Why survival, love, and self-preservation are not betrayals of Blackness. Love, survival, and Blackness are not binaries. They're layered, messy, and human.I wrote this for those ready to honor Black activists' humanity—not demand their sacrifice."
This has been hard for me to reconcile with, since I always believed I would date only Black people since I started dating once I got to college. I'm very active in Black political organizations, and most of my friends are POC.
I would go on dates, and most of the time, no real connection. But with non-Black people, I would get to know them without the pretense of romance, and then the catching feelings would take me by surprise, it would come naturally.
I think I still care a lot about what others think. That if I openly pursue Black people for romantic reasons, that means I uphold Blackness. But as a lesbian, I feel like it's complicated with a smaller dating pool. I don't want to hold myself back in life because I want to keep up and image. After a life when I experienced so much ostracization as a Black person, I thought that only another Black person could be my safety net. But I still need to unlearn that fact that that isn't always true.
Wow, honestly, this is so well articulated and brilliantly put. I can relate so much to what’s said here both as a woman of color and as a queer woman. You give me a lot to think about. Thanks.
Thank you very much for sharing this. It unexpectedly affirmed much of what has weighed on my heart, when I sit with myself. This morning, I asked myself, crying silently during my shower, why it often feels so lonely. May of us, give by ourselves, fight by ourselves and while we may find comfort in love, that too can feel lonely, especially when the person who loves us can't relate to our cause, our cry for justice and our anger when we are hurt from those we're trying to help. I found affirmation in this post and will do better to support others who may feel the same way.
As we say the one who feels it knows it. And boy do we feel it. The work isn’t easy but I know it’s fulfilling and we find co conspirators in the journeys who aren’t even partners romantically and that helps too. I am unpartnered but for now it suits me when it’s time it’s time. Glad my words resonated within you. ❤️
Can I ask what your thoughts are on Black people who only date non-black people? I personally have no issues with Black people who date outside of the black community especially black women because I think black women should go where we are loved. But it does come off as a bit odd to me when I interact with Black people who only date non-black people because in my experience they’ve usually come off as very whitewashed:/ I think I struggle a bit with differentiating between the two sometimes cause the difference isn’t always blatant
I see the author is not giving clear answers on this, which respect her not wanting to assume or talk about people she doesn't know, but I have a well reasoned opinion.
In today's cold world, love who you love. Take love from where you can get it. If it's genuine, its genuine. But only dating non black people is a definite red flag in my opinion. Because antiblackness also exists in the black community. Dating with an open mind about love and where it comes from is much different than dating based on anti blackness or internalized hatred of your own race.
Like when black people date other races, cool, live your life and accept REAL love, not fetishization, not tokenism, accept GENUINE love wherever you can get it. But once you start speaking down on black people, like they're not good enough to date and you have disregarded them as an option for romantic love, or platonic love for that matter, that shit is LAME AS HELL.
I don’t actually spend time thinking about who people I don’t know are dating. I don’t know their upbringing, their traumas, their self-image, or what they’re working through in therapy if they even have access to it. Every relationship is its own ecosystem.
I think about my own life. As a Black autistic woman with ADHD, chronic illness, no children, and responsibilities that span continents including running an NGO and building a school for autistic children in The Gambia I don’t have the time, energy, or interest to analyze strangers’ dating choices. Unless someone or people are in my community and have invited me into their story through conversation, I don’t speculate. That’s the same ethic I carried into writing this essay on activists I spoke with them first and wrote from my observations.
Projecting assumptions onto people based solely on who they date flattens context and doesn’t help us build the world we’re trying to live in. The real question isn’t who someone dates. It’s how they treat themselves, their community, and whether their relationships are rooted in harm or healing. That’s not something we can see from the outside.
I specifically mentioned people that I’VE interacted with and know well enough that I’ve met their partners. Hence why I was talking specifically about my experience with those specific people coming off more as yt-washed. I didn’t say anything about speculation because I don’t know what strangers do with their personal lives and I don’t believe that it’s any of my business. As someone who also has auDHD I was just asking because sometimes I find it hard to differentiate between people who are just dating the people who they best connect with and those who are doing it more from a place of harm. Especially because I don’t always feel the most comfortable bringing it up out of fear making the person feel uncomfortable. Cause even as I’m learning to unmask I still struggle with trusting my pattern recognition. However I also don’t want to surround myself with people who perpetuate harm in any capacity whether it’s to their own community or another that’s why I was curious as to what your thoughts were cause I thought your piece was interesting. I’m genuinely confused as to why your response has the tone it does and why you made assumptions about why I asked my question despite not liking to speculate?
