You know, it’s flattering to be invited to attend screw. You have no idea who the person is, but at least you know his or her suitemates find you attractive. If I remember correctly, this school year I was invited to attend six different screws, ended up attending about three of them, and surprisingly only had one bad experience (you know who you are).

They all followed a similar pattern. The day of or a day before the screw I’d get an invite from a friend or through a suitemate asking if I would go to some screw with some girl. If I could make it, I’d go.

The first one was fun, pretty straight-forward — you know, other than the whole police raid thing. Luckily I managed to avoid getting Rodney King’d, so I declared that night a success. The second one was slightly less exciting, but still a good time. No encounters with Liquor Squad police wielding M4 assault rifles: nice.

I ended up not being able to attend the third one I was invited to, but I decided to go ahead and check out her Facebook profile anyways (you know you would too), just to see what could have been. “Oh, another black girl,” I thought. Oh wait, sorry, I guess I forgot to mention a couple things. I’m an African-American male, and every girl I had been invited to attend screw with this year up to that point was also black.

You see, that’s a bit of a problem.

Why? Because unlike some other black males, I’m not only interested in black girls. I’m not that black guy in every commercial living a happy life with my black wife and two black kids. I’m a bit more, uh, open, then that. So for me, while being invited to anything at all is great, when four out of my six possible screw dates were black, it made me feel a bit boxed in, as if the world believes that a black guy like me should only end up with a black girl. I mean, these numbers would be fine if Yale was actually two-thirds black (imagine that), but it’s not.

But I should be a bit more precise in assigning blame for this. “World,” as much as you love to stuff me in a black box, there are others to blame: the girls themselves. In fact, I found out that in at least half these cases, the black girl specifically asked her suitemates to find her a black guy. Really? I can understand if, maybe for cultural reasons or something, you’d want to end up, perhaps, marrying someone of your same race. But for a college dance? For one night? For one, insignificant experience in your life, it has to be black?

So when I hear about “how hard dating is for black women at Yale,” I tend to think that some of them aren’t exactly using a winning strategy. In other words, you’ve got to learn to play the field. If the 10-15 percent of the Yale male population that you are interested in are open to, let’s say, 70 percent of females, then, surprise surprise, you’re going to have some trouble nailing a mate.

But maybe I should give black girls here some more credit. Out of the the three screws that I was invited to and actually attended, the only one that went poorly was the one for which my date wasn’t black. Funny how that works, huh?

Nnamdi Iregbulem is a sophomore in Davenport College.