A few things that happen in the film: a violation of sexual boundaries involving an electric toothbrush, wanton keying of limousines, smelly situations at customs, a French nudist captivates a bored American doctor, the children decide they want to be a dead princess and a dead bunny for Halloween, stoned shenanigans in the co-op elevator, and Marion sells her soul, which results in a minor brawl.

And did I mention a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama is a major character?

Delpy, who wrote and directed the film, makes the most out of the short screentime cramming in as much commentary on family life and the art world as she possibly can. A follow-up to 2 Days in Paris, Delpy balances the pace of her city subjects with the quiet calamity of modern life. The film spins so fast that in the middle of the madness, it takes more than half of the movie before I realize 2 Days in New York has managed to pull off an amazing depiction on an interracial relationship. Race is not the most important thing between Marion and Mingus, and it certainly isn’t their primary conflict throughout the film. Instead, where race intersects with their lives is subtle.

If race is blatantly brought up as part of the plot, it is often played for cringe-inducing laughs. Manu, Marion’s former flame who is currently dating her sister Rose, is a one-stop shop for racial ignorance posing as innocence. He tries to curry favor with Mingus’ sister Elizabeth (Malinda Williams) by saying she looks “just like Beyonce, only sexier.” Chagrined at finding out that Mingus doesn’t smoke weed, he off-handley remarks that Marion “found the only black guy in New York that doesn’t smoke.” And when Mingus’ friend from the Obama Administration comes to town, Mingus is mortified when Manu starts randomly calling him “Kumar.” (This friend was not played by Kal Penn.) Luckily, after a day or so, Manu is deported for lighting up in front of a police station.

2 Days in New York is a fun romp, with a strange, but satisfying ending that proves that love (mostly) conquers all.

 Seung had been told, all his life, more or less, that he was not allowed to marry someone like me.

Pronunciation aside, it hadn’t occurred to me that Seung and I made a mismatched couple. Mixed-race yes, but I couldn’t fathom that my race could make me the “wrong kind of girl” for anyone.

Yes, it was white privilege that blinded me to the fact I might be the bottom of the barrel on someone else’s race card.

Perhaps even more so because I have been listening to the dialogue about how to make America more post-racial — mostly as it pertains to black and white culture — for so long that it never occurred to me that an Asian immigrant family might cry foul when their son fell in love with an all-American girl like me. [...]

This man I had woken up with earlier in the day now seemed like a stranger to me. Specifically, he seemed like someone of another culture that I didn’t know or understand. Which was in fact true, because as much as we had in common, I was completely unaware of what it meant to grow up Asian-American — both in his home and in the outside world. [...]

Using my words, gently and respectfully, in many, many, many subsequent conversations about how I felt did in fact lead Seung Yong and I to marry — with the full support of all our parents.

But it was only through continuous dialogue — at the dinner table with friends who could advise us, and using calm voices in the bedroom with one another, and keeping an open mind on the couch at the therapist’s office — that we were able to find a way to make our familial cultures meet in the middle at our mutual American one.

 

—“His parents said, ‘Not with a white girl’,” Dianne Farr writing for CNN’s Defining America series

(Image Credit: CNN)

(Thanks to reader Mickey for the tip!)

Is it more realistic to paint a world where interracial relationships don’t matter at all, or one where race is just one of many issues?

In most projects that make it to both the large and small screen race is either the largest issue for the couple being portrayed, or it isn’t mentioned at all. Two new shows spent the summer season exploring the tangled world of race and relationships: but where VH1′s Single Ladies chose a racially aware way to present interracial relationships, Love Bites chose intentional color blindness…which ultimately reverted into the usual predominantly white cast with the occasional PoC best friends (and one foray with Donald Faizon).

Worst, all of the turmoil kind of undermined the originality of the idea – to have an anthology style show on love and relationships featuring a rotating cast of characters. I think, with proper execution, the idea could have come off well – quite a few of the bits were really funny. And, overall, the series managed to consistently insert the cute “awww” moments, which are normally the reason people trek to the multiplex to watch yet another romcom. But one of the things that noticeably declined as the show went on was the diversity of the cast and crew. The earlier shows had Faizon as a player being taught a lesson, and an interracial gay couple working through problems, Lindsay Price as a woman trying to balance her vibrator and her husband, along with some other random friends of color. As the show slowly came to revolve around one couple and their friends and family, the diversity also quietly left, with the occasional best friend appearance or one night stand of color.

On that last one, we have a cringe worthy moment involving race, where a guy named Tommy tells his one night stand Stephanie not to worry about her father’s heart attack because “blacks die of more heart attacks than Latinos.” He then takes a call from his friends who asked if he banged “a Latino.” Discussion ensues over whether “Latino” or “Latina” was the correct term. (Stephanie sits in the car, aghast at the whole exchange – later he tells her she took the fun out of “fiery Latina.”) Yet she’s the one who ends up apologizing and they end up together. So love conquers casual racism? The whole thing felt weird.

The show probably won’t continue, but it would be interesting to see who made the dialogue decisions on the interracial relationship pieces. The show slid from non acknowledgment to ham-fisted stereotype trading, without much rhyme or reason.

Meanwhile, Over on VH1, Single Ladies is holding down their Monday night block.

Showrunner Stacy A. Littlejohn talks about the creation of the show and where the inspiration for the show came from.

The gamble has paid off – Single Ladies averages 3 million viewers a show and has been renewed for a second season. Apparently a lot of women were interested in the dating adventures of Val (Stacy Dash), Keisha (LisaRaye), and April (Charity Shea). Interestingly, the Single Ladies approach to interracial dating veers away from the norm in a couple of ways. First, and foremost, there hasn’t been one of those “very special moments on race,” that we’ve all come to loathe. Instead, April’s relationships with black men (and Val’s dalliances with white men) are presented as part of their overall dating landscape. The opportunity arises – they take it. Their friends have jokes – but they have jokes about everyone. (Val’s relationship with a younger white guy was joke fodder, not because of his whiteness, but his youth and overenthusiasm.) The show focuses on a multiracial view of Atlanta – and if the recent developments in the love life of Omar (Travis Winfrey) are any indication, Single Ladies may widen it’s scope to look at queer Atlanta as well.

Here is Winfrey’s perspective on playing a gay man who “isn’t playing a gay guy:”

So it will be interesting if they decide to explore Omar’s inner life – particularly if Wilson Cruz (famously Rickie Vasquez on My So Called Life) continues as his polyamorous love interest.

—

Also, random Star Trek fans shout out:

Of course, I could talk to author/activist Tim Wise about 5,000 things all day long; he’s a fascinating conversationalist.  I even asked him a question on my mom’s behalf about the Tea Party.  (I relayed his response to her.)  We flowed from the problems of  “colorblind” rhetoric as social/political policy to what we do at the R, pop culture…including the politics of porn.

Andrea Plaid: Let’s talk about addressing race and racism on TV, with the discussion about Mad Men and how it does or doesn’t do that.  What do you notice about how race and racism is addressed on TV, especially on shows that take place in contemporary times, like The Cosby Show, Friends, and Grey’s Anatomy?

Tim Wise: Mad Men, from what I understand, is a fairly realistic portrayal of that time. The question is, Why do people love [the show] so much, why do they so enjoy a period piece like this one, which portrays a slice of life, and a period where people of color aren’t present? That’s interesting to me sociologically.  But my question is not about Mad Men so much, as it is about other shows like Friends, which is in the contemporary period in New York, and yet there are no people of color around, or Grey’s Anatomy or the Cosby Show, where we can have representations of folks of color, and “race,” but rarely if ever deal with racism per se. So, they can have the occasional, or even central characters of color in the case of Grey’s or Cosby, but it’s as if these people never deal with racism in their lives. It’s not that every episode needs to be about race, but when virtually NO episodes are, that’s unrealistic. I mean, even a show my kids watch, in re-runs, That’s So Raven (with former Cosby star Raven Symone) had an episode about racism: a really good one in fact. If they could do it, why can’t these shows for adults do it?

AP: The flip of that is how working-class and poor whites are portrayed as a group of people others can feel free to turn their noses at due to their outspoken bigotry and/or their impoverished lives.  Latest case in point: Arlene and Sam Merlotte’s family, the Mickens, on True Blood.  Your thoughts?

TW: Well, there’s a long history of portraying bigots as backwoods “trash” or whatever, because it allows the hip, urbane TV viewer to assume an outsider stance, where we can say “oh, thank God I don’t know people like that!” Or, “I’m not like that.” It’s why whenever one of the talk shows, like Jerry Springer or whatever would have on a racist family, it would always be some family from rural Georgia or whatever, missing teeth, mispronouncing words, or whatever. But of course, people can be elites and incredibly racist, without slurs, without bad dentition, without any overt signs of bigotry, because they have the power to do their stuff in private: old boy’s networks for hiring and contracts, zoning laws that restrict where people can live and where they can’t, etc.

AP: In light of the Ciara/Justin Timberlake post I did a while back–and now the controversy with Montana Fishburne–let’s talk about race and sex and the “ewwwws” that seem to arise with quite a few of these discussions, especially when images involve portrayals of sexualized/romantic interracial interactions.  What’s going on, in your opinion?

TW: [I think what's going on is] that there are valid questions about how are the images are being received in a racialized society.  There’s a fear, and it’s understandable, of women of color being seen by people as a sexual stereotype. So this is why the scene in Monster’s Ball several years ago — for which film Halle Barry won the Oscar — was problematic. Not only was it an aggressive scene in which the line between consent and resistance wasn’t clear at all, but it was, in the eyes of many people, a scene that triggered any number of real emotional memories of a whole history of white male aggression towards black women, and the sexualization of black women. I think folks of color are understandably concerned about the way men and women of color are portrayed, sexually, and in relation to whites, because the imagery is so fraught with historical baggage. For whites, I think racism of course still animates the resistance to certain scenes of that nature, or videos like the Ciara/Justin Timberlake example, and especially when the pairing is white/black. No doubt about that. Interestingly, of course, whites have constructed an entirely different set of assumptions about interracial relationships and sex when the pairing is, say, white and Asian, In that case, the sexualization of Asian women, in particular, as passive, ends up playing into any number of distorted sexual fantasies, which are both rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy.

