The Test

By Nicholas Stix

In January 1994, I went on a date with a biracial social worker (a field I had also worked in) who was 27, if memory serves. Her late Korean mother had met her black American father in Korea, where he was stationed in the Army.

We had a wonderful time. I know it was mutual, because not only did she act like she was enjoying herself, but she stayed out with me for 11 hours on a first date. This lady was no pushover; had she not been enjoying herself, she would have called it quits early. We saw a Chinese-American chick flick with an ensemble cast called The Joy Luck Club, had dinner, and hung out in the Union Square area of Downtown Manhattan.

She was attractive, intelligent, and except for one thing, personable. Although she was estranged from her father, whom she made no bones about disliking, she racially identified entirely with him.

At some point during the afternoon, she gave me an obvious loyalty test. Had I decided to pass it, I likely would have had a pretty good shot at earning her affections. She told a story about a young black man being pulled over by the police just because he was black, and insisted that it was an instance of a universal experience of all young black men.

The problem is, she was lying.

I had the choice between assenting to a lie and possibly getting involved with a very desirable woman—as long as I compartmentalized her racial dishonesty and bullying—and losing out.

The “choice” is an after-the-fact consideration; there was nothing to think about. In eight years in New York City, I’d experienced enough of black racism, black racial privilege, and black racial lies to last a lifetime.

Most men have to make a lot of compromises with the opposite sex, if they don’t want to spend their nights sitting alone in saloons or Dunkin’ Donutses, but lying about race to a race-obsessed woman was too much for me.

A day or two later, when I called her, and she said she didn’t want to go out with me again, she admitted it was because of the test.

She was an “honest dialogue” kind of person; they had a zero tolerance policy towards truthfulness in racial matters then, and have only gotten worse since. As far as my date was concerned, I might as well have used the “N”-word.

(The foregoing is a passage from a much longer essay, “Racial Dialogue in America: The “Racist Rant” That Almost Everyone is Condemning, but Won't Link to”.)