I hear you more clearly now, and I appreciate the clarification. People have asked me similar things about celebrities, and I always say the same I don’t know them, so I don’t speculate. That same principle applies here.
Even when we do know someone, who they date doesn’t automatically reveal their inner world, trauma history, or what safety looks like to them. If the concern is genuine and you’re in community with them, the most respectful approach especially as AuDHD is to ask directly. I usually preface those conversations with intention. Otherwise, it’s easy to slip into projection, especially when our own patterns are loud.
Proximity can feel like understanding, but context lives in conversation. And terms like “white-washed” often flatten what might actually be grief, disconnection, or internalized harm. That doesn’t make harm okay but it complicates easy judgments.
As someone navigating race, disability, chronic illness, and transnational work while connecting with Black communities across West African, Caribbean, and American contexts I don’t focus on who someone dates. I focus on how they move. Who they harm. Who they protect. Who they actually listen to.
I’ve seen people loudly proclaim “Black love” while mistreating Black partners. Others use that rhetoric to stir division in diasporic spaces. The language performs well. The behavior doesn’t. I’ve seen people say “protect Black women” and then endanger us publicly and privately.
So no it’s never just about what someone says or who they date. It’s about what their choices reveal. And if you know them personally, those are questions best asked directly not to people who’ve never met them.
What I meant is: don’t take performative statements or surface-level language (“Black love,” “protect Black women”) at face value as the whole truth. People can say the right things and still cause harm.
But if you’re close enough to someone and genuinely confused or concerned, that’s when asking directly makes sense. It’s more respectful than assuming or projecting. The key is how we ask, and whether the relationship allows for that kind of conversation.
I understand what you mean, and I do agree that someone using blanket statements like “black love” doesn’t actually represent the true nature of how they treat the black partners/people in their lives. Especially when you take aspects like colorism, featurism, ableism, etc into account. I think what I’m finding hard to navigate is when someone doesn’t use those performative or surface-level statements. But I see what you mean by focusing on their actions more-so than their words. I will say sometimes I wish I could just read people’s minds and know who to avoid lol but I appreciate you conversing with me.
"Some will find home in reflection. Some will find home in expansiveness. Both are Black. Both are sacred. Both are ours." Beautifully written, Lovette. I work in anti-racism, my husband is white and I have been challenged on this, by people asking if my choice of partner undermines my anti-racism work. My answer is usually a short no, but you have provided a depth of response and reflection that expresses this brilliantly. Thank you ❤️
Thank you and I equally appreciate your reflection. Over the past 15–20 years (yes, I’m older than I look), I’ve spoken with and defended so many Black women navigating similar projections. Even when we’ve not been on speaking terms. We don’t have to be friends for my values to stand. And those values are shaped by what’s being said, and who is saying it because the scrutiny rarely comes from care or curiosity. It usually comes from unprocessed trauma, projected outward.
Even I, who has never made my partners public because they haven’t chosen a public life have been accused during unpartnered periods of “only dating white people.” Despite having exclusively dated Black partners. That assumption taught me three things:
1. It says far more about the lens people are using than it ever does about me.
2. When people don’t know the facts, they fabricate them based on their wounds.
3. Public Black women in liberation work are held to expectations others would never place on themselves.
Their frameworks are often built on personal injury, not collective clarity and that imbalance distorts everything they think they’re seeing.
Your experience needs no justification. Nor does your love.
Both are still Black. Both are still sacred. Both still disrupt white supremacy because YOU are in them.
I’m glad this piece met you where it did. Go love, and be loved this work asks so much of us. I couldn’t imagine wishing you anything but more love and more rest, and I don’t even know you personally. That says more about us and the kind of world we’re building and healing we are dedicated to. Sending care.
This is so well-written, thoughtful, expanding and diving deep without any judgement while bringing in so much clarity, on so many levels exposing and offering...truth. Inner work. Self- awareness. Sacredness. Truly a sacred writing that I'll return to read again.