The bottom line is that racism and the history of racism always complicates interracial connections, be they friendships or romantic relationships. Folks who have been in interracial relationships for twenty years will tell you that: that nothing is as simple and straightforward as just, “oh, we love each other,” ya know? There’s always this other layer there, which both partners have to deal with in order to work through the hard times that all couples have. If a couple is having a fight and one partner is white and the other one is black, I’ve heard story after story of how both partners are wondering, “Is this the time,” ya know, when race is going to come into this fight? Is my partner thinking about this conflict racially? That kind of thing. It’s real

AP: Speaking of sexualized interracial interactions, we touched a bit on the economics of interracial porn.  You said that the genre itself “exploded,” but the “wealth isn’t being shared” and who’s “calling the shots and has access” are skewed.  Would you like to expound on that?

TW: There’s a lot to unpack here. Why the genre has become so much more popular in recent years, which it has, is a phenomenon I couldn’t begin to explain, sociologically or psychologically. The same is true with lots of sub-genres of porn, like Gonzo and such. I don’t know if perhaps both of these are in some strange way reactions on the part of white men to the fact that women generally, and people of color in particular, are gaining (however slowly) opportunities and certainly visibility in the culture, and so this is some kind of strange backlash to that — as in, a way to really objectify women even more than usual, or to project all kinds of deep-seated psychological fears about black male sexuality in particular onto black men, via porn — or whether it’s something else. But certainly we know that there are these deep-seated beliefs and stereotypes about folks of color, which are making their way into porn more and more. And the dynamics are usually pretty clearly in keeping with those stereotypes. So, ya know, it’s the black male dominating the white female. It’s the white female lusting after the black male. As with most porn though, the payoff for this kind of thing is usually a white producer, white studio, white distribution network. The folks of color whose bodies are turned into these templates for mostly white fantasies are not, in all likelihood, the ones reaping the most significant benefits.

I propose a new paradigm for both public policy considerations and private personal and institutional prac­tice: an approach I call illuminated individualism. While conserva­tives have long pushed for a complete disregarding of group identity in favor of a focus on rugged individualism and personal achieve­ment, and liberals like Obama have promoted a collective national identity under a “one America” motif, herein I suggest a third op­tion. Illuminated individualism seeks to respect the uniqueness of all persons and communities—and thus not to assume that racial identity or country of origin, as in the case of non-citizens seeking to become residents, automatically tells us what we need to know about a person and their background—while yet acknowledging the general truth that to be white, a person of color, indigenous, or an immigrant continues to have meaning in the United States.

In other words, we are neither merely individuals, nor merely Americans. Race continues to matter. Only by being aware of that meaning and resolving to view individuals and communities as they really are—which requires acknowledging their languages, cultures, traditions, and racialized experiences—can we actually hope to build the kind of democracy that treats all persons fairly and equally. And just as important, only by illuminating our own individual and community uniqueness—including our personal biases—can we hope to check the tendency to disadvantage and exclude, which sadly is still far too common. Illuminated indi­vidualism then suggests a number of policy options and practices, at both the public and private level…

–From Colorblind: The Rise of Post-racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity

AP: In light of all these questions, how does your idea of “illuminated individualism” work towards helping solve these issues?

TW: Illuminated individualism is really just a fancy term for progressive color-consciousness: a kind of color conscious mentality that leads us to take account of how color has shaped the experiences of others, and ourselves. So in terms of employment, this means adopting the mindset that when evaluating job applicants, we need to understand how things like on-paper credentials have been shaped (and mis-shapen) by the unequal opportunity structure. That way, when we are in a position to hire someone we don’t jump to the conclusion that we might otherwise reach, which is that the person with more on-paper credentials (often the white male) is the most qualified. They may be, but they may also simply have had more access. Colorblindness wouldn’t take that into account, but illuminated individualism does, because it illuminates, or tries to, the social context within which individuals operate. Likewise, in college admissions, we consider what it means to be a person of color in the school system, in terms of opportunities, in terms of access, in terms of the research on stereotype threat, which has found that even black kids who are equally qualified as their white counterparts, will often underperform on standardized tests, because of the additional anxiety they contend with, as they take the test, and which comes from their strong desire NOT to confirm the negative stereotypes that they know are out there, regarding black intelligence. Colorblindness would just look at scores and grades. Illuminated individualism says we have to dig deeper to see what’s really there.

There are lots of examples in the book about how we can weave this kind of color consciousness into our lives, as parents, educators, employers, co-workers, and in other areas.

Also, illuminated individualism is a key to interrupting our own racial biases, for those of us who are white. If we are aware of our biases — more to the point if we are made aware — by being exposed to what the research says about our implicit biases and how easy it is to fall back into old patterns and then act on them, then we can interrupt the process. We can check our biases. But only when we know they are there. So this means we need to be having these discussions about the importance of acknowledging and checking bias whenever we find ourselves in an evaluative situation, like an employment setting, or in school, or on a jury where race may be salient to the case somehow, to make sure we are going that extra mile to be equitable. The good news is that the research on this makes it clear: if we are made aware of how often we operate on the basis of biases, we can check them. The bad news is, we rarely are made aware of this problem. So that has to change.

I came across this gem while browsing the Hathor Legacy.  Blogger Ankhesen Mié has been watching the debate on fan forums about the Trek reboot (specifically the Spock-Uhura relationship) and decided to create a quiz around some of the most common sentiments:

1)    Do you feel horrified when you see Spock kiss a woman who looks like Uhura, and don’t know why?

2)    Do you look at Zoe Saldana and feel you “just can’t trust her” but can’t say why?

3)    Do you think Uhura’s not a very feminine character, but just can’t say why?

4)    Would you prefer Spock to be with Christine Chapel over Uhura?

5)    Do you think the Spock/Uhura relationship—in the story—is controversial because of Uhura?

6)    Do you consider yourself a “die-hard” Trek fan but still don’t agree with the pairing?

7)    Have you watched all things Trek—shows, films, interviews, etc. pertaining to this cast—and still think this pairing “came out of nowhere”?

8)    Do you think the kissing was “just wrong” and that Zachary Quinto was hurt by the writers?

9)    Do you think Spock wasn’t very “Vulcan” for being with Uhura?

10) Do you think Uhura forced herself onto Spock in the turbolift?

11) Out of the other dramatic elements in the film—death of Kirk’s father, destruction of Romulus, destruction of Vulcan, death of Spock’s mother, near-destruction of Earth, Kirk’s overly-speedy promotion, the massive death toll of young, innocent Starfleet cadets—is the Spock/Uhura relationship what sticks out to/bothers you the most?

12) Do you feel a “strong black woman” should never be in an onscreen relationship because you think it “weakens” her character?

13) Do you feel the same about a “strong white woman”?

14) Do you tell yourself Spock would never find Uhura attractive?

15) Do you tell yourself Zachary Quinto would never find Zoe Saldana beautiful, or that Leonard Nimoy never found Nichelle Nichols attractive?

16) For white girls only: Do you sometimes/often/all the time wish Spock kissed a white character so as to make it easier to picture yourself in her place?

Analyzing the Answers

If you answered yes to 1-12, no to 13, and yes to 14 & 15…you have a problem.  If you’re a white girl, there was no wrong answer to #16.  Wishing an actor/character would be intimate with someone who looks more like you for the sake of fantasizing, oddly enough, is actually quite normal.

But let’s analyze the others now, shall we?

The rest is well worth a read, as Ankhesen Mié really goes all in on the answers:

Do you think the Spock/Uhura relationship—in the story—is controversial because of Uhura?

Here’s what throws people: Spock is the “Other” in this relationship, not Uhura. In the new film, we can see how human males like Uhura fine (Kirk in particular). What shocks Kirk is the sight of a fellow human in the arms of an alien. To a slight extent, Spock offends fellow characters who witness their relationship—not Uhura. Humans in the Trek verse understand why a man would date Uhura; they have trouble, however, understanding why Uhura—who could have anyone—would date a Vulcan.

Have you watched all things Trek—shows, films, interviews, etc. pertaining to this cast—and still think this pairing “came out of nowhere”?

This goes in line with the previous question.  If you are a “die-hard” Trek Fan, then you of all people should know this relationship existed since the beginning—racism, ironically, kept it from being properly explored.  If you “just don’t see it”, then understand the creator, the actors, the writers, and directors have confirmed this ad nauseum.  The internet is filled with concrete evidence; more than enough, no doubt, for a “die-hard” fan like you.  If you still can’t see it, then it’s because you don’t want to see it.

Read the rest.

Do black women regard interracial relationships as a personal affront?

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen this issue raised. On June 2, it surfaced once more when blogger the Black Snob posted a thought-provoking piece on those who oppose interracial relationships called “Sometimes the White Girl (Or Guy) Isn’t about You (Unconventional Wisdom).”

The post begins with the Snob recalling her days in school when two black girls unsuccessfully try to jump a white classmate who’s dating a black guy. Throughout the piece, the Snob not only questions the rationale the two girls used to justify beating up their white peer but the rationale that black women in general draw upon to oppose interracial relationships. Are black women being fair when they assume that a black guy dating a white chick is a sell-out? And how do the insecurities of black women in Western society factor into their objection of interracial relationships?

She writes, “Some black guys are going to date white girls. Attempting to beat up the white girls will not turn that tide. …You’d be better off learning to love yourself than becoming mired in bitterness and hate over that thing that’s not really about you.”

The Snob’s points are valid. However, after reading her piece and others like it, I find myself wondering why black women are constantly portrayed as if they are only ones who react negatively to interracial relationships. As a black woman who has been involved with a white guy for more than a year, I’ve faced my fair share of hostility from white women, and some Asian ones, who seem resentful of my partnership. None of these women have disapproved of my relationship aloud, but they don’t really have to. Their body language says enough.

They do double-takes when they learn my boyfriend and I are together. They give me the side-eye or attempt to look me up and down when they think I won’t notice. Others have just been aloof or exhibited general bitchiness when I try to make conversation with them. I know that if I am having such experiences other black women involved with non-black men are as well. Yet, black women continue to bear the onus for the hostility that black-white interracial couples face.

The sad thing about this to me is that the reasons a black woman might object to an interracial relationship are wholly different from the reasons a white woman might. Black women worry how the black community will be affected overall if, say, the most successful black men find themselves with white women again and again. They worry about the effect interracial relationships have on low marriage rates in the black community. In contrast, when I encounter white women who cop an attitude upon discovering that my boyfriend and I are an item, their hostility comes from a very different place—a place of superiority.

