I’m comin’ back on this subject after seeing the movie “Save The Last Dance”. In the movie this smart high school black kid, very conscious of his blackness, even street smart; he had a ghetto friend who was in and out of juvenile homes, and was a drug dealer tuff kid. But he on the other had had aspirations of being a doctor and had applied to Georgetown University for pre-med. He falls in love with a white girl who comes to the school by way of her mom dying and having to stay with her dad. He and the white girl had a battle of witts in class and it started from there.
The white girl becomes friends with his sister unknowingly, and tells her that he is an asshole, etc. because of their class argument. She’s embarrassed when told that he was her brother. So in a friendly argument upon being formally introduced by the sister, the white girl tells him that she could dance circles around him at a club that they would both attend the following weekend.
So they get to the club scene and the sister gets there with the white girl and a few of her other friends and her brother’s old girlfriend is there and they get into an argument. The sister notes that she doesn’t like the girl because of the way she played her brother, but they never went into detail about how she played him. The brother gets there and his old girlfriend comes and tries to be friendly with him and he disses her because obviously he didn’t like the way she played him neither. He finds the white girl and they get into general conversation and he brings up the dance challenge, and she tries to get out of it because she can dance ballet, but not Hip Hop. She gets on the floor and looks stupid. When they leave in a hurry as a result of his thug friend getting into a fight and he helped him out, he, his sister and the white girl are all going in the same direction. He walks the white girl home and they make a pact that he would teach her some dance moves since she was gonna be hangin out with his sister and going to that club. During the course of these dance lessons, they talk and fall in love.
Now if this isn’t the story of my senior year in high school when I fell in love with a white girl, I don’t know what is. The girl I was with at the movies said he had Jungle Fever, etc. I said it was just a case of two open minded, intelligent kids coming together through social settings and started loving each other. The same situation happened to me. I met my girlfriend in the bad, now granted, I was a victim of wanting to be with a white girl because that was all the media pushed on me and they just looked so cute and lovable when at school. Every since eighth grade, I wanted one. In 12th grade I found one and fell in love and she loved me back.
Now, why this white girl in my senior year in high school? Before 12th grade, I wanted a relationship with Bethlehem Strong, Marilyn Singleton, Alta Berret, Cinclaire Thomas. These were all beautiful black intelligent young females in my age group but none of the relationships ever happened except for Marilyn. She wasn’t trying to have sex with me and she broke up with me for no reason at all really. See, what most people don’t understand is that a black man want a lady, one that is often seen, but seldom heard and one that is smart. Bethelehem fit this bill perfectly. She was a straight “A” student, very beautiful and I never heard her voice unless she was talking to me or someone else near me. I never seen her in a fight or argument. This is the kind of girl a man wants to love. In fact, I hold a friendly love for Bethelehem in my heart to this day for the lady I know her to be, even though we never were in a relationship together, and even though she may not ever think of me in any kind of way.
When I was in 12th grade, all I knew were loud mouth and rowdy girls with kids who were either with the fathers of the children or were not. And the key words in that sentence are LOUD MOUTH AND ROWDY! Not kids; for after I graduated from high school I was with a girl who had three kids while I was in college, and then another one after I graduated college. I can’t think of one black girl in the whole high school who I wanted to be in love with my senior year except for maybe Calesha Breakley. But she was too skinny, and plus she thought of me like a distant cousin because my first cousin Jerome’s dad was her uncle. I originally had planned on asking her to prom, but I got beat to the punch. There were the twins Sally and Salena but they had boyfriends, and they seemed just a little too damn quiet for me anyway. There was still Bethlehem, but she was in love with Fletcher Hightower and she stopped coming to school looking cute altogether. She was busy loving him while he was away at college and when he was at home. But while he was at home, he was loving Lillian Buckhead and got her pregnant. There was Anazette Thatcher, also one whom I love and respect to this day for the lady she is and was, but she wasn’t interested in me. She was in love with my friend Aderale or Gold.
If I had been in a relationship with Bethlehem or Anazette, a white girl couldn’t have entered my world, at least not then. I was in involved with Sarena Salinger when I got involved with the white girl, but I was under the brain washed mentality that she was dark-skinned and ugly. She wasn’t that cute, but she could dress well and she had a sexy walk and nice body. When I seen her in later years I regretted that I didn’t really get with her in high school. She never gave me another chance even though I tried a couple of times. With Serena, my good friend Rally introduced us. He told me that he had hit it and was passing her on to me because he didn’t like her, so that blinded me to the real beauty of her, which I discovered later on in college at YSU. And plus, I was brain washed thinking that I wanted me a white girl.
Now in the movie these two kids just innocently feel in love. I innocently feel in love with a white girl in high school too, but still I had that “I want a white girl” in the back of my mind. In the movie, he simply wasn’t seeing anyone at the time and neither was she, being that she just transferred to a brand new school. He was a gentleman, and she was a lady and they fell in love. Gentleman and lady, but most importantly, LADY! Even a thug wants a lady, but a gentleman whose set for college and has goals set, he definitely wants a lady to stand by his side. In some cases it doesn’t matter if she is black or white. Most white women present themselves as ladies, so in many cases, they get the gentleman, whether black or white.
The Only Child 1988 