I did my best months after being called every name in the book online. As always I stand by what I said and still do and most likely will til I leave this earth and those who get it I know took the time to understand and introspect and also know even when I make choices personally different I can understand someone else’s different from mine that harms no one…but elevated theirs. 🫶🏾✨
💯. Survival literacy is such beautiful shorthand for what you so elegantly discuss here. I married a big, beautiful black man but at the time I called him forth into my life, I was open to anyone who could love me as deeply as I'd learned to love myself.
i will be transparent and say i was a little resistant while reading this in the beginning. but, i just have to say i admire your ability to hold such a nuanced conversation in the most caring and empathetic way. i've most definitely been a tad bit disheartened a few times after discovering some of my favorite black political women leaders, specifically queer, were in an, as you put it, "expansive" relationship/partnership (and the hurt dug a little deeper if they were white). as i was reading this, i started examining why it bothered me -- and clearly for the obvious, how much anti-blackness is deeply ingrained in our society and how much we're conditioned to hate ourselves and each other. but when i was thinking about giovanni, i realized she has never done anything to make me question her love and devotion to black people. so, why is that we expect so much self-deprivation or to be centered in every waking decisions in black women's lives? knowing all of the histories of my ancestors and how love between one another was hindered in every capacity, living in a society and under a system that was structured to be against me and people who look like me, or knowing what it feels like to exist in this body as a black woman, i have made a conscious commitment to community healing and dedicating my existence to loving another black woman healthily and wholeheartedly. i enjoyed hearing your thoughts because it brought me back to the reality that all black people are functioning in some form of state of survival, however that looks or manifests for each of us. although i chose black love and a lover that looks like me, you've shown me that my decision alone isn't enough without pure intentionality; without wholeness, sacredness, safety, and healing being the center. i thank you for expanding my mind on black love in this way -- you just helped me to become an even healthier, loving, and giving partner <3
This was such a thoughtful and honest reflection I appreciate your willingness to sit with the initial resistance and still stay open. That matters. You’re right that we often expect deprivation to prove devotion, especially from Black women, as if our love only holds weight through suffering. Nikki Giovanni’s life, like so many of ours, deserves nuance, not projection.
And then there are folks like me: asexual and just doing the work. Loving community without romance, building kinship without coupledom. And even we get told our peace is too peaceful after a lifetime of survival. For me our paths may look different, but they’re rooted in the same care and intentionality you speak of. Thank you for sharing this. It gave me a moment of pause too. ❤️
i've been more open to my resistance as i've learned (most of the time) some form of knowledge comes from it or accepting some part of my ego will die. i hope one day all black people can heal and we shift from a place of survival to pure freedom and romance of life. we all deserve it; you deserve it. thank you <3
Some things are too heavy to hold let alone carry. I just want to say thank you for bringing this forward. I pray that humans become more self-aware and diminish the need to continue othering or projecting their own fears onto one another. Thank you for this work and your heart.
I experience constant bullying as a result of my interracial relationships. It’s very hard not to question who I am when my community is consistently trying to project some sort of internal hatred of myself just because I have friends that are white and a boy friend that is a white Cuban.
I tend to feel deep ostracism and isolation though when ever I discuss this it’s usually met with disbelief. 2020 was a very hard year my self and my relationship as a lot of racial pressure was placed on my shoulder through way of leading a grass roots org in my city. I decided to take a step back from physical organizing in an effort to save my relationship but finding a balance is still hard. I really appreciate this piece. 🥲
This makes me sad to read. Thank you for sharing this with such honesty. What you’re describing the way community policing can weaponize identity, especially in interracial relationships is real and deeply painful. The projections, the suspicion, the isolation… they aren’t just interpersonal; they reflect how colonial trauma, surveillance, and purity politics still echo in our communities.
The burden of “representing” Blackness while also having to prove your loyalty or depth of awareness especially during a time like 2020 is a weight no one should have to carry alone. Choosing to step back from organizing to preserve your relationship doesn’t make you less committed to justice; it makes you human.
You deserve connection, not suspicion. Care, not conditions. I’m glad this piece resonated and I SEE you.