It’s as if they are asking themselves, “Why on earth would he be with a black girl when I’m here?” Adding insult to injury is that it doesn’t seem to matter whether I’m more or less physically attractive than these women. That I’m black alone makes me inferior in their eyes. It comes down to this: women accustomed to being prizes in Western society are thrown for a loop when they see a white man who’s chosen a different option. As ridiculous as it sounds, their behavior reminds me of the Valley girl at the beginning of the “Baby Got Back” record who says in disgust, “She’s so black.” Black women aren’t supposed to be desirable, so when an eligible white male partners with a black woman, it’s not surprising that some people are going to react with shock or hostility.

I discussed this issue with a black friend several months ago. Then, she said of white women, “You know they’re threatened by us.”

Sure, I know that some white women may be intimated by black women they view in stereotypes—loud, overbearing and aggressive. But I did not think that white women were threatened by black women in the romantic realm. Is this akin to white men being jealous of the fabled size of black men’s penises? Are white women worried that they can’t compete with black women sexually? I don’t know. Yet, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this issue raised. Years ago when I was reading a profile on Oprah Winfrey, the writer suggested that the talk show queen wouldn’t have so many white women fans if she were more sexually threatening. In short, if Oprah were slender and alluring instead of the woman white ladies bring their problems to, she wouldn’t be as successful.

I wonder how valid this statement is. I do know that, on the surface, a few of the hostile white women I’ve encountered have no problem with black women. They do volunteer work involving the black community and are eager to sympathize with the woes of black women. But, upon learning that my boyfriend chose to date me, they are taken aback. Rather than being a rung below them on the social ladder—someone in need of their help—a black woman had effectively become their competitor and, thus, their equal.

Over the past couple months, I’ve been surrounding myself with people who all have something in common: they’re the least judgmental people I’ve ever known. They’re: 1) unconditionally understanding and compassionate of any given situation – no matter how crazy, weird, or counter-culture it may be, and 2) TOTALLY open about their own lives, in all their outrageous and extreme glory.

How refreshing. To escape the “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “bad”, “black” and “white”.

Which brings me to my point.

During a conversation with one such non-shockable friend, the topic of interracial relationships arose. As I began discussing my own perceptions and thoughts on the subject, something became appallingly clear:

I am judgmental.

Here’s the bare-bones, no-holds-barred confession: I am shamefully judgmental of Black man/White woman interracial relationships. When I see such a couple, I immediately jump to the conclusion that the Black man is trying to prove something and the White woman is trying to piss off her family. I lump the couple into a category, with no desire to dig deeper or even accept their union.

So during this conversation, my friend commented, simply: “Why do you care what choices these other people are making?”

The remark struck me. Yes, why DO I care? I’ve thought hard about this. I’m sure when my Black man/White woman aversion took shape, it sprung from jealousy. When I was a little girl, I never knew my true worth (what kid does?). I was so jealous all the time. Of White females, because, in my eyes, they’d always have something special in their pale skin that I could never have, no matter how straight I blow-dried my hair or how blond I dyed it. And of guys (all guys, but mostly Black guys), because they were always the most popular and the funniest… and most of them liked girls who weren’t boyish and gawky and frizzy-haired like me.

As time passed, I (seemingly) got over my childhood jealousies. But also, the “Black man/White woman relationship aversion” became almost second nature. An instinctual eye-roll. And coming from the Black girl who digs White guys… what a perfect storm of cutting irony.

So now I take a step back. I see many of my White girlfriends entering into wonderful, loving relationships with Black men. I see happiness and strength. And when I see a couple that I would generally stereotype cuddling on the subway or holding hands through Downtown Crossing, I really have to check myself. Why spend time passing judgment on things I don’t even try to understand? Why do I continuing to do this, with the roiling emotions of a 3rd-grader?

I’ve got it. The reality is that I’m NOT over my jealousies. And the problem exists in my own head, not the interracial union. Which is a tad upsetting, but also… again, refreshing.

Because I can’t understand all the complexities of others. But I can accept them. And, even better, I can bask in my God-given joy of delving deep and understanding my own complexities.

There’s no place for judgment in self-discovery. So I’m kicking all those judgmental thoughts to the curb.

by Racialicious Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

In a recent discussion about the content of Ciara’s video “Love, Sex, Magic,” in which the songstress collaborated with Justin Timberlake, many readers commented that the video itself served as a classic example of race baiting via sex and sexuality on the small screen. The video demonstrated what some considered a clear example of exotification and sexual exploitation of black women for the fodder of a white male audience. And again, in recent weeks, came the criticism of comments made by Kate, of the TLC show about adventures in parenting Jon and Kate Plus 8, who declared her attraction to, and arguably, fetishization (in the connotative sense) of Asian and Asian-American men.

These accounts garnered considerable attention from tv audiences, gossip column connoisseurs, and critical race theorist alike. Yet despite the aforementioned controversy, few considered the experiences of the interracial couples “on the ground.” In many instances, interracial relationships exist as some conversation piece or pivotal point for people who talk about race, but there is little attention paid to the simple fact that, like any other relationship, interracial relationships deserve the respect and courtesy of same-race relationships, respect in this sense meaning the right to exist sans accusations of racial essentialism and an excessive amount of societal self-projecting solely on the basis of the relationship being interracial.

In simply beginning an interracial relationship in the United States, one often suffers a considerable amount of social pressure, be it from family members, friends, or co-workers. When the presence of an interracial relationship is noted, its very existence at times solicits a barrage of questions in the minds of onlookers, one firing after the other. The questions range from the simple, “how did they meet?” to the complex, “do they really love each other or are they just together because they wish to rebel against social norms?” to the intrusive, “how is the sex?” Some of these questions are customary when considering any relationship, yet with interracial relationships, there seems to be an exceptional increase in curiosity, one that certainly rivals that of intraracial pairings.

And while there are plenty of unuttered questions, there is an equal, if not greater, number of unspoken answers, guesses and assumptions as to the many aspects of the relationship. In relation to interracial couples, the participants are rarely given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their reasons for being together in the first place, at least not in the same way as intraracial couples. For example, if one were to date someone of the same racial background, the issue of essentialism, the idea that one has chosen his or her partner solely on the basis of race and the characteristics one attributes to said race, is rarely considered. Thus we have the double standard. People of the same race could very well be dating each other for calculated reasons, one of them being race, yet this is rarely considered and applied to such couples. Only interracial couples fall victim to such assumptions.

Other assumptions include the possibility of one partner or the other wanting to make a political statement, to rebel against his or her parents, community, or culture, and/or to have a token member of another race to diversify one’s social surroundings. These, too, are rarely mentioned when considering the case of intraracial couples. In several recent articles about the “phenomenon” of first and second-generation immigrants of color choosing to date and marry “within” their race (1, 2, 3, 4), the issue of the couples’ having made this choice, clearly a political choice on their part, was not demonized or questioned in the same way it would be if, say, a person of one race chose to date someone of another race to make a statement as well. While this is not to say that the evidence of intraracial couples making this choice is favorable or ideal, it is important to note to show the pure hypocrisy evident in considerations of interracial couples’ respective choices.

Furthermore, there is the importance of appearance and physical features. Is one who has chosen a mate of a different race doing so because of an attraction to the physical features commonly attributed to said race? Could said attraction be due, in part, to stereotypes associated with someone of his or her partner’s racial group? These questions are also markedly absent when discussing intraracial couplings, though that does not mean such issues are not present in both types of relationships. If someone of one race were only to date members of his or her own race because he or she likes the features (and possibly thinks of stereotypes) attributed to said group, this choice is not so markedly isolated as a flaw as it often is when discussing interracial relationships. However, if someone of one race were to point out his or her attraction to specific features of another race, the person is often accused of combining stereotypes and physical attributes. This is not to say that this does not occur, as if often does, but to assume that it is always the case, and something exclusively associated with interracial couples is not only judgmental, but decidedly racist.

As one who has been involved in both interracial and intraracial relationships, I have experienced the aforementioned in both types. For example, I identify as black, and while dating another black person, the issues of skin color, hair type, and facial features came up quite a bit. To speak more specifically, I was lauded for these features being on the “good” side (in southern vernacular, meaning closer to white). My skin is light brown, my hair is curly, but not “nappy,”* my facial features render me somewhat racially ambiguous, and because of these features, I was considered attractive by my black partner. If the same features had been cited as defining points of my being attractive by a partner of any other race, people certainly would have called “foul.” On the other hand, in my experience, my features that could be attributed moreso to my being black and less so to the traces of European whiteness in my heritage have been more appreciated and accepted as beautiful by partners who have been of a different race. In cases like this, where do we cast judgment?

It is unfair to use interracial couples as scapegoats, yes, but it is equally as unfair to assign them with unrealistic expectations with which intraracial couples are rarely laden. The biblical analogy, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” comes to mind. Before we criticize interracial couples by way of, at times, assumed and unconfirmed flaws, we must examine our response to intraracial couplings that often go unscathed and without nearly as intense consideration.

Equally as important in this case is the need to avoid turning interracial couples into poster children or representatives for some imagined, racially democratic society. To assign more weight and social obligation to interracial couples is unfair and unwarranted. As someone who is presently living in Brazil, I have seen far more interracial couples in the 10 months I have been here than I have in my entire life while living in the United States. That certainly does not mean, however, that Brazilian concepts of race are perfect nor that racism is nonexistent. It simply means that at some point along the Brazilian cultural landscape, being in an interracial relationship became more socially acceptable, and at times even encouraged. Though even this example is not without its cause for concern (i.e. the fact that miscegenation with whites had long been encouraged for the sake of ethnic cleansing).

As with any relationship, there is often more to it than what meets the eye. And while I am certainly not discouraging the discussion and analysis of interracial relationships, I feel that our criticism at times should be curbed if we do not choose to assign the same judgment, expectations, and/or assumptions to couples who happen to be of two partners of the same race. People involved in interracial relationships are human beings, not objects, and we must bear in mind that they are not poster children on which society should feel free to project their own fears, insecurities, or dreams.
—-
*Before anyone jumps on me for using the term “nappy,” I should make it known that I do not assign negative meaning to that word and am the product of a mother who is a self-proclaimed possessor of “nappy” hair that I think is beautiful.
 

The Washington Post has an interesting story on recent trends in interracial marriage in America — specifically, a decline in the rate of Hispanics and Asians marrying partners of other races in the past two decades: Immigrants’ Children Look Closer for Love.

