You won't often see Czech men dating African women in this town. Since I've been living here, I've seen it perhaps once or twice, and even then you couldn't be certain the man at her side was Czech merely because he was Caucasian. The most popular interracial pairings seem to be Czech women with African men.

Lately, I've been thinking about the psychology behind all this, so I'm committing my ideas to screen tonight.

Perhaps the most superficial explanation I can muster for why this phenomenon exists has to do more with the Czech woman than her black partner. It is the village girl's deep desire to want to put her overbearing and old-fashioned post-Communist parents in their place that forms the biggest incentive for her interracial pairing. Imagine the coronary the family must have suffered from once she reveals she's dating an African, an enticing prospect indeed for a young girl from the Czech sticks. The girl somehow wishes to prove to her parents that she has total control over at least something in her lowly life, living in an insignificant Middle European nation which possesses no European executive power. All this must deliver to her such an explosive surge of personal power, that her resistance crumbles. If the "relationship" survives this initial rupture to the familial harmony, it will eventually become about mutual admiration.

Where did they meet? How did they meet? Why do they wish to remain together? For which ultimate purpose? These questions cascade one after the other.

Their pairing flies in the face of every single convention that has ruled this society like an iron fist for centuries. Along come these two idealists who catch rural Czech society unawares. Their bold decision to be together against all odds is a cold slap in face, the gauntlet thrown.

For the African man -- if he is a traditionalist -- his bride will form a part of his extended African family. Unless she is merely his plaything, an airy woman with whom he can sexual do with what he will, fulfilling his desire to be king over his own narrow domain of influence, then a time will come when he shall invite his bride back to his homeland. Due introductions will in turn be made to his family (again with the respective hues and cries), and at some stage -- if this Czech woman is ultimately accepted into his family's fold -- discussions will soon be held regarding the couple's plans to wed and have children.

If she is serious about having a future with her African, there are many things she must consider. It will require a considerable degree of selfless empathy and a sort of human compassion for the other which I don't see growing on trees around these parts. For that reason, I can't see too many Czech girls taking this ride to the end.

I'm not saying there haven't been a few Czech anthropological success stories out there. I'm merely saying that there hasn't been enough of a societal baseline. Not nearly enough time has passed for black people to become silent features of Prague society for this to be acceptable, and it will take a strong bond of love and affection for these two to get over the hump of traditional Czech racism. Believe me, few Czech women have analyzed it this way.

So if such a pairing is not ultimately consummated, what then are the true intentions of a Czech woman and an African man being together? In choosing to profess the existence of their relationship to the entire world?

I posit that it is mostly erotic. While it is indeed possible to combine the best of all worlds -- great sexual chemistry, stimulating conversation, and a wonderful family life -- it is certainly not the norm. A Czech woman and an African man taking the bold plunge to go public about their tryst are indeed taking a considerable risk.

Thankfully, Prague is not a violent city. The African man will not suffer a beating at the hand of Prague's delicate male lemmings, though I cannot vouch similarly for other towns across the Czech Republic where unemployment is rife and Czechs are in search of the nearest scapegoat. A black man and a Czech woman walking on Prague's streets will merely garner stares, though even the incidence of these aren't as frequent as they once were five years ago. What most people are not saying, however, is similar to what I've just outlined here -- that their "relationship" is a facade for what is essentially a sexual coming together of mutual convenience.

Douh, himself, has been involved in one these relationships for a while. He freely tells me about the times his lady friend causes him extreme mental anguish -- still ongoing as of the date of this writing. I've met this Simona of his in passing. To me, she doesn't seem worldly in the least. She doesn't speak English. While she might have quite a bit to say, she's bashful and untalkative in public. As first impressions go, she is decidedly unremarkable.

Yet what is not expressed, though entirely understood, is that her fawning nature is compensated for behind closed doors. She plays tyrant to Douh's smooth operator.

I'm not judging Douh for being with someone like her, someone so seemingly meek and unassuming, though manipulative in ways unimaginable in private. Everyone needs a companion, and sometimes even the most miserable company is better than going bone dry in the sack. That Simona doesn't offer more beyond the sexual realm is no surprise, but this only proves my theory.

So will the residual effects be of having more black-on-white matchings on Prague's streets? Will Czech society be affected positively, or will it have a reverse effect than the one these various dreamers, afflicted with "jungle fever," envision?

For answers to these questions we turn to the example of the more established democracies like the UK, Canada, and the US. There, interracial pairing has become a more routine occurrence. In my native Toronto, for instance, there is no longer anything outstanding about interracial couplings. It's just not revolutionary anymore.

Can the Czech Republic learn from these Western exemplars? No yet, I believe. Not until a black can receive a fair shake in this town.

At the end of the day, Prague remains a white polis. It's not even a town where a black person can enjoy a due measure of freedom of action or expression because Czechs fully expect "their" blacks to keep their places in society, to tow the firmly scrawled racial line. Since Africans are here at the behest of a tolerant Czech majority, which is willing to tolerate the faintest of black trickles in their country provided they do not settle for the long-term, Africans must behave themselves.

A mimicry of Western Europe's "multi-culti" society? That, alas, is something Czechs are today unwilling to stomach, Heaven Forbid. Blacks in their capital are okay up to a point, though it has not been determined what that critical mass is since there has yet to be a backlash against them.

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Czechs girls dig black men because they're different. They enjoy black mates because they don't behave like Czech men, nor do they possess the same basic anatomy. Black men approach the male-female dynamic in a way which makes being with one a forbidden and dangerous game.

I have often challenged such Czech girls with my views, and the responses I've received have been as I expected: pithy and piddling.

I've heard things said like: "I like how a black man looks against my skin," while I've never heard such a girl tell me of the tremendous respect she has for his academic background, or for his views about family. You hear about the delights to be found within the folds of the Egyptian cotton sheets, but never about the fact that he's well-read, linguistically-gifted, or that he's a wonderful father to his children from a previous marriage.

Another salient feature is that none of the Czech women I've spoken to in interracial relationships have been from urban, university educated backgrounds. None of them were well-employed, either, save for one older Czech woman who spent her young exile years outside of Czechoslovakia, only to return to this country with her African-American spouse following Wall Fall. Naturally, this brings into doubt which parts are more "African" about her African-American mate, but my example still holds.

For all the women who hail from the Czech countryside, where the men on offer are either country bumpkins or rabid misogynist swine which these girls would be otherwise compelled to marry from an early age, being with an African partner allows them to rebel. It is their first brave step along a journey which will take them away from a horrific home, and likely not their last.

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If the onset of more black-on-white relationships in the Czech Republic does not progress beyond the sexual curiosity stage, a more multiracial Czech country will in fact have a deleterious rather than a harmonizing effect. If Africans ever expect to become a fixture of Czech society -- and they must if the Czech Republic wishes to become a full partner in the European unity experiment -- they cannot remain the playthings of iconoclastic Czech girls. They cannot only be the objects of featherbrained Czech debutantes keen on enjoying an exotic no-strings-attached fling in the absence of a keener understanding of all the ramifications involved; and as you've just read, there are several to consider.

Mere carnal satisfaction is not the promise of immigration and integration for this rapidly diminishing population. Not at all.

But will Czech girls ever learn? Perhaps once their curiosities run out.

That time, however, is still a long way off.

(excerpted from A Sad and Tragic Tale of Mister Douh, by Adam Daniel Mezei)