• Lamine Yemal's girlfriend sparked discussion on the topic after recent Euros
Image: PIXABAY
While headlines all over the world covered the Spanish team win at the Uefa Euro 2024 championship and England splattered their front pages with photos of the one black guy on the team as they recounted their team's loss, the headlines on the socials focused on one thing:
Lamine Yemal's girlfriend.
The Spanish team junior has had a fantastic rise in the football leagues, playing with legends at his tender age of 17 and even going as far as being the youngest goal scorer at the Euros. With such phenomenal statistics for the young footballer, all everyone wanted to talk about after the finals was how he made the official debut with his girlfriend at the finale.
A social media influencer herself, Alex Padilla is, of course, a Spanish girl a few years older than Yamal. Given that Yamal was born and raised in Spain, the chances of him dating a Spanish woman are overwhelming. However, Yamal is of African descent born from a Moroccan father and an Equatorial Guinea mother.
Given Yamal's special circumstances, people still couldn't help but have the age-old discussion: Why do successful black men always seem to find love in white women?
This question has been discussed for many years and, of course, there is no concrete answer. Love, after all, knows no bounds. Love should transcend race, ethnicity and all barriers.
The question still haunts us, though. Black athletes (especially), even those from Africa and the Caribbean, almost always seem to find love in white women after their success. Those who grew up in the hood and played basketball in the park only date white or light-skinned women when they sign their NBA drafts.
It seems almost petty to have this discussion, but one can't help but wonder, aren't darker women part of the success picture? Look at the black men in the NFL, NBA, Fifa and top celebrities from all over the world, many of them have wives from a different race.
Recently, a holiday picture taken by the wives and girlfriends (WAGs) of the Philadelphia Eagles trended on TikTok as people compared the photo of the women who were all white except one black woman against an actual team photo of the players. As a shock to no one, the team was made up of almost 97 per cent black men. According to the rumour mill, the one black lady in the photo was the girlfriend of a white player.
Don't get me wrong, love is a beautiful thing and I encourage intermarriage as much as the next person. In fact, I, too, am a product of multiple generations of intermarrying. I have always imagined if I ever take one of those DNA tests, I would probably get results of DNA strands from each continent.
However, I do believe that the probability of all the famous, successful black men only finding love in white or light-skinned women is not as high as we are made to believe.
We can blame the ideology set by the colonialists and slavers that white was always seen as the superior race. Over time, many came to acknowledge marrying white women as a picture of success. To date, even in our rural areas, when one of the young men finds himself a ka-nice mzunguu, he will be celebrated as though he has made more of an achievement than his peers who marry local women.
Intermarriage is a great thing. In fact, it is what we need to help Miss Universe achieve world peace. But, associating success and perfection with a race or ethnicity or skin colour is a dangerous thing. The young boys are watching and will continue falling in this vicious cycle of choosing from one group just because they are made to belive that a man who has made it must look a certain way and be with a certain type of woman.