Sociologists and demographers are just beginning to study how the children of recent immigrants will date and marry. Conventional wisdom has it that in the open-minded Obama era, they will begin choosing spouses of other ethnicities as the number of interracial marriages rises.

But scholars are coming across a surprising converse trend. According to U.S. Census data, the number of native- and foreign-born people marrying outside their race fell from 27 to 20 percent for Hispanics and 42 to 33 percent for Asians from 1990 to 2000.

Scholars suggest it’s all about the growing number of immigrants. It seems that the large immigrant population fundamentally changes the pool of potential partners for Asians and Hispanics. Thus, the second generation is more likely to marry people of their own ethnicity.

It’s not quite like it was before, when there were only two Asian kids in your school — you and this other boy/girl — and everyone thought you two should go together to the prom. Forced coupling. Now half the school is Asian, so it’s not such a big deal. Something like that.

I noticed a funny thing while visiting my family in D.C. for Christmas. Simply put: every female in the house (my mom and aunt, who are African-American, and me and my cousin, who are interracial) was either involved with or married to a White man.

Hmm…

That’s curious.

The truth is, the topic of interracial dating is always bubbling in the back of my mind. I went out on a limb and wrote a post about it some time ago on this blog, which got me into some deep water with a few of my readers (a disagreement that I haven’t fully resolved in my mind).

But just recently, the issue resurfaced during a conversation I had with a fellow blogger (a White male) about how personal Obama’s candidacy was to many Americans. I know, I know… interracial relationships? Obama? The two are linked, sure, but they don’t really go together. Which is what made the conversation so poignant.

My friend asked me whether or not Obama was well liked among the African-American side of my family.

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “My family has always held a fondness for Obama. But what truly won our hearts – well, mostly for my mother and aunt – was his marriage to a dark-skinned African-American woman.”

“Wow, really? Even though they’re both married to White men?” My friend was baffled. “That’s… strange.”

Before that point, I had never thought of it as strange at all. But maybe it is. And after that, a troubling question began creeping into my mind: do some Black women hold an interracial relationship double standard?

Most Black women who I am close with approve of, and even cheer on, a Black female/White male interracial relationship. But one that’s the other way around evokes a feeling far less warm and fuzzy. For example, if Obama had been married to a White woman… eek. I’m sure we wouldn’t have been as quick to embrace him (and actually, I’ve talked with men and women of every color about this hypothetical situation, all of whom expressed a similar “cringe” – perhaps a topic for a different post).

I’ve been trying to figure out WHY this is for some time. Talking with my family has helped a bit. My aunt, who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s during Jim Crow, gave me this bit of insight:

At age five, I knew I was black. (At that time in 1950, the term was “Negro.”) I also knew that “my kind” of black – luscious dark chocolate – was not valued one iota. I was in that strata of folk to be relentlessly taunted and derided – the least desirable folk in the whole of the United States of America – BLACK-SKIN FEMALES.

Being called ugly by my childhood peers – other Negroes – was an everyday experience. …At monthly dances, (wearing my prettiest felt skirts with the poodle-on-a-leash design and for-the-occasion “straightened” hair with ever-so-neat bangs and Shirley Temple curls) no boy ever asked me to dance. Not once. No boy ever asked me for a date. No boy took me home to meet his family. No boy would dare to be seen with me. Far too risky.

What we did to each other is ‘our shame’.

I also spoke with my cousin a bit. She grew up in D.C. as well, only during the 80’s. She hung out with and dated Black guys, but oftentimes found that many of them were looking for something “not quite her”: long nails, thin straight hair, etc. Which is the façade that most of her female cohorts put on. But she wasn’t interested in pretending, and, interestingly, discovered that the few White guys she dated were much more eager to accept her as she was – thick bushy hair and all.

So what does this all have to do with Obama’s marriage to Michelle? He’s African-American, she’s African-American – no interracial relationship there. So why was she the reason my family members so embraced his candidacy?

Well, it’s this—a simple statement voiced by my cousin at the end of our conversation that slid all the pieces in place:

“I guess we just love men who really love Black women.”

Wow. The conversation never had anything to do with men (of any color) and everything to do with women. Black women.

So maybe we do hold a seemingly illogical but deeply personal double standard—one rooted in experiences that go back decades. From hearing about my grandmother’s experiences as a dark-skinned Black woman in the 30’s and 40’s to my aunt’s to my cousin’s to mine, I’ve grown an intense fondness for any man who appreciates a brown-skinned lady…

…and I’m half-White. Go figure.

I know it’s a little late to be bringing up Lakeview Terrace. Typically, reviews for feature films appear in publications the week the film opens. But let’s be real here: despite its Week 1 box office triumph, Lakeview Terrace is the kind of film you wait a week or two to see… at a matinee showing. And that’s exactly what I did. Frankly, though, I’m fairly certain I would’ve been better off waiting on the DVD release or the bad BET overdub on basic cable (You know it’s coming… in 2011).

But I’ve digressed.

I can’t imagine what drew audiences to this bizarre race film last weekend. Was it director Neil Labute’s arthouse reputation as a skilled provocateur? Was it the involvement of Will-and-Jada’s profitable Overbrook Productions? Was it Kerry Washington’s alleged “hotness?” Or was it simply that surefire, time-honored Sam Jackson delivery of the classic trailer line, “Ah’m the POE-LEASE! You HAVE to do what I say!”?

Maybe it was a little of everything. For me, morbid curiosity was the driving force. I took stock of the premise: black cop terrorizes the interracial couple who move in next door, simply because he’s anti-miscegenation and protected by the badge, and I decided that there was no way this could be executed well. But I certainly wanted to see folks try.

I’ll give you the short version of events here and please note that from this point on, there will be HEAVY SPOILERS. So if you still intend to support Will, Jada, Sam, Kerry, or Patrick Wilson with your box office dollars, STOP READING NOW.

So. Right away, we meet Sam Jackson as Abel Turner, a stand-up beat cop whose territory is a low-rent section of LA. We also meet his two children, Celia and Marcus. Abel, a widower, is trying his darnedest to raise these two little darlings to speak “properly” and to support Shaquille O’Neal over Kobe Bryant (we’re never told why, but we later come to assume it’s because of Vanessa’s non-Black ethnicity—that, or the rape charge… the interracial rape charge).

Abel’s relationship with teenaged daughter Celia is fraught with tension. She deliberately interjects “Ebonics” into her conversations and dresses less than chastely. It’s stock teen daughter/Daddy fare…. until he smacks her. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Abel is shown to have a decent relationship with the multicultural neighbors in the gated community of Lakeview Terrace, a breathtaking berg overlooking most of LA. The first of the neighbors shown is an Asian fellow, with whom Abel makes observations about the new couple moving in next door.

Of course, as is often the case in films and television shows like this, it isn’t immediately clear that Patrick Wilson’s Chris is married to Kerry Washington’s Lisa. See, Lisa first appears in a locked-arm stroll with Ron Glass. The cinematographer spends a lot of time here (and throughout the film) focusing on extreme close-ups of Sam Jackson. He narrows his eyes, as if passing judgment on the May-December couple strolling the perimeter of the palacial house, and barely takes stock of the sweaty White guy dutifully unloading boxes from a UHaul.

Within two minutes, however, Lisa slips her arm out of Ron Glass’s, flits over to Chris and kisses him passionately.

And then, Sam Jackson’s eyes REALLY narrow.

I should probably tell you right now that this movie isn’t about Abel Turner. It isn’t about Lisa. And it certainly isn’t about Ron Glass, who phones in a few scenes as her father, Harold Perreau.

In fact, this film treats all of its Black cast as tertiary in order to reveal its true intent.

This is a film about how hard it is to be a White man married to a Black woman.

See, if you’re a White guy, who’s been courageous enough to fall in love across color lines, your father-in-law will loathe you. Your Black cop neighbor will harrass you — particularly about your preference for really loud ’90s hip-hop and especially for your hot Black wife — and you won’t be able to do anything at all about it… because HE’S the POE-LEASE! And worse yet, when you show just a hint of reticence about readiness to have children, your Black wife (with whom you have little onscreen chemistry) will stop taking her birth control pills, trap you into fathering a biracial kid, and then get really pissed when you’re not absolutely thrilled as soon as she breaks the news… from the floor of the bathroom in your bedroom, as she cries and cradles the toilet.

Oh, and none of these Black people will have any discernable reason for being so vicious or duplicitous. Perhaps it’s just their baser nature as Black people that causes them to behave so uncouthly? Or, as in the case of Lisa, maybe it’s her insecurity about her skin color that forces her to force you into fatherhood. As she tearily claims in the requisite “I’m pregnant” scene, maybe it’s not that you don’t want to have kids. “Maybe you just don’t want to have them with her!”

It’s okay, though. In the end, you get to justifiably gun someone down and, while you bask in the glow of your own clever heroism, you also deign to forgive your weird-ass, over-enunciating, birth-control-pill-skipping wife. Because you’re just that magnanimous.

So that’s Lakeview Terrace in a nutshell, people. You may not want to see this if you’re Black. There isn’t a likeable soul in here for you to identify with — least of all Abel Turner, whose logic devolves more and more as the film goes on (really, dude gets stupider by the frame) and whose already reprehensible, one-note character turns positively cartoonish by his daughter-slapping, homicide-committing, “I’M the POE-LEASE!” denouement. You’ll also find nothing relatable in Ron Glass or the actors who play Celia and Marcus, because about 2/3 through the film, they all disappear, never to be heard from or referenced again.

If anyone among you has seen this flick and come away with a more favorable interpretation of its thesis, please feel free to enlighten me. As far as I can tell, there’s no equity (or realism) for Blacks in Lakeview Terrace.

Can you judge a movie by its trailer?

Opening this Friday, this is Lakeview Terrace’s premise according to the LA Times: “Jackson plays a law-and-order racist who doesn’t like the interracial couple next door.”

The racial relationships appear to be secondary to the film’s central, upper case question: What do you do when you can’t call the police??? (Gasp! Can you imagine such a topsy turvy universe? Oh, right.)

But I couldn’t help but chafe at the way the Lakeview Terrace trailer presents racism and interracial relationships. What kind of harassment do interracial couples face today? While a few years ago interracial relationships were met with hostility and violence – and still are – today there’s also the possibility that you’ll get a whole other type of gross response. Like maybe a high five (Way to bag a Asian/Latina/Black chick!) or cooing (Do you think you’ll have little chocolate babies?).

