Why Did Mike Tyson Say His Kids Don’t Date Black People?
Short answer: On T.I.'s ExpediTIously podcast, Mike Tyson asked out loud why his children don't date Black people and blamed himself, saying he "didn't set a good example as a Black man." In The Black's hosts say self-blame is only half the story — what actually shapes who your kids find desirable is the environment you raise them in and what you model about Black people at home.
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This is the In The Black podcast. So recently there was a conversation had between T.I. and Mike Tyson. I never thought that I would have an opportunity ever in my life to say that that conversation ever happened, but here we are. A conversation between T.I. and Mike Tyson. And Mike Tyson is asking T.I. why his kids don't like Black kids — or date Black kids. It was both. It was both, because I know he has younger children. And what ended up coming out of that was a very interesting conversation that I think stems from some level of privilege, to be very honest with you, first and foremost.
[Clip] "...my kids don't date black kids. Why is that? Why? Why? Right. Okay. And when you go there, they communicate with the kids. 'Cause my son said that. So, why? You know, they said, 'I don't like it, 'cause I see how my sister act.' I said, 'Whoa, that blew my mind.' I said, 'What? How does your sister act?' ... I'm like, 'What is wrong with you? You don't like her?' You know what I mean? I think that has a lot to do with it. And I'm not in this world. In my world, I'm still different — in my mind, I'm different than them. Well, you are. You are, you know. And my grind was different than theirs."
As we're going through this conversation, once again please make sure you like, share and subscribe and comment down below about your thoughts on T.I. and Mike Tyson's conversation. Now gentlemen, since we've watched this video — honestly, I'm still kind of flabbergasted at the conversation happening at all, but I'm going to let El go ahead and kick it off. What were your thoughts?
Oh wow. All right. You let me start it off. Hey, you should have thought about that better. If you're going to blow it up, let's just blow it up. Whatever's left is left. Podcast might be over after this. I think there were a couple of things that I found incredibly fascinating. I didn't realize how much my head was going to hurt listening to Mike Tyson and T.I. have a conversation together. That was probably the biggest and most challenging component. But they had a conversation about a topic that we have addressed multiple times, that we have unpacked quite a few times — about interracial relationships, right? But I think for this particular conversation, it's larger than that.
Mike Tyson mentioned that he was struggling with his daughter — specifically, he led with his daughter, his daughter being involved in relationships with white men, right? And he began to question himself. He even asks in the video: he sat back and asked himself, was he doing something wrong as the type of Black man that he was? He asked the question, have I been a good example for my daughter? Is that the reason why she avoids dating Black men? And I'm like — are we going to be honest here? My guy, we're not even going to bring up your criminal history, even though I think that plays a large role in this. We're not going to bring up those things. So if we're going to have this conversation about who our children are involved with, whether it's intimately or friendship, and the reason why they choose — you've got to have the full context. You've got to have the whole thing. You've got to have what happens in your home. What are you modeling in your home?
The class component is huge, right? T.I. mentioned a part that I was just like, yeah, I can see where you're coming from, because he was like, "Your kids are going to be going to private schools. They're going to be in affluent areas where white people and other non-Black races are going to frequent." That's a huge component. But I think for me, the way you would combat that — if you were open to combating that — would be what you model in your home. Again, right? Because T.I. went and defeated his own argument by saying, "Yeah, my mother-in-law is white and I love her to death." I'm like, okay, well, you're destroying whatever you're trying to get to. You're wildly on the fence here.
But I think when you have these conversations with your children about this, where you start is how your children typically are going to finish. What you're indwelling and what you're building upon in your family. And building a healthy Blackness in your home doesn't mean anti-anything. It just means that you're putting yourself and your people above everything else. And that can be very difficult to do — very difficult to do when you are in certain tax brackets where we typically do not dwell, or where there's less of us. We even see it with LeBron and his wonderful partner that he's been involved with since he was in high school. He's been involved with the same Black woman, married to her, has Black children — but then his Black children are now dating outside of the race. Interesting. So even while you have that, I think it's a larger, more nuanced conversation that I think we should have more in our community, in our homes, because this is a real thing.
Even within our schools: if you live in poor, poverty-stricken areas, your schools are going to be predominantly one way, and who you socialize with the most often potentially could be who you have your intimate leanings with — unless you have that thing at home that has instilled some level of, I don't even want to say pro-Blackness, but Black pride, where you have a different view on the world that is seen through a Black lens. Doesn't mean that they won't do it. Doesn't mean anything like that. It means that your first option is going to always be home.
