Loves Not Color Blind – Kevin A Patterson

Of course, I’d never suggest dating people as a social experiment. In fact…don’t. Don’t do that. What you can and should do is promote inclusive environments in your polyamory community. Go to events and conferences that center underrepresented voices. You should seek out diverse groupings in your hobbies and special interests.

You should make friends. Find common ground with people who don’t look like you or don’t live like you. Normalize variety in your everyday life. The rest takes care of itself. Polyamory has a built-in feature of bringing people together. Through interconnected romances, friendships, sexual dalliances, and any combinations therein, we have the ability to easily stretch outside of our comfort zones. People who might’ve existed forever outside of our social circles often end up as metamours or as friendly faces at our local meetups. Don’t lose the opportunity to learn more about others and ultimately about yourself.

“I grew up in a white neighborhood. I moved there when I was in 4th grade. So, I went from a relatively mixed community in Alabama to a majority-white suburb of Houston, Texas. So, I was oftentimes the only black person that a white person had met in real life. All of their interactions with black people were based on television and, at that time, portrayals of blacks weren’t very positive.

As far as popular media, there was The Cosby Show and that was pretty much it. It was pretty isolating. So, growing up as a kid, you’re looking to find people you identify with. For me, I didn’t really see that. What I remember very clearly, was watching cartoons after school and on Saturday mornings. You’d see all of these superheroes and other characters and the vast majority of them were white.

Mostly white males and occasionally white females. I’d immediately gravitate towards the few black characters that you had. Doc and Roadblock from G.I. Joe or all of those black characters that Cree Summer voiced. It was to the point where I had to attribute blackness to characters that weren’t explicitly so. Characters that weren’t even human, but were a little off-color or a little darker or had a little bass in their voices became black.

Good examples were Panthro from ThunderCats, Blaster, Jazz, and Optimus Prime from The Transformers, even Papa Smurf. These were characters that I could identify with. They were ambiguous enough that I claimed them. I wasn’t given the representation, I just had to create it for myself.

Love’s Not Color Blind Race and Representation in Polyamorous and Other Alternative Communities Copyright ©2018 by Kevin A. Patterson Foreword copyright ©2018 by Ruby Bouie Johnson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Thorntree Press, LLC P.O. Box 301231 Portland, OR 97294 [email protected] Cover design by Wolf McFarlane and Franklin Veaux Interior design by Jeff Werner Editing by Tonya Martin Proofreading by Roma Ilnyckyj Library of Congress Cataloging-​In-​Publication Data is available for this title. Digital edition version 1.0 OceanofPDF.com DEDICATION This book is dedicated to my children. All I can teach you is how to freely be yourselves. From what I’ve seen of you, that should be enough. OceanofPDF.com FOREWORD I met Kevin Patterson’s reputation before I met Kevin Patterson the person.

Others described Kevin as an amazing leader and powerful force of nature. In the six to nine months that preceded our official introduction, I was peppered with: “Do you know Kevin Patterson?” “Have you talked to Kevin Patterson?” “You need to talk to Kevin Patterson.” Over the course of those months, my activism, involvement, and criticisms of the polyamorous community became well known.

As a black woman, my criticisms and concerns are similar to those that Kevin discusses in his pioneering inaugural book, Love’s Not Color Blind. The more vocal I became about my concerns, the more assertive folks became about me speaking with Mr. Patterson. As I write this foreword, I recall my initial thoughts of the insistence that I meet Kevin. Though Kevin and I are active in the polyamorous communities, personally, my focus is therapy and education. So, I was perplexed, yet intrigued by where and how we could connect.

My first meaningful interaction came about as the result of a colleague recommending that I complete an interview for Poly Role Models. Unbeknownst to me, Kevin founded and curates Poly Role Models. The interview consisted of me answering questions about my journey and my experience as a black polyamorous person. Briefly, I was introduced to polyamory in 2012. Since 2012, my relationship with myself and my relationships with others have become more rich and intimate.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: cdaef7bcd3b6fdf6
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,919,147 bytes (1.83 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 137
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 233.4 minutes
• Total Words: 46,680
• Total Characters: 275,930
• Average Words per Page: 340.73
• Average Characters per Page: 2014.09

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