Sometimes, the biggest lesson you learn in dating comes from a relationship that didn’t happen. On other occasions, the lesson you learn has nothing to do with relationships and more to do with how you view the world, and how it views you. This next relationship isn’t as much about the girl, then it is about an interesting time in my life, and the conversations about race we app need to have. Still with me? Good, let’s get to it. 

The Girl: 

I met Erica at my first job after college. We were both organizers. I was based out of New York City, Harlem to be specific, and she was located in upstate New York. There were many reasons I liked Erica, but what I enjoyed most about her was that she was the complete opposite of anyone I had ever been interested in. She was. Tomboy, down to earth, and funny in ways that a twenty-something Stanley didn’t know women could be. By the way, did I mention that she was white?

Don’t get me wrong, Erica wasn’t MAGA white, although I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a pro-Trump family member or two (it’s almost impossible to be white and not have at least one openly racist family member). But I digress, one of the things that surprised me about Erica was her upbringing. Erica was the first white person I ever met who actually came from a poor family. Her family was from a small town not too far from Albany, and they were the type of poor that 23-year-old Stanley thought only existed for Black and brown people. However, because of that upbringing, she and I could understand and relate to each other in ways that we couldn’t with other folks on staff. Our similar struggles gave us natural class solidarity I had never shared with a white person. 

Erica knew what real struggle felt like, she had a family she needed to take care of, and had millions of stories about friends from back home she wished could have had the same opportunities that some of our more privileged colleagues did. Whenever there was a full staff meeting or training. We would spend hours sharing war stories from back home and competing about the weird/funny things we would have to eat when food and money were low. Our friendship was solidified when I found out that not only did she know what Spam was, she still ate it regularly. 

When we met, I was a 23-year-old fledging narcissist with very little filters, lots of charisma, no self-awareness, and presidential aspirations. She was good at not letting my ego get in the way of our friendship and mastered the art of knocking me down a peg or two when I was getting too cocky. 

A Little More About Me Back Then: 

Before her, I never seriously considered dating a white woman. I grew up associating white women with trouble. Especially if you were a young dark skin Black man, which I was/am. If I’m being honest, I still think it’s dangerous for Black men to date white women. Not necessarily because all white women are dangerous, or trash. They’re not, but white supremacy and white rage are. If I could give some unsolicited advice to my readers of color, I would say that if you’re going to date a white woman, make sure she’s a solid person with strong racial analysis, who likes you for you and not because of some weird fetishized idea of Black or POC people.

Now that I’m reflecting on our friendship ten years later I can say with confidence that Erica was solid, and her racial analysis was on point for someone who like me grew up at the height of the “ I don’t see color” era. Unfortunately, for me, at that age, my analysis wasn’t so solid. Obama’s election in 2008 and the subsequent “post-racial” America bullshit propaganda from media outlets had convinced me that I didn’t need to think about race anymore. I just had to erase everything about my culture and strive to get as close to whiteness as possible. 

This meant, distancing myself from my Afro-Caribbean lineage, refusing to use slang, and wearing a suit at all times so that police would know that I was “one of the good ones.” Erica would constantly undermine that goal by asking me about my family, and getting me to learn more about my family’s history. When I told her I was Haitian, she bought me a book about the Haitian Revolution called, “Black Jacobins.” 

The Mixtape:

The Breakup: 

Yet again, this is another story where there wasn’t actually a breakup but stick with me. Every year during the holiday season, our job would “ask us” to do door-to-door Canvass to raise money for the organization. This usually happened in the winter, and everyone would be required to come to NYC for at least a week. This work event was called the “Urban Jungle”. On the last night of the said week, they would take us to a local bar and thank us by purchasing an absurd amount of Busch light (a very cheap beer), and host a party night. Erica and I were at the said party but it was getting late and I was planning to leave.

I wanted to make sure she made it to her hotel safely and asked if she would like to ride the train together. That’s when she informed me that she was too broke to book a hotel and planned to sleep in the office. The office wasn’t horrible, but it was constantly full of uneaten pizza, stale coats, and whatever else you could imagine rodents would be attracted to in it. Who would want to sleep there? I had an extra room in my apartment and invited her to stay the night. She agreed and we embarked on the two-hour commute it would take to get to my actual apartment. 

I should mention, by the time we left the party, both of us were PRETTY DRUNK. And by the “both of us” I mean me. The minute that train took off, I fell into a beautiful drunken slumber. 

Like any real New Yorker, my body was trained to wake up either right at my stop, or a few minutes before it. However, before my internal NYC sleep clock could work its magic, my Busch light slumber was interrupted by shouting. When I opened my eyes, I realized it was Erica. She was standing up and screaming at a white guy sitting across from us. He looked like he was trying to get her to lower her voice, but the minute he realized I was awake, he got up and went to the next cart. I tried to ask what happened but Erica was too upset to talk.

About five minutes later we arrived at my train stop and headed out. While walking to my building she finally revealed what had happened. Apparently, the guy sitting across from us thought that I was kidnapping her. After trying several times to slip her a note which requested her to “blink if she was in danger, he switched tactics and tried to call the police while riding on the E train underground.

This was 2010, there was absolutely zero cell phone reception in NYC train stations at the time. Erica didn’t grow up in the city and didn’t know that. So when she saw him trying to call the cops. She lost her shit. I tried to crack a joke or two but she was too upset. She kept apologizing for his behavior and for “Putting me in that situation” I didn’t understand why she felt so guilty. White people had always been afraid of, or cautious of me. It was just another NY experience as far as I was concerned.

We finally made it to my place and went to bed in separate rooms. The next day while heading to the office, I asked her out on a date. She had just started seeing someone and while she might have been interested, the timing was off. Then, in what would be the first of many reminders that men are creeps, she thanked me for not trying to fuck her the night before when we were both drunk. 

 The Lesson: 

This is probably one of the longest posts I have written for this series, and that’s because there is just so much to unpack here. Let’s start with the elephant in the room. While it doesn’t always feel like it, this ghetto-ass country has come a long way when it comes to race, that being said; as long as white people and society as a unit refuse to confront this countri’s sickness of white supremacy, America will never be a safe place for Black people. My experience on the train with Erica was a perfect example of that. We were two consenting adults heading to my apartment, on top of that, I was sound asleep, but because of the color of my skin, I was seen as a threat. Even while sleeping. 

Everybody claims to be a proud woke lord these days, but in 2010, allyship was something that folks who don’t wear deodorant and hang out at union square talk about. It wasn’t a part of the broader lexicon and had still not made its way to most organizing/activist spaces. At least not the white ones. Despite that, and her own upbringing, Erica was able to see the privilege she had as a white woman, and the ways her presence actively put my life in danger. White supremacy is the cause for these horrible scenarios and we have to be committed to dismantling them. 

And finally, if you have read anything of mine besides these relationship posts, you know that I talk about the need for white people to want to dismantle white supremacy if we have any chance of actually achieving that goal. My relationship with Erica is the perfect example of how we can build solidarity through similar class struggles. We were two broke kids, from different corners of life trying to change the world, and because we both understood the struggle and saw the damage it did to our communities, we bonded and worked together. Add a clear-eyed racial analysis to that relationship, and you have a framework for building an anti-racist relationship with the white people in our lives.