Well, I think it's going to be very hard for anybody with good intentions in having this conversation to say that the people that you are around consistently, and that hold a positive viewpoint in your life, you're going to continue or be more swayed to be close to, right? And I think we see it all the time. I have homeboys of mine that grew up in Texas, and we know that the population of white folks in Texas was close to 70% white at the time, right? So I have homeboys now that — all their kids, all they ever dated was white women, simply because in the environments where they were, it was predominantly white. I've always grown up in majority predominantly Black areas. It wasn't until I got to college that the thought of it being "okay" — and I put that in quotations — the thought of it being okay to date outside of my race even became a thing for me.
And I know that there are people that want to make it seem as though having this preference, or being more skewed to date Black, is an anti-white racist narrative. And I don't think that it is. I've heard this on many, many occasions, even from some so-called friends of mine. I think it's okay to have that perspective. I think even from a historical perspective — we don't want to deal with the history, the evil, vile history of Europeans. We don't want to address that. We don't want to address how that evil, vile opinion still resides, and we have the historical evidence and data from that with the rise and prevalence of MAGA. There is a clear indication that there are a number of white people in this country who still hold racist, white supremacist ideology.
And even in that regard — not even just that. If they hold that ideology, there are still a large portion of white people that are apathetic or indifferent to the struggles and to the living situations of people of color and Black people. Wanting your children not to be engaged, as a sort of prevention and a sort of safety, because you don't know — many of these people are hiding in plain sight who they are, and you want to protect your children by not doing that. I as a father teach my kids not to talk to strangers, and I put that in the same category. I'm going to make a wild comment in a second, but I want Crush to go ahead and jump in. Go ahead, Crush.
Yeah. My apologies for coming in a little bit late with my acknowledgement of this, because I heard about this conversation, but I could not help but relate to it personally. I know I may have alluded to it in prior episodes, but as I got older, I began to view certain ends of my family a little differently — especially knowing the history of my home countries of Guyana and Jamaica. And it's ironic that we point out that environment most likely molded the tastes of these children. Ironically enough, I went to a predominantly white Catholic school in elementary or middle school. But my first crush was a Haitian girl, you know. I never — I don't know what it was. Maybe it was probably a sentiment that was reinforced at home subtly. Of course, I may have regarded a white girl too as attractive, but my taste always leaned towards Black women.
And while other members of my family seemed to be more comfortable in predominantly white spaces throughout their personal journey, and other parts of my family seemed to reinforce an idea, or reinforce a certain taste in certain kinds of women — more than once — it was hard not to notice after a while. And conversations have been had about the taint of colonialism. Say that one more time, bro. Say that one more time. There have been conversations about the taint of colonialism and what it has done to the mentalities and psyches of generations of indigenous people, basically.
I hate to go way back, but I'll never forget that my dad told me about how their mother did not raise them with any pride in Guyana. She raised them to leave. Why? Because her skin color was not by choice, you know — and how she knew the choices her children would have to make trying to live and have lives in Guyana would be nothing compared to what they get in the States.
Listen, my guy — and I know that Crush can relate to this, given that we're both children of the third world, right? This is not to say that a large part of what we've already stated — that clearly class plays a large part in this, and class is a large enabler of the environment that is reinforcing very specific ideas and images in those children's heads in terms of what wealth looks like, in terms of what comfortability looks like. We need to make sure that we're clear that when we're talking about class, we're talking specifically about class and its status here in the United States, right? Because there is an upper class that exists in Nigeria. Yeah. I mean, Guyana, too. Same thing. And that's what I'm saying. So those things and those people are more likely to be of the same color. So then you have to ask yourself: what is it that ties this desire to be so close in proximity to whiteness all the time?
I think that it is unfortunate. It is ragingly unfortunate, and we don't talk about it very often, to be honest with you. But there is a love of white people that exists — I'll say in Nigeria specifically, just so I don't alienate anyone else; I'll alienate myself — a love of white people in Nigeria that is crazy. And I think the same premise applies when you go to places like India. If you are dating a white person, married to a white person, in many circles you've made it. You got you a good white man. You got you a good white woman. And heavens forbid if that white person speaks the language too — you might as well have Jesus walking on water, the way they feel about these white people.
And it's an unfortunate battle, because I've always grown up, at least in my household, being taught to be proud of this — being proud of this because there's so many people that don't want you to be. And that's not to say that you shouldn't have your preferences. Okay? But I don't want you to make it seem as though your preference supersedes mine. And if I want to raise my children in a way that they should see that anytime they see a Black woman or a Black man, their first thought is not revulsion —
One of my favorite fighters in the whole world, Mighty Mouse, Demetrious Johnson, was on a podcast recently where they were asking him about the fact that he's dated white women. He ultimately married a white woman. And I've always respected him, because he really came up from the mud. And to hear this man disparage Black women as his reason for dating white women and marrying white women sent me up the wall.