This is the mind-blowing contortion of contemporary racism: racism no longer simply outlaws interracial relationships, it also encourages them.

This is because racism these days often takes an inclusive form. Living in an urban, liberal city, the kind of racism I see most often takes the form of cultural appropriation: going to a restaurant and seeing our cultural foods co-opted into some sort of mayonnaise hybrid; hearing non-Black hipsters calling each other N***** to show how “down” they are; attending a yoga class and seeing statues of sacred deities being used as coat racks; and of course, the exoticisation of women of colour, and the asexualisation (sorry, making up words) of many men of colour. See Esther Ku – or Samurai Girl! – if you want proof.

As a culture we seem to define racism solely as an act that involves burning crosses or violence. Sometimes it seems like mainstream North American culture will only agree it’s racism when physical suffering is involved – and even then it can be a tough sell. But I see that there are two kinds of racism: hostile racism, and benevolent racism. The first kind involves burning crosses, the second kind involves people wanting to befriend you because they think you can teach them kung fu. If we privilege one kind of racism over an other, we are less equipped to spot, call out, name, validate our experience of, and stamp out the other kind.

But the way Lakeview Terrace highlights hostile racism isn’t it’s only problem. At least from the trailer, the movie seems allergic to the idea that benevolent racism exists.

From that LA Times article:

Turner [played by Samuel L. Jackson], a single father of two, also can’t stand that the skin color of his neighbors isn’t the same. “You can listen to that noise all night long,” Turner at one point says to Chris as he listens to rap music, “but when you wake up in the morning, you’ll still be white.”

In my world, it’s not so unusual for people to have genuine beef with white folks who listen to rap music – when it’s perceived that they’re doing so just so that they can seem like they have “cred.” I don’t think POCs or anti-racist folks should hate on any white person who likes rap. However, there’s a justifiable context to that unjustifiable bias: white folks have been hijacking elements of black culture for their own use since white and black folks began to co-exist in America. But this statement, which in another setting could be form some sort of anti-racist protest, is a threat in the movie, is irrational – as in how dare those uppity black people say we can’t listen to their music – rather than a real issue that anti-racist people tussle with.

[The article also mentions that Turner hates hybrid cars, because that's right, the only people in America who are racist are crazed right-wingers who have an irrational hatred of espresso-based coffee and pilates. Just so you have a nice little dose of liberal dogmatism to go with your racism.]

Going by the trailer of Lakeview Terrace, this is the movie’s logic: Turner has a problem with the mashing of cultures. Turner is also an unreasonable, illogical bully. Does Lakeview Terrace equate discomfort with culture mashing, based on history and racial context – in other words, someone objecting to benevolent racism – with a bigot who is off their rocker?

And what do you think about the fact that the character who has a problem with someone’s race, is not white? In my view it plunges this movie even further into that postracial nonsense; where often benevolent racism is ok because we’re postracial, ergo anyone has the right to anyone else’s cultural goods; and where affirmative action has created an explosion of “reverse racism”: Wow, American society is so advanced that not only can black people be homeowners and cops, they can even be racist!!!

It’s not ok to harass your neighbours. It’s not ok to hate on random interracial couples. But the idea that racism comes in many forms, and so some anti-racist people may have trouble with interracial relationships, and some may struggle when they see cultural goods being consumed by people from outside the ethnic group, doesn’t fly in Lakeview Terrace.

We who may struggle with representations of interracial relationships do so not because we’re full of prejudice and hatred, like Abel Turner, but because we’re for racial equity – and it’s hard to see celluloid POCs dating white folks rather than us all loving each other. But the Lakeview Terrace trailer (and possibly the whole movie) presents a person who is wary of interracial relationships as a hysterical racist.

You want to know the most obscene thing about that Lakeview Terrace trailer? Lakeview Terrace is the name of the neighbourhood where Rodney King was attacked. What kind of sick parallel are they trying to draw here – that when a black cop harasses his white neighbour and black spouse, it’s the same thing as four white police officers beating an unarmed black man half to death?

Or will we find out in the last act of the movie that Turner is Rodney King’s cousin, and that’s why he doesn’t like white people? And even if that does happen, will that really redeem the rest of the movie?

I’m not so sure I’m gonna tune in to find out.

* The only other time I can remember seeing a Hollywood character object to a mixed race pairing was when the sister from Save the Last Dance freaked out on Julia Stiles’ character for dating her (black) brother. Can anyone remember a Hollywood character who objected to an interracial relationship? Were they an unreasonable person of colour?

When I was in elementary school, maybe second grade, a white classmate asked me the deep, probing question: “When you get married, is it going to be to a white man or a black man?” To someone like me who is biracial, this question is probably up there with “Are you adopted?” and “Can I touch your hair?” But even at 7 years old, I felt that this was silly — how could I possibly know who I was going to marry so far in the future? And why would I care what color he was as long as he had all of the stereotypical Prince Charming qualities that little girls are taught that men should have? And besides, my 7-year-old self pointed out, what if he’s going to be Asian or Native American?

I can thank my parents for instilling in me the idea that people are people, and that it’s cool to date whoever you want. In fact, both of my parents were practicing misceganators before they got married to each other. My white mother and her black boyfriend once got kicked out of a Catholic church in the 1960s. When my parents got married in the 1970s, someone in the supposedly ultra-liberal college town that I grew up in would routinely slash the tires on their cars overnight. They raised me to believe that, despite the crap that they went through, the world was becoming a better place every day and that by the time I was an adult, I there would be nothing to worry about when it came to interracial dating.

Of course, real life didn’t work out that way. No, I never had people damaging my personal property or ostracizing me for my choices. But what I did find was that the interracial dating revolution from my parents’ time, when things were about challenging the status quo and being willing to take shit from everyone around you in the name of love, was highly romanticized compared to the pitfalls and quirks that I encountered when I was old enough to start spending time with boys. Given my status as biracial, pretty much anyone who I chose to date could have earned me the moniker of “interracial dater,” but I think that my skin is dark enough that it was assumed that by dating black guys I was dating with “my own” race. Still, throughout middle school and high school, I “went with” (as we called dating back then!) guys of various backgrounds.

However, if I look at the general pattern, I “liked” or “dated” more black guys in middle school and progressively less of them as I got older. This is a little bit of a digression, but I was always a tomboy, and the last black guy I dated, in my junior year of high school, really put me off by asking me a bunch of seemingly sexist (or at least nit-picky) questions about “what happened to your nails?” because I don’t get them done and “why don’t you try and look more cute” and stuff like that. I think at some point after that, as I made my way through college, I decided that I couldn’t/didn’t want to live up to a lot of the standards that the black men I knew seemed to have for women, because I didn’t care about makeup or getting my hair done and because I was actually a huge nerd who spent her time playing video games and chatting on the Internet (of course now I know that perfectly nerdy brothers exist too, but at the time I was feeling more than a little jaded).

Anyway, back to the main point. Out of the white guys that I dated before I got married, most of them fell into the category of thinking of themselves as “beyond race.” By this I mean that they were the kind of people who would proclaim that they honestly didn’t “see” color when they looked at people, due to some kind of extra special social enlightenment that they had attained and now wanted to brag about.

I can’t remember how many times I heard things like “you know, I don’t even think of you as [black, mixed, whatever]. I just think of you as a person.” And I first, my young, naive self thought that sentiment was really sweet, because I didn’t realize the degree to which it was denying a huge facet of what made me ME. And a lot of this involved complicity on my part, as well — in several relationships, I felt that I had to be careful not to do anything “too black,” lest my beloved suddenly begin to see color again when he looked at me.

The last white guy I dated fancied himself to be some kind of a poet with an exceptional way with words. I had noticed that in his earlier writing he tended to describe “beautiful” women as having “alabaster white” skin and other such bullshit, but I ignored it, because I figured that he was with me now and therefore his idea of beauty must have changed or at least expanded. Except I didn’t really ignore it. Because I was the one who pursued him and not the other way around, I found myself always wondering if he would rather be with some skinny blond with perfect, “porcelain skin” — like the girl he dated before me. I was his first non-white partner, and I always felt like a silver medal, or a compromise.

One day he started talking, poetically, about the word “pale” and how it was evocative of a special, frail kind of beauty. And I snapped.

I asked him if my lack of “paleness” made me somehow less beautiful. He got defensive and claimed that I was misunderstanding him, that he wasn’t talking about skin tone per se, but about some abstract idea. But that was it, for me. I started to think about all of the times that he told me that he “didn’t really think of me as black — just as a person” and what that REALLY meant. Like he was being kind enough to overlook a glaring handicap or something.

However, the man I am married to is also white, but instead of being a “beyond race” person, he is an anti-racist who has always found black women beautiful and desirable. He doesn’t look past my skin but right at it, and says that it’s lovely! In the past on Racialicious, I’ve seen preferences like his sometimes termed as being a “fetish”, but to be honest I’m just happy to be with someone who likes me for me, where I don’t have to wonder if he’d rather have my personality and interests repackaged in a white girl’s body.

To me, these two categories — “beyond race” versus “anti-racist” — make a huge difference in terms of interracial relationships that involve white people.

(This is in response to this post on Racialicious.)

This is what I have been waiting for.

The Women of Color and Beauty Carnival.

And, of course, it does not disappoint.

Black Amazon – I Ain’t Pretty

You see when we talk about pretty , I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing, not to mention to cling to pretty even in CHALLENGING the concept ( I WILL REJECT ALL THINGS THAT I SEE AS PRETTY CAUSE EVERYTHING MEANS THE SAME TO EVERYONE) makes me nauseaus.

You see in my life as WOC , pretty has had fuck all to do with attractiveness, vibrancy, or sexuality , it has had everything with a validation.

A validation that includes protection, ownership, and often the use of these things to pit women agianst each other, sometimes by patriarchial interests, OFTEN by racist thematics, and sometimes love itself.

Personally, I am beautiful. It is strange to say because dear god it sounds conceited and I am trying my darndest not to post any pictures , but even in the glaringly Eurocentric run studies about symmetry and youthfulness and clearness of skin and bountifulness of hair ETc.ETC.

I am doing okay.

I am not however in any way European featured , not in the slightest not by a long shot. My look comes with the music of steel pans and African drums some sitars and strings with a light note of pipes . My walk is all drums all the time.

I am always black.

And I am not pretty .

