You just never know where life will take you, man. My name is Steve Seraphin. A big and tall Black man of Haitian descent living in the city of Nepean, Province of Ontario. And I am a Black guy who kind of had some racist tendencies. For the longest time. Now I want to be better. I want to open my heart and see people as people rather than lump them into categories. Yes, Black folks can have racist tendencies too. It happens. I have issues with White folks, man. Most specifically White women. I feel they think of themselves as overly entitled and they're arrogant and I find them fake. I guess I forgot to see White women as individuals rather than just a group. And that's a bigoted thing to do regardless of race.
You simply can't lump people into one group. No two individuals on this planet are exactly the same regardless of factors like race, genetics, geography, wealth, religion, personal interests, education or sexual orientation. People are people. The same way there are White chicks in Canada who are arrogant, there are some White Canadian women who are nice. Just like some Black Canadian folks are mean and many Black Canadian folks are nice. We're individuals, all of us. I still consider the Black woman to be my standard of beauty. I used to mock those Black guys out there I saw with White chicks. Until I had a change of heart.
I enrolled at Carleton University, wanting to get a degree and get a better life for myself. I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, prior to moving to Ontario in Canada. Lots of Black men in North America have access to higher education but they don't really apply themselves so they don't become anything worthwhile. I want to be a police officer someday. I'm a permanent resident of Canada now and someday soon I will be a Canadian citizen. When that happens, I'll go to the police academy and get trained to become a police officer. It's my dream. My father Antoine Seraphin is a police officer in the city of Cap-Haitien in my native Republic of Haiti. I want to follow in his example.
I experienced a lot of culture shock when I first came to Canada. The Black women of Canada are beautiful but just like the Black women of America, they prefer Black guys who are thugs, hustlers and wannabe jocks to hard-working, educated Black men. Most Black women I know claim to want a decent Black man but they go after all the bad guys and leave us decent Black men unloved and lonely. If you're a Black male who wants to be invisible to Black women, all you have to go is get a job, go to school and stay out of trouble. If you do those things, Black women will never notice you exist. If you're a thug, then you become irresistible to them. Could someone explain that one to me?
I went to a Black church in the hopes of meeting Black women. The church has about three hundred members. Sixty percent of the membership is female and between the ages of twenty and forty. As a twenty-something young Black man, I liked those odds. I thought I would meet a beautiful young Black woman to date. And I noticed many beautiful Black women. Folks, I am really fond of Black ladies. I sing their praises. I wear a "Black Girls Rock" T-shirt. My bedroom wall is littered with pictures of Black female celebrities like Serena Williams, Gabrielle Union, Lisa Leslie and many more. Yet Black women never seem to notice me. I'm always polite and friendly to them. I'm always a gentleman. I'm generous and courteous. I always give up my seat for a Black lady on the bus. I thought doing these things would make Black women notice me. Yet they never noticed that I existed. I'm a six-foot-four Black male. Invisible is not something I'm supposed to feel in Canada. I stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. The only people who don't notice me are Black women.