But these people of African descent, men and women, who get involved in interracial relationships and begin disparaging their race of origin — and I'm not defending it, I'm trying to point to the picture — they almost have to say that they find something negative about their race of origin, because what they can't do is just say: this is my preference. This is just my like. This is just my kink. This is just my fetish. Nobody wants to acknowledge that part, right? That's the underlying thing. We don't even want to acknowledge that in our intra-racial relationships. Like, yo, I really like you just because your legs are this way, or you do that. We don't even want to acknowledge our kinks and fetishes on a normal everyday level. So if we're going to acknowledge them on a racial level...
Real quick, just to bring it back to the video, to the comments: Tyson was then talking about his son, and how his son said that he didn't like Black women because of the image of his sister. He's like, I thought your sister is awesome, your sister's incredible — why don't you like her? And it's that aggressive, standoffish, confrontational — all these negative things, all the time. Whenever we hear about people who don't choose Black women and they choose outside, or don't choose Black men, it's because they're lazy. It's all of the white supremacist, colonized-mind stereotypes and talking points that we hear. So when I hear people say that it's because of those things, I'm automatically going: oh, you're still riding with a colonized mind.
What Mike Tyson actually said to T.I.
The exchange came from T.I.'s ExpediTIously podcast, where Tyson turned the question on himself: "Why my kids don't like black kids? They don't date black kids. Why is that?" He said that when he sees his daughter drawn to white men, he thinks, "I didn't set a good example as a black man." He added that his children "must have seen me sometimes when I was vulnerable" and decided they didn't want anyone like that. In the episode, Big O also flags the part that stopped him cold: Tyson's son said he didn't like Black girls because of how he saw his own sister behave.
The clip keeps resurfacing years later, and it keeps landing, because a lot of Black families have some version of that conversation and never say it out loud.
Tyson asked the right question — then stopped one step short
Big El gives Tyson credit for asking it at all. But "was I a good example?" is a question with a context, and Tyson's is public record: a 1992 rape conviction, prison time, and decades of documented volatility that he has spoken about himself. The hosts aren't interested in relitigating his past. Their point is narrower and harder: you can't ask why your children flinch at Blackness without looking at what Blackness looked like inside your own house. Kids build their template from what they watch every day, not from what they're told on the way out the door.
Class and zip code quietly set the dating pool
T.I. made the argument the panel thought was strongest — that kids in private schools and affluent neighborhoods are going to be surrounded by white and other non-Black peers, and proximity does a lot of the work. The hosts' own lives back it up. Krush went to a predominantly white Catholic school. Big O grew up in majority-Black spaces and says dating outside his race didn't register as an option until college. One host described friends raised in a Texas that was close to 70% white at the time; their kids only ever dated white women, and nobody in the family experienced that as a statement about anything.
But environment isn't destiny, and the hosts note that T.I. undercut his own point when he mentioned loving his white mother-in-law. Environment sets the odds. Home sets the lens.
This isn't only an American story
Krush, whose family roots run through Guyana and Jamaica, described relatives raised to leave — a grandmother who deliberately did not raise her children with pride in the country they came from, because she knew what their skin color would cost them there. Big O named the same pattern in Nigeria and pointed to India, where in plenty of circles marrying a white partner still reads as having made it. The hosts call this the long tail of colonialism: a status hierarchy that outlived the empires that built it. Naming it isn't an attack on anyone's marriage. It's asking where the ranking came from.
Preference is fine. The reasoning underneath it often isn't.
This is where the show draws its line, and it's a sharp one. Nobody on the panel argued that Black people shouldn't date whoever they want. What set them off is a specific pattern: people who date or marry outside the race and then justify it by running down the race they came from. Big O brought up a fighter he genuinely admires, Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson, and how hearing him explain his choice by disparaging Black women landed like a betrayal.
The hosts' theory is that "this is just my preference" feels too naked to say out loud, so a taste gets upgraded into a verdict — and the verdicts almost always arrive in the same borrowed vocabulary: loud, aggressive, confrontational, lazy. When Big O hears that list, he isn't hearing a preference. He's hearing stereotypes that were handed to somebody and never examined. It's the same proximity-to-whiteness logic the show has unpacked before.
What "healthy Blackness at home" actually means
The hosts are careful about this part. Building Black pride in your house isn't anti-anybody. It means your children's first option is home — that when they see a Black man or a Black woman, the first reaction isn't revulsion. They may still date outside the race, and that was never the metric. The metric is whether they were taught to see their own people clearly before the world got to teach them otherwise. That's the same question the show asks in "Some Black People Want To Be White — Do You Want To Be Free?", and it's why what happens at the dinner table matters as much as how we discipline our kids.
That's the uncomfortable part of Tyson's question. He asked why his kids don't date Black people. The better question is what they were shown about Black people — by whom, and for how long.
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