Dear Black Women, Let Travis Kelce Go

This week, news of Kansas City (I don’t know if it is the one in Missouri or Kansas) Chiefs football star and once bad b-tch collector Travis Kelce stepping out and publicly dating the one and only rhythmically challenged but lyrically gifted, super polluter, Taylor Swift and Black Twitter lost its sh-t—and ladies I’m frankly disappointed. 

So many Black women picked up their phones, wiped away their saddest tears, unlocked those same phones with their scrunched-up faces, pressed the X app, just to complain that a once fine, swagged out, fade-wearing white man was doing the unspeakable; he was dating a white woman, and not just any white woman, thee Taylor Swift.

So maybe it was his new appearance that really bothered the ladies, or maybe they felt that Travis donned Blackness just to get with Black women and then did a Miley Cyrus and went right back. Either way, it was super ridiculous for a Black woman or anyone for that matter, to get upset that a white man and white woman are touching down in the sheets, especially a rich white man and a much, much, much richer white woman. If anything, I respect this decision. Travis Kelce has a history of dating multiple Black(ish) women; if that is all that he dated, wouldn’t that border on fetishism?

Would it not be just as unusual for him to not date a white woman as it would be for Black men to not date Black women?

Now, I will concur that since he started dating Taylor, he went from looking like “I date Black women,” to “I arrest Black men,” with just a few sharp turns of a razor, as well as now wearing some new clothes that are just as baggy but now seem to have an ill fit, but at the end of the day, Travis Kelce does not owe Black women—especially those he does not know—a damn thing.

I get it.

Statistically, it is hard being a Black woman on so many levels, and one of them being dating, where Black women are the least likely chosen on dating apps, but that does not mean that every time a good looking (sometimes it doesn’t even matter to some of us, side eye) white guy looks our way we have to roll out the red carpet for his arrival to the cookout. I am by no means against interracial dating. That would be hypocritical of me, but it feels like too many times when people date outside of their race (specifically with white people), they are subconsciously seeking white validation. For a demographic that has been othered so many times for our looks while simultaneously having that look copied, it can be validating having a handsome, rich white man, who essentially can have any woman he wants, think that Black women are beautiful but Black beauty should not be using white people to validate how beautiful it is.

Travis does not owe Black women anything; he is not a Black man, and just as some non-Black people do, he cosplayed Black cool while it suited him and went on back to his roots, sans Alex Haley. He is now dating one of the richest entertainers in the world, and who can really blame him?

Hell, he is dating Taylor Swift, so who knows how long it will really last, but they seem to be enjoying each other’s space, and Taylor looks like she wrote his name in hers.