:42oh, I love Black women.
00:44It's always on.
00:45I have a preference and Black women are the worst, right?
00:48So when I think about these comments, I look out over them.
00:52I think we think things like this are funny or a joke, which they, you know, I get why people are entertained by them.
01:00But these kind of things are why today we're celebrating Sandra Bland's birthday without her, right?
01:07Our perception of Black women or them not being worthy of our love, let alone our political attention or media,
01:14is why we can have this Black woman who is not here on her birthday because the state also saw her as less than valuable, right?
01:21So it can be fun and a joke, but also we have to understand that there's consequences to the things we say in our preferences, right?
01:29Yeah, and it's funny because those kind of jokes, they have a lot of weight to them.
01:32Like at the end of the day, they're not funny because there's not enough to counterbalance it.
01:36In fact, Jill Scott once wrote a piece for Essence called The Wentz, where she admitted that she cringes when she sees Black men dating interracially, but not Black women.
01:46Why do you think that that double standard is this?
01:49I don't even know if it's so much of a double standard.
01:53Rather, Black women are highlighting that they're hurt sometimes by how we're treated,
01:58in addition to seeing people who look like us not loving us,
02:02especially people who look like us in positions of power.
02:06There was a photo that came out of like all the superstar Black men at the Met Gala,
02:12and people notice how a lot of their wives don't look like dark-skinned women or like themselves.
02:17So I think, yes, we can talk about a double standard,
02:19or we can talk about the fact that Black women are just really pushing for you all to love us and support us the same way we love and support you.
02:27No, totally.
02:28Once I was interviewing Gabrielle Union, and she told me that there was a post she had where it was like her, Dwyane Wade,
02:34and, you know, all of them on vacation, and someone wrote in, Black Wives Matter.
02:39And I was like, that is so important.
02:42But speaking of celebrities, do you think the popularity of the celebrity affects the amount of backlash?
02:48For example, nobody seems bothered when certain folks like Wayne Brady, Kanye, or Halle Berry marries outside the race.
02:54What do you think about that?
02:55I think that Halle Berry and Wayne Brady also aren't making statements like white is right and Black women are the worst or evil to date, right?
03:07The backlash is coming because he made a statement about Black women, and it was a negative statement.
03:13He didn't just say, oh, I have a preference of only dating a certain type of woman.
03:17It's like, I have a preference of only dating a certain type of woman, and I don't like Black women, right?
03:22And I will also give him a little bit of grace that these tweets were from 2011.
03:28And in 2011, I was younger than I am now, and we all go to our Facebook memory stories,
03:35and when it gets down to the bottom, we all cringe a little bit at the things we may have put out into the world.
03:41I think instead of him trying to say these aren't true, it's an opportunity for him to say how much he does value and love and respect Black women.
03:50To not pull a Nate Parker where you see someone for months go without saying, I'm sorry.
03:56But this is an opportunity for Woody to really be like, y'all helped me down when I premiered on BET during New Edition,
04:03and I expect to hold you all down too.
04:06I'm sorry.
04:06I have since transitioned from these views, and I love you.
04:10This is an opportunity for him to show up for the people who are showing up for him.
04:14That is an excellent point, and you're right.
04:16He should have just jumped right on and been like, listen, this is not true.
04:20This is false.
04:22Here's where I stand, and let that be it, and let that go out into the world.
04:25But yeah, being quiet is just kind of letting social media and all of us to kind of get to,
04:30kind of come to our own conclusions.
04:31And given the history of celebs and, you know, white women, we're just going down a very familiar path.
04:38But with that said, do you think people get as upset when Black men date Latino women or Asian women?
04:44Is there just something about white women, about white women dating Black men that we particularly hate?
04:50Again, I don't think Black women are coming together to say, only date us.
04:55What we're saying is, when you are choosing not to date us, do you also have to give us all these hateful,
05:02all this hateful rhetoric around why we're not good enough or why we're not worthy of love, right?
05:07Again, it wasn't that he, like you mentioned, Luke Cage had a lot of support when his show was,
05:13when that show was on Netflix.
05:14Or there's countless other celebrities who are married to white women or women of color,
05:19non-Black women of color who have our support.
05:21What we're simply asking you to do is to not say that we're not valuable or worthy, right?
05:28You all just showed some of those tweets and they're awful.
05:30And they're not just, I have a preference, but I dislike this group of folks.
05:35And what we know for sure is even people who do date Black women,
05:40it doesn't necessarily mean that they honor or respect them.
05:43We have Misha Lay's story on TV around her relationship and how she was being abused
05:48and all these other, these plethora of issues of Black women who are in relationships with Black men
05:54who are not valued or treated the way they should be treated.
05:57So I'd rather have that conversation instead of a double standard or being upset,
06:01because I know for me, I'm not upset that you're dating a non-Black woman.
06:05I just wish you didn't say on the long run that my life wasn't valuable.
06:09And I think there are folks like Sonia Renee Taylor,
06:12who talks about the body not being an apology, who are uplifting all people,
06:17but especially Black women to say, you know what, regardless of what society is telling you
06:21or regardless of how they're treating you, you yourself are valuable.
06:25And I think, again, he needs to hanker down on that.
06:27If he loves Black women, then prove it.
06:30Amber, thank you so much for your perspective. Thank you.
Comments