I’m not sure if this is relevant but I think an important piece of this is when you don’t grow up in stereotypically “black” environments. I’m a black girl from Utah with a valley girl accent so off jump I am the outcast, I am stuck up, I think I’m too good, and it’s just like no I’m just from a different place that’s it guys 🥲
No it happens to us even born in africa. Not the dating part but the “you arent like us” i feel no ways about it anymore because I have long unpacked it. You can grow up in all white areas or majority Black countries for me neurodivergent anyways I will always stick out as a sore thumb. I love and embrace it now.
I really appreciate this piece, it’s very well written and explained and I hope others are able to appreciate every corner you explained. “This is why the lens is intentionally specific, and why it centers the emotional weight Black activist uniquely navigating when survival, love and community are intertwined”. You explained it all thoroughly and I hope people read this over a few more times before commenting to fully understand and digest the context in which you’re coming from.
It genuinely means a lot when someone takes the time to sit with the full context, not just the surface.
I wrote this with care, knowing that the emotional landscape I was trying to describe isn’t always easy to explain especially when survival, love, and community are so deeply entangled.
I’m grateful you caught that. I also agree: sometimes it takes a few reads to really feel the layers.
Thank you for reading with patience and depth. That’s a rare kind of generosity.
I truly appreciate this thought provoking work. Life and love really are messy and non-binary. I will continue to digest this to have a better understanding of another's choices and a better understanding of my own. My respect for you continues to grow.
This was such a powerful read. I didn’t think I was going to watch the entire insta reel but I was captivated. I also wanted to go back to that time and give you a hug and fight on your behalf.
What pulled on me most was the proximity to whiteness b/c I grapple with this as I have, in this part of my life, been blessed with several white friends who provide support and allyship I didn’t know was possible. And at times, I have questioned my ‘blackness’ b/c of it. Some of this is old wounds from childhood where I was told ‘I talk white’ or b/c my friend groups were diverse ‘I act white’. But I love black people deeply and find so much joy in our shared experiences at times.
I also have experienced that many times they don’t let you rest in your healing b/c they aren’t healed. For all the work I have left to do here I cannot afford to be vexed 24/7/365. I so love the framing of this as expansive love.
Thank you for staying with me through that reel, personally I cant watch it because I remember exactly what was happening I was fighting an entire government whilst paying for and repatriating trafficked women and being attacked by Black people for not consulting them with what I did with my money, time and work. It means more than you know because that wasn’t easy to share. It was unfiltered emotions and tiredness from 22hour days working with trauma that was showing what it costs to keep surviving systems that were never built for us.
So many of us have been made to question our Blackness not because we lacked it, but because people projected their own pain onto us. I was born in Gambia as Black as it gets and because of masking and proximity to support from my grandmother was called non Black. So— even if that support comes from white friends it doesn’t erase your Blackness. It doesn’t dilute your loyalty to the work and cause. Your love for Black people shows in how you carry yourself, in how you refuse to abandon your own healing.
You’re absolutely right — some Black spaces can retraumatize you when healing isn’t centered. We deserve more than that. We deserve rest without guilt, love without proof, community without exhaustion.
Expansive love isn’t betrayal. It’s survival. It’s wisdom.
I’m really glad you’re here. And I’m proud of the way you’re choosing yourself, too. So so much! 🫶🏾🫂
Thank you so much for saying that! Honestly, readers like you are what make me love Substack even more. Being able to share layered thoughts and have them received with care means the world. 🫶🏾
This essay is not based on abstraction or external commentary.
It draws from several sources: my lived experience, my long-standing relationships and conversations with Black activists who entrusted me with their realities, and my own analysis as someone who has moved through these dynamics personally and collectively.
I clarify this at the very beginning of the piece I write from what I have witnessed, lived, documented, and been invited into, not from theoretical distance. This is why the lens is intentionally specific, and why it centers the emotional weight Black activists uniquely navigate when survival, love, and community are intertwined.
Readers who approach the work carefully will see that I am honoring complexity, not reducing it.
I stand with my fellow activists including those whose choices differ from mine in love, strategies, and survival tactics look different from one another because survival and love are not monolithic.
Thank you so much, Hannah. I’m really tired of everything being forced into binaries too especially when lived experience is so much richer, more layered, and more complicated than that.
This has been hard for me to reconcile with, since I always believed I would date only Black people since I started dating once I got to college. I'm very active in Black political organizations, and most of my friends are POC.