Entry Level Living – A New Approach to Race and Beauty

I recognize that we live in two worlds: one that was created FOR us and one that is created BY us. Creating our own world that doesn’t destroy us and make us susceptible to the needs and desires of the other world is exceedingly difficult; it requires us to be self aware and have a great deal of self determination. This is why the hair/skin complexion issue is so messy: how much of our decisions are based on us and how much of our decisions are based on what other people tell us?

Yeloson – Dating and Crossing the Line

“Love is love is love is love”

She says it, she believes it. And I want to believe it. But through all these filters? I only see a phrase which has so many steps before you can understand it in context for it to mean anything- as much as “Can’t we all get along” is used as a dodge for fucked up behavior. I can’t say love is love, because love is only love if it isn’t actually a word taped onto the stuff above.

“I love you” is a phrase I heard repeated so many times in high school, between the circle of 5 white guys who dated the same 5 asian girls. I guess each of them loved each of the girls the same way they loved the other 4- as objects, as fetishes, as special acquisitions, oriental treats. I’m sure the girls loved each of the guys as they loved the other ones too- interesting they didn’t date anyone else given that the school was almost 50/50 white and black. Funny how all these people who don’t see color manage to date only one color, all the time.

“I can’t believe you’re against racism and you’ll only date asian women!”

Of course, I never said I would only date asian women- I only said I wouldn’t date white women. How sad and how fucked up the mentality that if I’m not dating white women, I must mean I only date asian women. I even explained that a) this is a choice for myself, and not something I advocate to anyone else, and that b) it has to do with the fact that I don’t feel like dealing with white privilege on top of everything else with a relationship. Somehow, my choice to not have sex with white people was racist- oppressing white people through denial of my cock.

Apparently, a lot of people hold my cock in much higher esteem than I do. And they’ve never seen it. I guess word gets around?

Actually, it’s about the basic privilege issue of hearing the word, “No.” It upsets the hierarchy. Everyone is supposed to lust for white women. I mean, Ming the Merciless, Fu Manchu, Long Duk Dong, dude from Vanishing Son and Chow Yun Fat in Pirates of the Carribean have totally proven the scientific fact that asian men are totally enraptured by the white wimminz, except we lack the savagery of the Brute or the Deviousness of the Jew to pose a real, credible threat.

My choice to say no dethrones white women from the vaunted prize position. It’s not even about me- it’s about me choosing to date WOC over white women, and not tied by some foolish “I can only date my own” logic. Cause, you know, no way would anyone sane choose say, a brown woman over a white woman.

Go read the rest.

This is my second contribution to the interracial dating series. I originally wasn’t going to contribute after the intro post as my experience in this area is extremely limited. But, since we aren’t having the conversations I want to have, I’ll take a crack at it. I’m going to come off as a jerk, and I’m okay with this. Feel free to pose any questions you like in the comments, but I am going to ask that you refrain from making assumptions about my friends. If you want to know something, ask. – LDP

My best friend dates white girls.

It’s still painful for me to type that. Just the words, staring me in the face on the screen is like me pouring salt on a five year old wound. How the hell did that even happen?

Things weren’t always this way. Back in high school, I started kicking it with the guy who would eventually become best male friend (hereafter referred to as Bestboy). At the time, we bonded over a mutual love of reading, rock music, and dying our hair ridiculous colors normally only found in packs of Kool-aid. Bestboy was busy exploring his identity as a burgeoning black intellectual with a skateboard and back then his common refrain when it came to relations with the opposite sex was that he “dated the rainbow.” He found my insistence on dating within the race puzzling, I found his dating outside of it equally strange. But, as adolescents are wont to do, these minor disagreements were laid aside in favor of discussing more pressing matters like how many people could fit into a Honda Hatchback on the way home from HFStival.

Time passed, we graduated, and me and Bestboy kept in touch. Our hobbies grew in the same direction and we reunited around mutual adoration of art and anime. There was only one thing that became a quiet little undertone to many of our conversations. Over the last few years, the “rainbow” Bestboy spoke of had faded into one color: white.

Now, at this point, many of you may be wondering why I care about these things at all. Why do I care who my best friend dates? What does it matter the race of his partner as long as he is happy?

In a perfect world, these things wouldn’t matter. Love would just be love.

But the world isn’t perfect and these things do matter.

Love doesn’t occur in a vacuum.

Now, Bestboy still often repeats that he dates the rainbow – until I point out that the last three serious girlfriends over the last five years have all been white. And that most of the women he tries to pick up at bars are white. And most of the women he finds attractive and approaches are white. Specifically, tall, thin, and some variation of blond.

He’ll then point out some random three-night stand as proof that he still does and I’ll point out that his dating habits go beyond the paper bag test – these women could pass the manilla folder test. And since my friend is deeper in tone than I, I tend to look at him skeptically.

At this point, we have a low simmering feud on our hands.

Now, I have never been one to comment on the nature of other people’s interracial relationships. First of all, it’s just rude. I’ve often cringed in horror when I overhead someone suck their teeth at the site of a black man strolling around with a white woman. After all, generally speaking we do not know that nature of someone’s relationship from a quick glance. All that is revealed there are pre-existing stereotypes. So, unless a man is walking around with a tee-shirt reading “Just white girls for me, thanks!” we are not privy to what happened with this particular situation or how they hooked up.

But with this friend, I do know the history. I’ve been there. And as he frequently asks for dating advice, I frequently comment.*

As time passes, our discussions of interracial dating started to have a bit of an edge to them. Bestboy openly admires my relationship with my boyfriend, and I have to choke back a cutting response about black love being sweetest. After his most recent breakup, I found myself seriously considering my positions. It was a train wreck of a situation in which he found that his latest white girl was a closet racist after she made a “those people” remark after attending one of his family functions, which spiraled into a three week long fight about race, sex, and class ultimately ending in their demise. Boyfriend and I sat on the bed, listening to the whole sorrid tale before commenting.

“Stop dating white girls,” Boyfriend said, and I nodded in agreement.

A day or so after that, we were at brunch when he started eyeing the willowy blond waitress.

“She’s cute,” said Bestboy.

“She’s cuter,” I said, indicating a petite Latina with waist-length dark hair who had been seated across from us.

Bestboy gave me a deep sigh.

“Will you cut that out?” he asked with a note of exasperation.

“I will when you start dating brown people,” I fired back.

The comments come to mind quickly – they are difficult to tame.

I recently tried to put my finger on why Bestboy’s dating habits bothered me so much. I have other friends who date interracially and their choice of partner never phases me a bit. So why is it different when it comes to him?

After a little probing, it came to me.

It is the same reason that certain comments cut deep.

Like TAN remarking “and I do have to acknowledge that blonde/white/gold/peach/light turns my head faster than Darkness, even if it isn’t a superlative blonde, peach or whatever” in his discussion of why he is trying to condition himself to like mediocre black girls. Or that one line from “Cupids Chokehold,” that Gym Class Heroes song where Travis raps that his girlfriend has “porcelain skin.” Yes, I am aware of his girlfriend and his biracial heritage. But it still hurts to hear a brown man openly praise a certain skin tone that most black women will never achieve. As a black woman moving through society, these comments aren’t casual or innocent to me. They are not attacks. But they are reminders of what I am not, and what I will never be.

In discussions of beauty – particularly those on women centered blogs – white women can understand being held up to an unrealistic standard of beauty. To be impossibly thin, impossibly blonde, impossibly clear skinned, with a body that defies the law of physics is presented as something that is attainable if you try hard enough and buy the right products, though many women find these efforts to be futile. What most of these conversations do not understand is that when black women pick up these kinds of magazines, or watch advertisements on TV, or popular television shows with popular white actresses, we do not get the message “try harder.”

The message we receive is never.

You will never look like this. Not if you straighten your hair, or lose weight, or work out every single day, or have the perfect body and the perfect wardrobe to match. Even if you fit all those requirements, you’re still “pretty for a black girl.” And if, for some reason, you do not fit these requirements, if your hair is frizzy or curly or kinky, if your thighs and ass will always keep your size in the double digits, if your features are not keen, if your skin tone is too deep, then there are many people who will never consider you beautiful.

They will never see who you are.

I remember reading an online conversation where a (presumably white) commenter had said “Well, every where I go, I hear Black is Beautiful!”

And I thought to myself yes, because that has to be stated – over and over again – for people to begin to believe it. The idea that white is beautiful is so common, so throughly saturated in our society, that is does not need mentioning.

It is just fact.

So, in watching the transformation of my friend’s dating habits, I also wonder about the influence of society. Why is it that now is the time he chooses to date white women almost exclusively? Is it because we are approaching the age for marriage and children? Why is it that the women he chooses to consider long term relationships with are always white?

Occasionally, my black woman rage seeps out and I find myself lecturing him. While I am currently on the sidelines of the dating pool, I see my single black female friends who are gorgeous and talented and ambitious and caring and wonderful remain single while my quirky, IBM** on paper best friend brings by white woman after white woman and I just want to know why.

And then it hits me. I don’t really have a problem with him dating white women.

I do have a problem with the specific white women that he is dating.

Back in high school, we were all learning our tastes. So while he dated a seemingly endless stream of girls, of varying races and ethnicities, they all had a few things in common. They were bold, intelligent, and interesting. They had some physical traits in common, but for the most part, the girls he dated back then were defined by their personalities. I remember one girl dyed her blond hair varying colors to match her mood and wore a piece of hardware on a chain around her neck just so she could tell the boys to “suck her nuts.” The other girls from that era were equally as interesting and colorful and I can remember most of their likes and interests.

Contrast that with the women he’s brought me to meet in adulthood. Bland, wan, boring and uninteresting, they sit silently at the table when we go out and do not engage in conversation. They are uniformly thin and chesty. They are prone to dramatic threats when they are feeling ignored, but are otherwise a silent species intent on staring at their own reflections. They drink too much, too often, and often wake up in the throes of regret about something.

Bestboy once showed me a video from CollegeHumor.com called “Amy at the Club.” In the video, the actress is parodying the legions of (white) women who drink to escape their problems, come off as obsessive and strange, and think sexual contact is a quick and easy substitute for conversation.

I couldn’t laugh at the video.

I saw too many of his girlfriends in that parody.

The only difference is the actress is a brunette and his last girlfriend could hold her liquor.

One girl he dated for two years, and she was a nice, sweet girl.

She was also as boring as wallpaper paste.

Bestboy complained about her lack of stimulating conversation and home body habits often, often calling me in frustration after they would fight. When they broke up, I asked him what he saw in her.

