What is the point of Afrocentric love?

Photo via Denzel's Instagram

Before we embark on the delightful and intricate journey of exploring Afrocentric love, it’s important to clarify that this form of love extends beyond heterosexual, monogamous, or binary relationships. However, as a Black woman with a heterosexual life experience, I must honestly admit that my perspective on Afrocentric love is inherently limited to romantic and sexual relationships between myself and men. As I explore how we imagine this love, I’ve engaged in rich, complex conversations with my closest friends and other women in my community. I’ve questioned the way I’ve engaged in romantic and sexual relationships with Black, Indigenous, and white people, as well as those with white privilege. And, of course, how my fight against racism has shaped my romantic choices and other loving relationships with family and friends.

In her book All About Love, bell hooks proposes that, "Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively." I resonate with hook’s idea, and it makes me wonder whether or not I’ve truly loved or been loved, especially when considering that the people with whom we attempt to form bonds have access to our wounds and may hurt us (in the best-case scenario because they failed to recognize such wounds). Moreover, this idea can guide us in reflecting on love within romantic and sexual relationships, prompting us to reconsider the ideal of Afrocentric love—a conscious choice to decolonize our emotional relationships. This is significant given how the colonial wounds of racism and classism have profoundly shaped our choices, desires, and preferences.

I could hardly make sense of so many ideas on Afrocentric love without resorting to personal experience. I don’t expect this piece to clear up anyone’s doubts on the subject, and it may likely leave more questions than answers. In fact, the writing process was overwhelming and amplified my uncertainties. Still, I believe that in light of El día del amor y la amistad (Love and Friendship Day, a Colombian holiday akin to Valentine's Day, celebrated on September 21st), these words might open a conversation or prompt us to think more deeply about how we perceive love and the ways that racism and classism impact our romantic lives.

What is Afrocentric love?

Many people assume that when we talk about Afrocentric love, we’re advocating for a form of segregation similar to 1950s America. But that’s not the case. We’re talking about fully embracing the chance to fall in love with Black people rather than assuming that falling for white people is better.  I recommend watching the movie, Loving (2016) to remind us of a still-terrible reality: the state has power over our choices when forming romantic bonds or families, including same-sex marriage or the possibility for those couples to raise children.

Afrocentric love arises from the ideal that love should be a free choice, and that among those choices should be the option to choose ourselves, allowing us to love and build Black families and communities. I understand Afrocentric love as a political stance, embraced by a sector of the Black population—activists, thinkers, writers, artists, and academics—who advocate for the option of forming romantic and sexual relationships with other Black people. This ideal of romantic relationships emerges with the hope of deconstructing colonial desire. It is also a form of resistance against a system that has historically overvalued whiteness, positioning it as the ultimate form of beauty, while attaching derogatory adjectives to Blackness and deeming Black people unworthy of love and respect.

Thus, Afrocentric love is about lessening the emotional toll of confronting racism in the social and family settings of a white partner—constantly explaining racist attitudes and comments, endlessly justifying the experience of living in a Black body, and challenging white privilege without worrying about triggering white fragility. For this reason, it’s not a superficial preference for someone with Afro features. 

In fact, this type of relationship advocates for a desire rooted in anti-colonial and anti-racist deconstruction. This is key: we often forget that being Black doesn’t automatically imply an anti-colonial or anti-racist stance. Afrocentric love emerges as an alternative for romantic relationships to become safe spaces of support for Black people—a chance to build and strengthen communities through romantic, familial, and friendship bonds. This is an ideal of Black love… But in a capitalist, heteronormative, and patriarchal system, such idyllic love is hard to come by.

We live in a society that views romantic relationships as a means of social mobility. No matter how we identify racially or ethnically, we treat love as a transaction. We like to think of love as something intimate that concerns only the lovers, and we wish it were that way, but social, familial, and political contexts heavily influence our romantic choices and the expectations we have for relationships. Why do we desire the people we desire? Why are we attracted to certain people? Historically, white people have been overwhelmingly over-represented in every space, occupying positions of political and economic power while monopolizing the symbols of desire and beauty.