I would go on dates, and most of the time, no real connection. But with non-Black people, I would get to know them without the pretense of romance, and then the catching feelings would take me by surprise, it would come naturally.
I think I still care a lot about what others think. That if I openly pursue Black people for romantic reasons, that means I uphold Blackness. But as a lesbian, I feel like it's complicated with a smaller dating pool. I don't want to hold myself back in life because I want to keep up and image. After a life when I experienced so much ostracization as a Black person, I thought that only another Black person could be my safety net. But I still need to unlearn that fact that that isn't always true.
Wow, honestly, this is so well articulated and brilliantly put. I can relate so much to what’s said here both as a woman of color and as a queer woman. You give me a lot to think about. Thanks.
Thank you very much for sharing this. It unexpectedly affirmed much of what has weighed on my heart, when I sit with myself. This morning, I asked myself, crying silently during my shower, why it often feels so lonely. May of us, give by ourselves, fight by ourselves and while we may find comfort in love, that too can feel lonely, especially when the person who loves us can't relate to our cause, our cry for justice and our anger when we are hurt from those we're trying to help. I found affirmation in this post and will do better to support others who may feel the same way.
As we say the one who feels it knows it. And boy do we feel it. The work isn’t easy but I know it’s fulfilling and we find co conspirators in the journeys who aren’t even partners romantically and that helps too. I am unpartnered but for now it suits me when it’s time it’s time. Glad my words resonated within you. ❤️
Can I ask what your thoughts are on Black people who only date non-black people? I personally have no issues with Black people who date outside of the black community especially black women because I think black women should go where we are loved. But it does come off as a bit odd to me when I interact with Black people who only date non-black people because in my experience they’ve usually come off as very whitewashed:/ I think I struggle a bit with differentiating between the two sometimes cause the difference isn’t always blatant
I see the author is not giving clear answers on this, which respect her not wanting to assume or talk about people she doesn't know, but I have a well reasoned opinion.
In today's cold world, love who you love. Take love from where you can get it. If it's genuine, its genuine. But only dating non black people is a definite red flag in my opinion. Because antiblackness also exists in the black community. Dating with an open mind about love and where it comes from is much different than dating based on anti blackness or internalized hatred of your own race.
Like when black people date other races, cool, live your life and accept REAL love, not fetishization, not tokenism, accept GENUINE love wherever you can get it. But once you start speaking down on black people, like they're not good enough to date and you have disregarded them as an option for romantic love, or platonic love for that matter, that shit is LAME AS HELL.
I don’t actually spend time thinking about who people I don’t know are dating. I don’t know their upbringing, their traumas, their self-image, or what they’re working through in therapy if they even have access to it. Every relationship is its own ecosystem.
I think about my own life. As a Black autistic woman with ADHD, chronic illness, no children, and responsibilities that span continents including running an NGO and building a school for autistic children in The Gambia I don’t have the time, energy, or interest to analyze strangers’ dating choices. Unless someone or people are in my community and have invited me into their story through conversation, I don’t speculate. That’s the same ethic I carried into writing this essay on activists I spoke with them first and wrote from my observations.
Projecting assumptions onto people based solely on who they date flattens context and doesn’t help us build the world we’re trying to live in. The real question isn’t who someone dates. It’s how they treat themselves, their community, and whether their relationships are rooted in harm or healing. That’s not something we can see from the outside.
I specifically mentioned people that I’VE interacted with and know well enough that I’ve met their partners. Hence why I was talking specifically about my experience with those specific people coming off more as yt-washed. I didn’t say anything about speculation because I don’t know what strangers do with their personal lives and I don’t believe that it’s any of my business. As someone who also has auDHD I was just asking because sometimes I find it hard to differentiate between people who are just dating the people who they best connect with and those who are doing it more from a place of harm. Especially because I don’t always feel the most comfortable bringing it up out of fear making the person feel uncomfortable. Cause even as I’m learning to unmask I still struggle with trusting my pattern recognition. However I also don’t want to surround myself with people who perpetuate harm in any capacity whether it’s to their own community or another that’s why I was curious as to what your thoughts were cause I thought your piece was interesting. I’m genuinely confused as to why your response has the tone it does and why you made assumptions about why I asked my question despite not liking to speculate?