He shrugged. “She cooked. And she let me do whatever I wanted in the bedroom.”

The answer irked me, especially as the answer has repeated itself with other women. It is not the fact that he dates white women, but the fact that he seems insistent on dating a stereotype – and specifically, the stereotype that is often attributed to white women: submissive, sexually adventurous, and easily controlled.

As he started to discuss all the things he had asked her to do sexually- things he asked for just because he could – I felt the angry black woman start welling up again. Is that it? Is that all it fucking is? The grand mystique of white girls boils down to passenger seat blow jobs and a girl who will shut up on command? What the fuck?

In that moment, I could completely understand the teeth sucking that happens, the anger that occurs, why so many black women start getting that familiar pain behind the eyes when they see a white woman and a black man linked romantically. It isn’t just about them, in that specific relationship, at that specific point in time.

It is also what that pairing symbolically represents.

The black man, envy of the world, attractive and in control, shunning his darker sisters for a white prize. The white woman, beauty standard world over and desired by all races of man, able to pick and choose any man for the taking.

And black women, mules of the world, once again pull the short end of the straw. We came up short, again. Lost out to a white girl, again. Have yet another subtle reinforcement that even the men who look like us do not find us attractive. Again.***

It’s enough to make a woman consider kicking her best friend down the stairs.

But, I don’t. I inhale deeply and remember that I am loved, remember that there are plenty of men who don’t act or behave this way around white women, remember that there are some people who were able to navigate the treacherous path of stereotypes and fetishes, and manage to come out with love.

Love.

This thing that is so difficult to find, so fleeting, so elusive that it is hard to begrudge anyone who has found it with anyone of their joy. Their love. Their story.

But as I said before, love does not happen in a vacuum. The influences of societal programming run deep. And when I see Bestboy, the question on my mind most often is not why white women, but rather, don’t brown girls deserve love too?

Why don’t you think you’ll be happy with one of us?

I wonder these things. But more often, I wonder about my friend. He isn’t happy, and with each failed relationship, he feels as though he is moving further and further into being a lifelong bachelor. He occassionally voices his sadness aloud, and I hurt for him. Everyone wants to be loved. I’m just worried he’s looking in the wrong place. He’s looking for the woman society holds as beautiful and desirable, the airbrushed and polished trophy, and not the real flesh and blood women that exist in the world.

Women who know who they are. Women of any race.

And I would be happy for him, whoever he finds, of any race, as long as she suits him.

But until then, old habits die hard.

Another Sunday passes, we’re breaking bread at yet another brunch spot, yet another blond walks by and I find myself subconciously scouting for a WoC alternative.

The blonde passes.

“She’s cute,” Bestboy remarks.

“She’s cuter,” I say, inclining my head to a tall desi girl with a cute short bob and wicked earrings.

Bestboy looks at me and sighs. He’s not ready to admit that my racial analysis of his dating life could have some foundation in the truth. But he does recognize that something is wrong.

“Look,” he finally says, “I’m trying, okay?”

I know how he feels.

In my own way, I’m trying too.

—-

*And yes, I told him I was writing this post.

**Ideal Black Man, for those of you who haven’t seen Something New.

***Yes, I am aware this is not true, black men (and men of other races) rushing to our defense. I am exploring the feeling here.

I remember when, the week before I left for college, my parents sat me down to tell me about the facts of life. The lecture wasn’t about sex — my father, a physician, was prone to oversharing the grosser aspects of human anatomy, so I was horrifyingly aware of the mechanical aspects of reproduction as early as elementary school. No, the wisdom they sought to impart related to the Theory of Dating Relativity. Which is to say: The more similar your partner is to you without actually being a blood relative, the better.

Children of close family friends? Perfect. If that’s not possible, try someone whose parents are from the same hometown. Taiwanese is better than mainlander or Hong Konger, Chinese of any type is better than other Asians, but if you must stray outside of Greater China, focus on East Asia before Southeast or South Asia … and so on and so on, in an ever-expanding series of concentric circles.

My parents weren’t being racist (or at least not maliciously so): Their beliefs were shaped by the reality in which they were brought up, and the culture to which they’d immigrated. They’d seen the challenges faced by people in mixed relationships, and they wanted my sister and me to have an easier life. Things weren’t easy for mixed couples in the 1970s, particularly among immigrant groups, where social networks were critical yet fragile, and most community support systems were contingent on “insider” versus “outsider” status.

But have things changed? With last week marking the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the landmark June 12, 1967 Supreme Court decision that upheld the right for men and women of different races to marry, it seemed like an appropriate time to explore that question.

Statistics support the notion that interracial relationships are on the rise in the Asian American community: Mixed couples represented over a quarter of all marriages among Asian Americans in 1980, and over a third of Asian American marriages in 2006. And interracial couples with Asian partners are increasingly depicted in movies, TV and other popular entertainment, to the point where their racial differences are often not even germane to their characters’ storylines.

What many commentators have pointed out, of course, is that both the numbers and popular culture reflect a reality in which only half the Asian American community — the female half — are players. Call it the doubletake test: Seeing an Asian American woman with a non-Asian man is no longer noteworthy, but an Asian American man with a non-Asian woman still turns heads. That gender gap is reflected in interracial marriage statistics as well: According to the U.S. Census’ 2006 update, 19.5 percent of Asian American women outmarry, compared with 7.2 percent of Asian American men. And that, to some, speaks volumes about the sexual desirability and social status of Asian men in America.

As blogger Dialectic wrote on the popular Asian American online forum TheFighting44s (where four out of the top five most popular posts relate to interracial relationships): “If heterosexual white male patriarchy and what it did in the world were not so powerful, I think it would be fair to say that Asian American women and men would be ‘out-dating’ or ‘out-marrying’ at similar rates, and that we wouldn’t elevate whites, denigrate ourselves, or worry about whether we’re sexually and personally worthy of others to nearly the same extent that we do now.”

—From Jeff Yang’s Asian Pop Column, dated June 18, 2008

“I hope he dates a white girl.”

A few years ago a visitor to actor John Cho’s page on the Internet Movie Database left this comment. The commenter, presumably an Asian male, explained that he made the statement because it would serve Asian women right if a desirable Asian male ended up with a white woman, since Asian women so often end up with white men.

At the time, I didn’t make much of the comment. I thought it was the lone view of a person who felt that the women of his race had betrayed him. But more recently, I’ve seen a slew of comments like this one pop up online. Visit Halle Berry’s IMDB page or any site that mentions the baby girl she had with white Canadian model Gabriel Aubry, and you’ll find a series of remarks, left presumably by black women, that not only applaud Berry’s decision to partner with a white man but also express resentment against black men for not committing to black women. Black men are afraid of marriage, dating white women, in jail, “on the down low” or dead, the commenters argue, and, if they wait around for black men to get their act together, they just might end up childless and alone.

Now, I realize that these comments stereotype Asian women and black men, but they beg the question: Do Asian men and black women find themselves in interracial relationships for different reasons than their female and male counterparts, respectively, do? When Asian men and black women date whites, or any other group, is it a way to give the middle finger to those they feel have rejected them or, at the very least, avoid ending up alone?

Before I go on, I want to stress that I know that there are plenty of Asian women available for Asian men to date and plenty of black men available for black women to date (though black women reportedly have the lowest marriage rate of any other group of women), but the perception is that they are being left behind, and perception influences action.

So, if you’re an Asian male or a black female involved in an interracial relationship, do you feel that you’ve in any way been influenced by these perceptions? Also, I would really find it interesting to hear from Asian men involved with black women or vice versa. I’m not proposing this as a solution to everyone’s dating woes, but, as I read the kinds of comments I described above, I couldn’t help but to wonder about this possibility.

Lastly, I’m wondering if Asian men and black women feel that they garner more surprise when they date interracially than their female and male counterparts do? In other words, are people more startled by the sight of an Asian man and a white woman together than they are by the sight of an Asian woman and a white man? The same goes for black women with white men, compared to black men and white women.

(Photo Credit: Akira’s Hip-Hop Shop)

Is it possible to exoticize a member of your own racial group? After catching a screening of “The Visitor” recently, I found myself wondering if this were possible. The Tom McCarthy film is about a dispirited academic who returns to the apartment he shared with his late wife to find a couple living there made up of a Senegalese woman, played by Danai Gurira, and a Syrian man, played by Haaz Sleiman.

At its core, the movie is about how the professor, who is white and nearing retirement, is rejuvenated by his encounter with the young, immigrant couple. But the professor’s personal growth was not at all my focus as I watched “The Visitor.” I was too taken with Gurira, with watching the beautiful, intricate jewelry that hung from her ears and the colorful garments that made her Snickers-colored skin look all the richer, to make the professor’s metamorphosis my first priority.

Watching “The Visitor” I was reminded of a scene from Toni Morrison’s novel Tar Baby. A light-skinned black model named Jadine is stunned by an African woman she sees while grocery shopping. She thinks:

“The vision itself was a woman much too tall. Under her long canary yellow dress Jadine knew there was too much hip, too much bust…, so why was she and everybody else in the store transfixed? The height? The skin like tar against the canary yellow dress…? She would deny it now, but along with everybody else in the market, Jadine gasped…Just a quick snatch of breath before that woman’s woman—that mother/sister/she; that unphotographable beauty—took it all away.”

Unlike Jadine, I’m not going to deny that I was mesmerized by “the vision” of a beautiful African woman, despite being African myself (I have a Nigerian father and an African American mother). After watching “The Visitor,” I’m still trying to process exactly why I had this reaction, and so far I’m pretty sure it’s due to a combination of factors. Firstly, I was struck by the simple appearance of an African woman in a film set in the West. It’s rare to see Africans on the silver screen in a setting outside of Africa, let alone see them not play characters who are victimized by war, AIDS or another atrocity. And even in films set in Africa, the women are usually relegated to the role of wife and, thus, never allowed full character development.

“The Visitor” turns this dynamic on its head to a degree. Yes, Zainab, the character Gurira plays, is a significant other. The movie mostly chronicles her love for her boyfriend, Tarek, but Zainab is developed in the sense that the audience knows about her passion—fashion—that she is introverted and cautious, yet capable of reaching out, that she’s not the type to bite her tongue when her boyfriend grates on her nerves and that she is annoyed by the customers who buy jewelry from her but have no clue about her homeland.

