Why Do So Many Black Athletes Date White Women?

Why We Care Who Black Athletes Marry

I’m going to rip the Band-Aid off.

Every time a prominent Black athlete appears with a white girlfriend or wife, you can almost predict what happens next.

Another one.

As soon as they get money, they get a white woman.

Black women were good enough before he became successful.

I’ve heard versions of this conversation for most of my adult life.

And I’m not going to dismiss the Black women who feel strongly about it.

Because that emotion didn’t come from nowhere.

But I also think there’s another side of this story—one I happen to have lived.

Why It Feels Like Betrayal

Before talking about Black athletes, we have to talk about history.

You can’t separate the emotions surrounding interracial relationships from slavery, segregation, racism and generations of Black people being told—directly and indirectly—that whiteness represented beauty, power, wealth and social acceptance.

Black women experienced their own particularly brutal version of that history.

So when some Black women see a successful Black athlete with a white woman, they aren’t necessarily seeing just two people who fell in love.

They may see something historical.

A Black man was raised in a Black community. Black women were his mothers, sisters, teachers, girlfriends and supporters.

Then he becomes successful.

Money arrives.

Fame arrives.

Access arrives.

And suddenly the woman standing beside him is white.

The feeling can become:

We were good enough to struggle with you. Why aren’t we good enough to succeed with you?

I understand why that can feel like betrayal.

Understanding the feeling, however, doesn’t necessarily make the conclusion fair.

Because I was that Black athlete.

Basketball Dropped Me Into Another World

I grew up in a world that was probably 99% Black.

Then I received a basketball scholarship.

Almost overnight, I was introduced to a university environment that felt 99% white.

Think about how dramatic that change is for an 18- or 19-year-old.

One day nearly every girl around me was Black.

Then basketball picked me up and dropped me onto a massive university campus where the overwhelming majority of women I encountered were white.

National education data backs up the broader imbalance of that era. In 1980, approximately 20% of Black 18-to-24-year-olds were enrolled in college compared with about 28% of their white counterparts. NCES⁠

But I wasn’t thinking about statistics.

I was living it.

I could walk across campus and encounter white woman after white woman before seeing a Black woman.

So was I supposed to stop dating?

I would easily walk on campus and see one hundred white women before I saw one black woman I would easily walk on campus and see 100 white women before I saw one black woman. Everyday. Was I supposed to say: Sorry, I’m waiting to see if a Black woman comes around the corner?

Of course not.

I dated my first white girlfriend.

It wasn’t a rebellion against Black women.

It wasn’t me deciding whiteness represented success.

My environment had changed.

I didn’t change the dating pool. Basketball changed the world around me.

That’s a distinction we don’t talk about enough.

Then My World Got Even Bigger

Basketball didn’t leave me on that university campus.

It eventually took me around the world.

I spent years playing professionally in Europe. I later lived and worked in Asia.

And naturally, the people around me changed again.

I dated European women.

I dated Asian women.

That’s what happens when your life becomes international.

And my own family ultimately became interracial.

My first son is with a Black woman.

My second son is with a white woman.

Those two sons don’t represent two different versions of me.

One isn’t proof that I remained loyal to Black people while the other proves I abandoned them.

They’re different chapters of the same man’s life.

My environment changed. My relationships changed. My Blackness didn’t.

That’s why I hesitate when somebody looks at the race of a Black man’s partner and believes they can determine from that photograph how he feels about Black women.

You don’t know his journey.

But Black Women Aren’t Imagining Everything

Now let’s make the conversation uncomfortable in the other direction.

There really is a gender difference in interracial marriage among Black Americans.

Pew Research Center found that among Black newlyweds in 2015, approximately 24% of Black men married someone of another race or ethnicity, compared with 12% of Black women.

Among Black men with at least a bachelor’s degree, the interracial-marriage rate was approximately 30%. Pew Research Center⁠

So when Black women say they’re noticing something, there is a broader demographic pattern underneath the conversation.

But those numbers describe Black Americans generally.

They don’t establish a unique “Black athlete-white woman syndrome.”

Professional athletes are simply extraordinarily visible.

Nobody takes a photograph every time the Black dentist down the street goes to dinner with his white wife.

Let an NBA star walk courtside holding hands with a white woman and millions of people see it before halftime.

Visibility can make something look even more prevalent than it is.

Success Changes Your Options

Let’s rip off another Band-Aid.

Success changes your dating pool.

That’s true for men and women.

Money changes where you live.

Fame changes who notices you.

Travel changes who you meet.

Education changes your social circles.

And professional sports can change all of those things simultaneously.

Today’s athlete experiences this transformation even earlier.

NIL means a highly recruited college athlete can enter university with money, endorsements, national recognition and hundreds of thousands of social-media followers before ever becoming a professional. NCAA⁠

Of course that changes his options.

And yes, let’s be honest enough to acknowledge something else.

For some men, status probably does affect racial preference.

There are undoubtedly Black men who associate certain women with having “made it.” Colorism exists. Eurocentric beauty standards exist. Money can change people’s behavior.

Let’s talk about all of it.

But what we shouldn’t do is take that possibility and use it to prosecute every interracial couple we see.

Sometimes there’s another explanation.

He likes her.

Maybe he loves her.

Nobody Is Entitled to the Successful Black Man

This is probably where I’ll lose a few readers.

A successful Black athlete does not owe the Black community a Black wife.

He’s not communal property.

His relationship isn’t a racial reinvestment program.

And the same standard has to apply to Black women.

A successful Black woman doesn’t owe the community a Black husband either.

Choose who you love.

America didn’t strike down state bans on interracial marriage nationwide until Loving v. Virginia in 1967. National Park Service⁠

Think about the irony.

We spent generations fighting against a society that told people whom they were legally permitted to love.

We shouldn’t recreate a softer version of the same restriction inside our own communities.

Maybe We’ve Been Diagnosing the Wrong Syndrome

For years, people have looked at the successful Black athlete standing beside a white woman and asked:

Why did he choose her?

I think there’s another question worth asking.

Why do we believe he owes us an explanation?

I’ve lived both sides of this conversation.

I came from an overwhelmingly Black world.

Basketball carried me into an overwhelmingly white one.

Then it carried me across Europe and Asia and into cultures I couldn’t have imagined as a kid.

My first son is with a Black woman.

My second son is with a white woman.

I didn’t become less Black somewhere between son number one and son number two.

My life simply got bigger.

And maybe that’s the part we’re missing when we judge these athletes from photographs.

Sometimes a Black athlete didn’t abandon his community.

His world expanded beyond it.

He met different people.

He entered different cultures.

He fell in love.

That’s not betrayal.

That’s life.

So perhaps the Black athlete-white woman syndrome isn’t a syndrome at all.

Maybe the real syndrome is our inability to see a successful Black man with someone outside his race without putting his identity, loyalty and relationship on trial.

Race deserves discussion.

History deserves discussion.

Black women’s feelings deserve to be heard.

But love is not a racial obligation.

My environment changed. My relationships changed. My family changed.

My Blackness never did.