I hear you more clearly now, and I appreciate the clarification. People have asked me similar things about celebrities, and I always say the same I don’t know them, so I don’t speculate. That same principle applies here.
Even when we do know someone, who they date doesn’t automatically reveal their inner world, trauma history, or what safety looks like to them. If the concern is genuine and you’re in community with them, the most respectful approach especially as AuDHD is to ask directly. I usually preface those conversations with intention. Otherwise, it’s easy to slip into projection, especially when our own patterns are loud.
Proximity can feel like understanding, but context lives in conversation. And terms like “white-washed” often flatten what might actually be grief, disconnection, or internalized harm. That doesn’t make harm okay but it complicates easy judgments.
As someone navigating race, disability, chronic illness, and transnational work while connecting with Black communities across West African, Caribbean, and American contexts I don’t focus on who someone dates. I focus on how they move. Who they harm. Who they protect. Who they actually listen to.
I’ve seen people loudly proclaim “Black love” while mistreating Black partners. Others use that rhetoric to stir division in diasporic spaces. The language performs well. The behavior doesn’t. I’ve seen people say “protect Black women” and then endanger us publicly and privately.
So no it’s never just about what someone says or who they date. It’s about what their choices reveal. And if you know them personally, those are questions best asked directly not to people who’ve never met them.
Wait I’m confused I shouldn’t focus on what people say but you think I should still ask them directly?
Not a contradiction just a distinction.
What I meant is: don’t take performative statements or surface-level language (“Black love,” “protect Black women”) at face value as the whole truth. People can say the right things and still cause harm.
But if you’re close enough to someone and genuinely confused or concerned, that’s when asking directly makes sense. It’s more respectful than assuming or projecting. The key is how we ask, and whether the relationship allows for that kind of conversation.
I understand what you mean, and I do agree that someone using blanket statements like “black love” doesn’t actually represent the true nature of how they treat the black partners/people in their lives. Especially when you take aspects like colorism, featurism, ableism, etc into account. I think what I’m finding hard to navigate is when someone doesn’t use those performative or surface-level statements. But I see what you mean by focusing on their actions more-so than their words. I will say sometimes I wish I could just read people’s minds and know who to avoid lol but I appreciate you conversing with me.
"Some will find home in reflection. Some will find home in expansiveness. Both are Black. Both are sacred. Both are ours." Beautifully written, Lovette. I work in anti-racism, my husband is white and I have been challenged on this, by people asking if my choice of partner undermines my anti-racism work. My answer is usually a short no, but you have provided a depth of response and reflection that expresses this brilliantly. Thank you ❤️
Thank you and I equally appreciate your reflection. Over the past 15–20 years (yes, I’m older than I look), I’ve spoken with and defended so many Black women navigating similar projections. Even when we’ve not been on speaking terms. We don’t have to be friends for my values to stand. And those values are shaped by what’s being said, and who is saying it because the scrutiny rarely comes from care or curiosity. It usually comes from unprocessed trauma, projected outward.
Even I, who has never made my partners public because they haven’t chosen a public life have been accused during unpartnered periods of “only dating white people.” Despite having exclusively dated Black partners. That assumption taught me three things:
1. It says far more about the lens people are using than it ever does about me.
2. When people don’t know the facts, they fabricate them based on their wounds.
3. Public Black women in liberation work are held to expectations others would never place on themselves.
Their frameworks are often built on personal injury, not collective clarity and that imbalance distorts everything they think they’re seeing.
Your experience needs no justification. Nor does your love.
Both are still Black. Both are still sacred. Both still disrupt white supremacy because YOU are in them.
I’m glad this piece met you where it did. Go love, and be loved this work asks so much of us. I couldn’t imagine wishing you anything but more love and more rest, and I don’t even know you personally. That says more about us and the kind of world we’re building and healing we are dedicated to. Sending care.
This is so well-written, thoughtful, expanding and diving deep without any judgement while bringing in so much clarity, on so many levels exposing and offering...truth. Inner work. Self- awareness. Sacredness. Truly a sacred writing that I'll return to read again.
I did my best months after being called every name in the book online. As always I stand by what I said and still do and most likely will til I leave this earth and those who get it I know took the time to understand and introspect and also know even when I make choices personally different I can understand someone else’s different from mine that harms no one…but elevated theirs. 🫶🏾✨
Yeah, many can learn from you ...I wish.