And while Zainab is a significant other, it’s important to note that she’s not a wife, but a love interest. The fact that she’s portrayed as sexually desirable is subversive simply because, as Morrison notes in Tar Baby, African women, mother/sister/she women, the genuine article, if you will, is not supposed to be desired. Such women are supposed to be “unphotographable.” So, yes, seeing the dark-skinned Gurira, with less than an inch of hair on her head, portrayed as anyone’s love interest, especially the love interest of a non-African man, challenges all sorts of cultural norms.

Interestingly enough, though, McCarthy doesn’t make a huge deal of the interracial romance between Zainab and Tarek, both of whom are Muslims. The most attention given to the interracial pairing is during a scene in which Tarek’s mother meets Zainab for the first time and is surprised that she is black and “very black” at that, but that is all. The mother’s only objection, and it is an implied objection, about Zainab’s relationship with her son is that the two were living together, a religious no-no. Overall, the characters’ Muslim background and immigrant status seem to outweigh their racial differences. And, in a post-9/11 world, a world in which the fact that Barack Obama’s estranged father was born into a Muslim family is a liability, it’s definitely refreshing to see Muslims shown as three-dimensional, loving people. It’s also refreshing to see McCarthy challenge the trend of depicting interracial couples as if they are exclusively made up of one white and one non-white person.

That said, “The Visitor” is by no means perfect. A cogent argument can be made that its immigrant characters function solely to bring about the white professor’s personal transformation. But the ground the film breaks throughout more than compensates for this. So, if you haven’t already, catch a screening of “The Visitor.”

* The title of this post is taken from the Duke Ellington song, not the drink.

Updated: The character in the movie is named Zainab. Thanks Lisa!

Interracial and interethnic dating has as much, if not more, to do with “Family Matters” as my own family. So, in order to try to describe the experience of being in an interethnic relationship, I have to first evaluate the culture popping up all around me. Grab some Cheez Puffs or chicharrones, put aside your distaste for cheesy, alliterative snack food references, and let’s get to this.

Should you ever feel inclined to Google “Interracial Dating,” as I do not do often on a Tuesday night, you’ll find a lot of dating sites aimed at hooking you up with someone of another race. Not information about interracial dating, not tirades against it, not advice, not thoughtful writing on the subject, but, rather, dating sites with names like “Salt and Pepper.” Discovering this made a little light blink on and off in my mind’s eye reading “Fetish! Fetish! Fetish!” I’ll admit to feeling conflicted about interracial dating as it relates to the fetishization of a group. Who am I to make the distinction between preference and prejudice? That concern always takes the form of a certain cringe I’m never without when thinking about the subject, but when I see evidence of people actively going out and searching for someone of another, specific race or ethnicity, well. That action toes the very fine line between personal preference and …and what, exactly?

This isn’t racism in the traditional sense of hating or fearing a group of people, but there does seem to be the impression that the fetishized group is somehow either aesthetically or sexually superior to other groups or that, taking that a step further, they are somehow subhuman, objectified, interchangeable receptacles for sex and attention. I don’t want to advocate the idea that there are different levels of racism, but this particular brand is so hurtful because it occurs so subtly and, for the most part, disguised as a compliment. When a man who is darker than me compliments me on the paleness of my skin, as I often encounter with Latino men, it insults and devalues both of us. I’m reduced to my body parts, and he buys into the idea that white skin is inherently beautiful. And I am left feeling disgusting. Utterly, completely disgusting. Because I am both a victim and a perpetuator of this ongoing war against people’s skin. Why don’t I find this man attractive? Is it his look? His attitude? His beliefs? Am I also guilty of fetishizing, of being racist? How am I implicated in all of this; what is the level of my culpability?

So, when I approach a subject like interracial or interethnic dating, I have to first question those who seek it out and the motives for why people enter into such couplings. People, as it turns out, like me. “Love! We’re in love!” is the simple answer coming from couples tightly clasping hands. But, you know. That’s just not good enough. Love means different things for different cultures, at different points in a historical timeline, for people of different ages.

Chemistry, then, makes sense to me. Pheromones and closeness and, in some cases, an open bar featuring really cold Vodka on a really warm night. Attraction makes sense to me, but, like love, it’s never simple and never exists in isolation from the culture we live in. TV commercials, catalogues, perfume ads, romantic comedies, heroes and heroines in coming-of-age novels – these have all had a part in coloring, literally and figuratively, my idea of what is attractive. And, although I am attracted to wit and personality and thoughtfulness, those are not things that will necessarily make me cross the line from friends to… half of a couple, clasping hands, yelling “Love! We’re in love!” despite my inability to intellectualize that impulse.

I have been asked whether I think that minorities, especially women, choose white partners once they have reached a certain level of success, monetarily and/or socially. To which I respond, “Sure. Maybe. Sometimes?” I think, however, that while this may prove true for some couples, a lot of interracial and interethnic couplings are more the result of being raised in, and thus being more comfortable with, a culture that is created by and caters to White Americans. In my own family, my two youngest aunts, one of whom was born in the U.S. and the other who moved here when she was a toddler, have both married Anglo men. And, true! They do happen to be very successful women, in terms of their careers. But they also happened to have grown up immersed in American culture, with American friends and American TV shows that presented a picture of what relationships should be like – an ideal that is different from the ideal my Cuban grandmothers and Spanish great-grandmothers were raised with.

Having grown up in Miami, I feel like I’ve been raised in – at least – two different worlds. As such, I’ve gotten to sample what I like and what I don’t care for in terms of relationships. I know that a lot of what I don’t particularly care for are qualities most often associated with machismo. While I understand this is a cultural construct and not something inherent in Latino men, it is ingrained in the Latino community in ways both subtle and explicit. It’s a concept that is nurtured and intensified in places like, say, Miami, where, more and more, people are expected to, and often do, behave according to socially mandated roles that I have always found ill-fitting. That particular identity, a Miami Latina as I had felt it had been defined for me, was not something I wanted.

So, I don’t find it terribly surprising or groundbreaking that I’m dating a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. We’ve grown up watching the same cartoons; we speak in the same highly complex code formed of song lyrics, movie references, web comic characters and internet memes. And we both like spicy chicken sandwiches. We have a common language and enough cultural touchstones between us to bind us together. You guys. It’s love.

My family, however, is a different story. It’s not that they are necessarily put off by my insistence (as they see it) on dating a non-Latino, it’s that they worry for me and that worry manifests itself in a way that makes me want to scream.

The funny (horrible) thing is, I would never have been able to predict their reactions to my boyfriend. But Americanness is seen as something so far removed from their own identity and experience, that they seem to fear I’m stepping into some void from which I’ll never return. When, in truth, this stepping across occurred the first time I watched, enraptured, as Mr. Rogers traded one sweater for another and tearfully joined Feivel, singing “Somewhere Out There” entirely by heart. I was already long gone. It wasn’t that I never felt Cuban or Latina, it was that I never knew what it meant to feel these things. I was into books and TV shows and oldies. Pop culture didn’t include salsa music or flan or Noche Buena dinners. These were part of my childhood narrative, sure, but they weren’t the guiding factors. I didn’t realize I was supposed to be Latina until I took a summer course in Spain and was promptly informed that I did not resemble or act like Jennifer Lopez. Seriously?

But back to my family. I was asked, half-jokingly why my uterus was not yet brimming over with future Cubans. I smiled demurely while inhaling two margaritas and a beer. “I’m practicing,” I slurred. My family, very kindly, ignored me. Then I was grilled about my boyfriend.

“Is he Cuban?”

“Nope.”

“But he’s Catholic?”

“Hiccup.”

A worried pause. I crammed one or seven nacho chips into my mouth.

“Is he…?”

“Mmmf?”

“The J word?”

The string of expletives that immediately swirled around my alcohol-soaked brain was decidedly Cuban.

But what can I do? I know my family loves me, completely and unequivocally, and have what they see as my best interests at heart, always. I know they care that my boyfriend and I are bonded together by common values. They want him to respect me, all of me, and that includes my Cuban family and my identity as a Cuban-American. I know the idea of racial or ethnic purity pales (God, whatever) in comparison to a common set of values and morals.

But.

Therein lies the disconnect. My values are complicated. They have much to do with my upbringing, sure. I would never deny that. But my upbringing has been shaped by more than being Cuban, than eating purée de malanga for dinner and being doused with Agua de Violetas after bath-time or being able to recognize a photo of Jose Marti before I could name the President of the United States. My upbringing is also the Mr. Clean jingle and The Ninja Turtles and Full House and the Babysitters Club series. And although these things may not be definitely American, they are definitely White, Upper-Middle Class America, no matter who consumes and enjoys them. They are, as it so happens, definitely me. And while I’m sure many Cuban-American boys in Miami and elsewhere carry around the same cultural reference guide, I haven’t met one. I met a guy who happens to be White, who happens to be Protestant and who happens to speak the same language I do. That’s just what happened in this particular episode.

A few years ago, I lived in an apartment with my then-boyfriend and his best friend. Oftentimes, my now-ex worked nights, so a lot of the more domestic chores fell to me and the roommate to complete.

Me and Roomie eventually fell into the habit of walking to the grocery store every so often, to pick up supplies and get some exercise. This idea started out fine. But over time, Roomie and I noticed a strange happening every time we got close to the store. Apparently, the sight of a tall white man with reddish hair laughing and talking with a tallish black girl was enough to render some people speechless.

Then, the staring started.

First, it was just one older black man on a park bench watching us walk by intently.

The next time, it was a group of black men sitting outside the Caribou Coffee.

Another time, the grocery store staff fell completely silent as we approached. Six black men silently voiced their disapproval. Six sets of eyes followed Roomie into the grocery store with me. I saw Roomie tense up until we were out of their sight.

After that trip, Roomie quietly informed me that he didn’t want to walk to the grocery store anymore.

I’ve thought of this scenario often over the years, because it tends to underscore the assumptions and ideas surrounding interracial dating. A lot of the more visible or outward reactions are based strongly in the assumptions we make about the participants in IR Relationships.

So, let’s begin our conversation here – what are some of the most common assumptions about interracial relationships?

No need to challenge these assumptions just yet – let’s just get the major assumptions out there.

—

A note: All comments are subject to Sulyp’s Rule #3, which is: Keep posts “Informative, Kind, and Truthful”. If it’s not two of the three, evaluate whether or not you really should post it. Also, phrase your words carefully – anything unnecessarily hurtful will be deleted.