@Buddy
Italy, a country known for its language of love and for its men who publicly shower overtures on women like a centuries-old art form, is often associated with romantic encounters of the kind portrayed in the movies, from “Roman Holiday” to “The Lizzie McGuire Movie.” So some black women ask, why shouldn’t it be the same for them?
Latrese Williams is one such black traveler. When Ms. Williams goes out in Chicago or pretty much anywhere else in the United States, she said, she often feels ignored by men who seem to barely register her existence. But when she walks into a room in Italy, all eyes are on her — and to her, that’s a good thing. These polar reactions occur, she said, because she is black.
“Even though I would behave in the same way at home and abroad, in Chicago I felt invisible,” Ms. Williams said in her home in the Monti neighborhood of Rome. “But in Italy I kept meeting guys.”
In November, she moved in with her Italian boyfriend, whom she met on Tinder in Rome.
In recent years, Italy has become known for widely publicized episodes of racism against African migrants or dark-skinned people perceived as migrants, and even
racial abuse toward Italy’s own black soccer players. It may be surprising that there is a steady stream of black women who travel to Italy in search of amore.
Perhaps less surprising is that, amid the new crop of travel companies
catering to black travelers and black women, in particular, there’s a growing group of tour providers, blogs, Instagram accounts and Facebook groups that encourage black women to travel to Italy to find love. Unlike traditional tour operators, companies like
Black Girl Travel and
Venus Affect provide dating advice and assistance finding a romantic partner, along with sightseeing.
Online, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr posts show photos of black women with Italian men or black women with white men in Italy; Facebook groups and YouTube videos contain lengthy discussions about Italian men loving black women. Many of the posts are tagged with the word “
swirl,” a popular term describing a black person and a white person in a relationship.
@Ezekiel 25:17 GO RESCUE HER
A numbers game
For decades, the misleading idea that black women in America are the least likely people to find love has been the topic of books, movies, television specials and countless news articles. In 2017, the Pew Research Center found that
black men are twice as likely as black women to have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity.
And a widely reported OkCupid study of American users of the dating app found that in 2014, most men on the site rated black women as less attractive than women of other races and ethnicities. The sense of being undervalued or not admired and pursued by men as a black woman in the United States is what Ms. Valentine and Ms. Weaver are capitalizing on.
“Dating in America as a black woman is like playing musical chairs,” Ms. Williams said. “If there’s 10 people and six chairs, somebody’s going to have to sit on the floor. There aren’t enough black men for black women in America.”
In fact, although interracial marriage has increased for all Americans, black men and women
still marry each other most often; less than 10 percent of black men and 5 percent of black women were married to a spouse of another race in 2010, according to
census data.
Another number often cited in the conversation about black women finding love — and also criticized as misinterpreted — is a number that was popularized in a
2009 ABC News/Nightline broadcast titled “Single, Black, Female,” which said that 42 percent of black women in America have never been married, twice the percentage of white women who have never married.
and then there's Internet Ass Movements
that "Divest/Swirl" talk was literally included
Damn