💯. Survival literacy is such beautiful shorthand for what you so elegantly discuss here. I married a big, beautiful black man but at the time I called him forth into my life, I was open to anyone who could love me as deeply as I'd learned to love myself.
i will be transparent and say i was a little resistant while reading this in the beginning. but, i just have to say i admire your ability to hold such a nuanced conversation in the most caring and empathetic way. i've most definitely been a tad bit disheartened a few times after discovering some of my favorite black political women leaders, specifically queer, were in an, as you put it, "expansive" relationship/partnership (and the hurt dug a little deeper if they were white). as i was reading this, i started examining why it bothered me -- and clearly for the obvious, how much anti-blackness is deeply ingrained in our society and how much we're conditioned to hate ourselves and each other. but when i was thinking about giovanni, i realized she has never done anything to make me question her love and devotion to black people. so, why is that we expect so much self-deprivation or to be centered in every waking decisions in black women's lives? knowing all of the histories of my ancestors and how love between one another was hindered in every capacity, living in a society and under a system that was structured to be against me and people who look like me, or knowing what it feels like to exist in this body as a black woman, i have made a conscious commitment to community healing and dedicating my existence to loving another black woman healthily and wholeheartedly. i enjoyed hearing your thoughts because it brought me back to the reality that all black people are functioning in some form of state of survival, however that looks or manifests for each of us. although i chose black love and a lover that looks like me, you've shown me that my decision alone isn't enough without pure intentionality; without wholeness, sacredness, safety, and healing being the center. i thank you for expanding my mind on black love in this way -- you just helped me to become an even healthier, loving, and giving partner <3
This was such a thoughtful and honest reflection I appreciate your willingness to sit with the initial resistance and still stay open. That matters. You’re right that we often expect deprivation to prove devotion, especially from Black women, as if our love only holds weight through suffering. Nikki Giovanni’s life, like so many of ours, deserves nuance, not projection.
And then there are folks like me: asexual and just doing the work. Loving community without romance, building kinship without coupledom. And even we get told our peace is too peaceful after a lifetime of survival. For me our paths may look different, but they’re rooted in the same care and intentionality you speak of. Thank you for sharing this. It gave me a moment of pause too. ❤️
i've been more open to my resistance as i've learned (most of the time) some form of knowledge comes from it or accepting some part of my ego will die. i hope one day all black people can heal and we shift from a place of survival to pure freedom and romance of life. we all deserve it; you deserve it. thank you <3
Thank you truly 🥹❤️. I felt that.
So many of us are already shifting, already healing. But we deserve spaces where that healing is seen through truth, not projection.
Not romanticized, not reduced. Just real.
Your words carry so much softness and clarity. I receive them. And I send them right back.
Some things are too heavy to hold let alone carry. I just want to say thank you for bringing this forward. I pray that humans become more self-aware and diminish the need to continue othering or projecting their own fears onto one another. Thank you for this work and your heart.
I experience constant bullying as a result of my interracial relationships. It’s very hard not to question who I am when my community is consistently trying to project some sort of internal hatred of myself just because I have friends that are white and a boy friend that is a white Cuban.
I tend to feel deep ostracism and isolation though when ever I discuss this it’s usually met with disbelief. 2020 was a very hard year my self and my relationship as a lot of racial pressure was placed on my shoulder through way of leading a grass roots org in my city. I decided to take a step back from physical organizing in an effort to save my relationship but finding a balance is still hard. I really appreciate this piece. 🥲
This makes me sad to read. Thank you for sharing this with such honesty. What you’re describing the way community policing can weaponize identity, especially in interracial relationships is real and deeply painful. The projections, the suspicion, the isolation… they aren’t just interpersonal; they reflect how colonial trauma, surveillance, and purity politics still echo in our communities.
The burden of “representing” Blackness while also having to prove your loyalty or depth of awareness especially during a time like 2020 is a weight no one should have to carry alone. Choosing to step back from organizing to preserve your relationship doesn’t make you less committed to justice; it makes you human.
You deserve connection, not suspicion. Care, not conditions. I’m glad this piece resonated and I SEE you.