In the Latin American context, mestizaje (racial mixing) with the aspiration of whitening has been a state-promoted strategy for social mobility. Black people grow up in family environments with social pressures to overcome the “racial flaw” (the belief that being Black is a birth defect a person should try to overcome, yet because it is considered inherent, no effort will ever be sufficient to fight it entirely) at all costs. We try to sneak into the love party, whether through excessive grooming, aesthetic procedures like hair straightening or skin lightening (and a long list of harmful practices), achieving academic excellence, or landing a highly regarded job. The myth that in Colombia, "we are classist but not racist" is deeply ingrained; that is to say, we are led to believe that our Blackness will be “forgiven” if we are wealthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of our accomplishments, we are still told, "You're so lucky your partner is white. You know, you’re going to improve the race." I heard this racist comment often when I was married to a white man.

This highlights the symbolic disadvantages Black people face when entering romantic relationships where white privilege prevails. In the most oppressive cases, Black people are praised simply for having had sex with a white person. Enduring this daily racism is the price we pay for access to certain privileged spaces, from entering elegant restaurants (where Black women are assumed to be sex workers) to living in better neighborhoods, cities, or countries (where we’re mistaken for domestic staff) or gaining entry to social circles that offer economic advancement (though we might have to endure racist jokes).

One thing is certain: when we open the conversation about Afrocentric love, for Black women, it is often very difficult to have relationships with Black men, because Black men prefer white women for relationships. Many say that they, “take us Black women to lunch and white women to dinner,” or that they “marry the white women and keep Black women as lovers.” Likewise, Black men themselves question Black women’s desire to marry white men and the prestige this entails. Or the long-standing racist comment “negro con negro da calor” (“Black with Black is blazing hot,” which is a way of discriminating against one another), which has been one of the colonial system’s strategies to promote whitening through racial mixing, framing love between Black people as a disadvantage. 

From my own experience, I resonate with the idea that “un hombre no es gente ni familia de uno” ("a man is neither family nor someone to rely on," which is to say that any romantic relationship is temporary and ephemeral unless the man becomes an actual part of our community) regardless of whether he's white, Black, Indigenous, Asian, or otherwise. However, for someone as sensitive to racism as I am, it is a relief to form romantic and sexual bonds with Black men. 

The ways of being in the world of white men from the Global North, or those with white privilege in Latin America, are a source of anxiety and distrust. That said, it’s also true that conversations about these kinds of relationships don’t spark change in everyone. I’ve had far more discussions on the subject with women and sexually diverse individuals than with Black men themselves. And just because we question racial oppression doesn’t mean Black men are ready to confront their machismo, homophobia, or other forms of violence, whether in relationships with Black or white women. 

I often wonder how we imagine Afrocentric love, particularly given the classism that we, as women who have fought so hard to overcome precarious circumstances, still carry. Yes, we all dream of Afrocentric love with an “amazing Black man—well-hung, academic, millionaire businessman who spares no expense with us.” 

Social media continues to promote the idea of the “Black power couple,” exemplified by couples like Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Sadly, we often still mimic whiteness in our criteria for choosing partners. I’m surprised at how little we’re willing to compromise to build Afrocentric love, even though we’re so aware of the structural racism that prevents most Black men from attaining social mobility. And yet, we complain that the small number of Black men who manage to ascend into elite circles—whether by statistical chance or due to the obsession I mentioned—often choose to marry white women. So, it’s important to think about Afrocentric love while also challenging classism. Classism prevents Afrocentric love.

Let’s come back to bell hooks' idea: “No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.” Then, how have racism and classism wounded us so deeply, and yet we still perpetuate discrimination? How is it normal that we divide people into “just for sex” (Black) and “for a serious relationship” (white or with white privilege)? If we’re simply replicating the same discriminatory patterns that whiteness imposes, then what is the point of Afrocentric love in the first place?

This is a collaborative piece, originally released in Spanish by Volcánicas.