AJ Johnson on Black Relationships

AH: So if you are only socializing with African American students is there a big dating pool that you can choose from or do you try to date from outside of the College of Charleston or is that nor one of your priorities?

AJ: Well, there is not a big pool to date from I guess, because again we are very isolated and we focus just on the community, but we have a very small population, and when you have a very small population concentrated in a tiny area with all kinds of freedom and pheromones being thrown from here to everywhere. I mean you create drama, there is so much drama because of that very issue and you do see a few Black people dating outside the race, but those are generally the ones who are not concentrated within the Black community, like the Black community, where everyone knows everybody else and in that same case everybody has had sex with everybody else. And unfortunately I was telling a friend the other day, I cannot date these girls on campus and this is reference to the Black girls on campus, because personally I would not date outside of the race because if I am seriously dating, that is somebody who I am looking to be with for life and I could not be with a White woman for life, because I would feel like that she would not be able understand the trials that I have been through, that my race has been through and there are just certain scars that one needs to be able to understand that a White female would not be able to understand, or any other race as a matter of fact, but as far as the culture, the tiny community, the isolated community of College of Charleston, every girl has been at least with some guy on campus, because as small as a pool of Black females as there are, there is an even smaller pool of Black males who are straight. Out of those guys if you are straight, one of the things that they say is “That if you are straight on this campus, you have messed with more than one girl on this campus” and so if every guy has messed with more than one girl on the campus then of course there is going to be overlapping like, messing with girls on campus, and every guy has been with every girl one way or another and it is a part of the culture that I don’t want to be a part of so if I say that I don’t want to be a part of these girls on campus, that doesn’t mean I want a girl out of the race, I want a girl within the race, but at the same time I do not want a girl within the race within the culture of this campus.

AH: Gotcha, okay. In your family has there been interracial couples?

AJ: Yeah, especially on my dad’s side. On my mom’s side, it is much more, I guess is more Black Nationalistic, very set in the roots, my grandma had all kinds of children, all kinds of grandchildren, and all kinds of grand grandchildren, but we are able to trace our roots back there and they are very modest and homely like, very home grown, whereas on my dad’s side, on my dad’s side it is very interesting one of my great grandfathers actually came as a freeman from Africa and from him I believe, in some point or another he married into the Cherokee, well Creek Indians, whereas on the Creek side, I believe, they married into a White family and so on my dad’s side I have some KKK [Ku Klux Klan] members, family members actually on my dad’s side, like not too far out and I have actually met some family members, that have told me that if we were not family, if we were not blood, he would not be able to look at me like a human being because I am Black and the thing is this guy was mixed, like he was White and Black, but he had like Confederate flags all over his house and stuff. So, yeah, and one of my uncles, he married a White woman, and I think he is mixed and my dad’s side is just all kinds of mixed up as far as that goes, yeah. White and Black it is not even that big of a deal I guess, well apparently, it is that big of a deal

AH: Well for some people

AJ: Right, right. but having White on that side of the family is not that big of a deal, whereas, as having White in the family on my mom’s side would be much more so.

AH: Okay, so there is pressure from your mom’s side to marry a Black woman?

AJ: Oh, absolutely! Oh, my mom has told me not to bring a White girl home, like she has told me on multiple occasions, like “I don’t mind you dating her, but you will not bring a White girl home” She has told me that on multiple occasions.

AH: So you dated White [girls] in high school?

AJ: I didn’t date in high school because I was really awkward

AH: Well, you never know

AJ: I thought about it, but again like my mom always pressured do not date a White girl, so I stayed away from White girls, so that means I was looking at either Black girls or girls of some minority, there are no, but in all of my classes all there are were White girls and the girls, Black girls far and in-between I couldn’t identify with them and even though I wanted to; and then you have Hispanics and a few Asians in between and they were fine whatever, but I just couldn’t, there wasn’t nobody that I could identify with and nobody I could just click with because I just, I was told that I had to look for a certain person and she was not there.