I’m not sure if this is relevant but I think an important piece of this is when you don’t grow up in stereotypically “black” environments. I’m a black girl from Utah with a valley girl accent so off jump I am the outcast, I am stuck up, I think I’m too good, and it’s just like no I’m just from a different place that’s it guys 🥲
No it happens to us even born in africa. Not the dating part but the “you arent like us” i feel no ways about it anymore because I have long unpacked it. You can grow up in all white areas or majority Black countries for me neurodivergent anyways I will always stick out as a sore thumb. I love and embrace it now.
I really appreciate this piece, it’s very well written and explained and I hope others are able to appreciate every corner you explained. “This is why the lens is intentionally specific, and why it centers the emotional weight Black activist uniquely navigating when survival, love and community are intertwined”. You explained it all thoroughly and I hope people read this over a few more times before commenting to fully understand and digest the context in which you’re coming from.
Thank you so much for this.
It genuinely means a lot when someone takes the time to sit with the full context, not just the surface.
I wrote this with care, knowing that the emotional landscape I was trying to describe isn’t always easy to explain especially when survival, love, and community are so deeply entangled.
I’m grateful you caught that. I also agree: sometimes it takes a few reads to really feel the layers.
Thank you for reading with patience and depth. That’s a rare kind of generosity.
I truly appreciate this thought provoking work. Life and love really are messy and non-binary. I will continue to digest this to have a better understanding of another's choices and a better understanding of my own. My respect for you continues to grow.
This was such a powerful read. I didn’t think I was going to watch the entire insta reel but I was captivated. I also wanted to go back to that time and give you a hug and fight on your behalf.
What pulled on me most was the proximity to whiteness b/c I grapple with this as I have, in this part of my life, been blessed with several white friends who provide support and allyship I didn’t know was possible. And at times, I have questioned my ‘blackness’ b/c of it. Some of this is old wounds from childhood where I was told ‘I talk white’ or b/c my friend groups were diverse ‘I act white’. But I love black people deeply and find so much joy in our shared experiences at times.
I also have experienced that many times they don’t let you rest in your healing b/c they aren’t healed. For all the work I have left to do here I cannot afford to be vexed 24/7/365. I so love the framing of this as expansive love.
Thank you for staying with me through that reel, personally I cant watch it because I remember exactly what was happening I was fighting an entire government whilst paying for and repatriating trafficked women and being attacked by Black people for not consulting them with what I did with my money, time and work. It means more than you know because that wasn’t easy to share. It was unfiltered emotions and tiredness from 22hour days working with trauma that was showing what it costs to keep surviving systems that were never built for us.
So many of us have been made to question our Blackness not because we lacked it, but because people projected their own pain onto us. I was born in Gambia as Black as it gets and because of masking and proximity to support from my grandmother was called non Black. So— even if that support comes from white friends it doesn’t erase your Blackness. It doesn’t dilute your loyalty to the work and cause. Your love for Black people shows in how you carry yourself, in how you refuse to abandon your own healing.
You’re absolutely right — some Black spaces can retraumatize you when healing isn’t centered. We deserve more than that. We deserve rest without guilt, love without proof, community without exhaustion.
Expansive love isn’t betrayal. It’s survival. It’s wisdom.
I’m really glad you’re here. And I’m proud of the way you’re choosing yourself, too. So so much! 🫶🏾🫂
So much love for this piece. Thank you for writing it so thoughtfully!
Thank you so much for saying that! Honestly, readers like you are what make me love Substack even more. Being able to share layered thoughts and have them received with care means the world. 🫶🏾
This essay is not based on abstraction or external commentary.
It draws from several sources: my lived experience, my long-standing relationships and conversations with Black activists who entrusted me with their realities, and my own analysis as someone who has moved through these dynamics personally and collectively.
I clarify this at the very beginning of the piece I write from what I have witnessed, lived, documented, and been invited into, not from theoretical distance. This is why the lens is intentionally specific, and why it centers the emotional weight Black activists uniquely navigate when survival, love, and community are intertwined.
Readers who approach the work carefully will see that I am honoring complexity, not reducing it.
I stand with my fellow activists including those whose choices differ from mine in love, strategies, and survival tactics look different from one another because survival and love are not monolithic.
Thank you so much, Hannah. I’m really tired of everything being forced into binaries too especially when lived experience is so much richer, more layered, and more complicated than that.
I appreciate you seeing and feeling it. 🫶🏾