Interracial/cultural dating. Any experiences to share?

[Sanman]

I've done a lot of inter-racial dating. I'm South Asian, but was born and raised around NYC. I've dated white women, black women, Muslim/ middle eastern women, even met a few Latin women. I've also dated South Asian women that were raised over there and only came to the U.S. for school/work. East Asian women don't seem to be that into me generally, so no luck there. Usually, South Asian women are the most into me because I am not "typical" and they like that. Since my cultural identity is a real mix of Asian and American, I find that both ends of the spectrum require some work and nothing ever really "fits" very well. Those South Asians that are more conservative or did not grow up here do not have the same memories and enjoy the same things. I often tell my friends that we may share the same culture, but she has no idea why I get excited when I find a $ 0.99 Tupac, Nirvana, or STP CD at a thrift shop. On the other hand, the American women I date don't understand why meeting my parents is not a more casual affair, my dietary restrictions, or other cultural issues. Either way, dating is a bit more work on both ends to make things work well. However, short of meeting the ideal South Asian chick that is from NYC, slightly nerdy, slightly rebellious, and a lot fun I don't really have a choice.

[Ruby Slippers]

I dated a black man briefly, someone who had only ever dated outside his own race, and both our families gave us crap about it. I couldn't believe it. He told me that when he showed his mom a picture of me, she sighed and said, "When are you going to bring home a nice black girl?" And my dad and brothers were all suspicious and basically asked me WTF I was thinking. This had no bearing on us not seeing each other anymore, but it sure didn't help us feel good about things.

 

People can be so ignorant.

[Mrlonelyone]

@Ruby and others.

 

I like to think of it in terms of social pressures. There are positive or affirmative pressures. There are negative or discouraging pressures.

 

Relationships are a combination of social pressures and the forces between two people that bind them together.

 

An interracial relationship has to have strong enough internal bonds to resist the external negative social pressures or it will not survive.

 

A real world scenario where this is revealed.

 

Couple one is intra racial, say white and white. Couple one has to approval of their families and society at large. So when couple one has problems couple one gets support aimed at helping them stay together. People give couple one respect and support and councils them on how to stay together. Last they are given subtle shows of support in the form of being welcome at family gatherings and both families getting along. This makes the couples bond stronger.

 

Couple two is interracial... say a black man and a white woman. Couple two has only partial approval from their families...maybe has been estranged from one or both families. So couple two either has no support from family or their family actively undermines them.

 

Couple two has relatives who while they are married will have nothing to do with them.

 

Couple two has relatives who while they are married will try to get them to cheat, actively trying to break up the interracial marriage.

 

Couple two has people who will argue over how their children should identify.

 

Couple two is subject to subtle shows of disrespect and disregard from looks to comments, to vicious gossip.

 

In short couple one has positive social pressure pressing them together.. while couple two has negative social pressure trying to pull them apart. It takes real guts and mettle to have an open interracial relationship. To be honest I would say that even now a gay couple walking down the street gets less flack than an interracial couple.

 

 

@Zengirl

 

(The following said in a calm but firm voice.)

 

The thing is it is not just about class now or ever. A black person in the south could be a doctor yet in the pre 1960's south that doctor had to step off the sidewalk and walk in the (sometimes horse crap filled) street if a white person approached them. They could not even look them in the eye.

 

Oh and did I tell you about how Emmet Till got lynched for flirting with a white woman?

 

That wasn't about class that was about skin color. If Emmet Till had been a millionaire he still would have been hung for talking to that white woman.

 

Those memories are still fresh and raw for us. Just as fresh and raw as Japanese atrocities are for Koreans. I for one would not dare try to tell them their feelings on that matter were about anything but nationality. Pay our history the same respect please.

[zengirl]

I don't know that I pay any sins of the past much respect, to be honest. I can understand how they impact things, but if someone wants me to feel guiltyabout it or be excluded in some way, whether it is because I'm seemingly white or because some of my Japanese lineage pillaged Korea. . . I just don't. And never will. Not sure what you're getting at there, MrLonelyone, or what you mean by 'pay our history the same respect.' I'm happy to learn history and how its shaped a society, surely, but I'm not sure what that has to do with openess vs. not. Nor am I sure how you can say these things and then claim Black and White America are basically the same culture; it seems counterintuitive to what you're saying.

[Mrlonelyone]

Zengirl

 

I don't want you to feel gulilty and neither do your students.

 

We simply want you to understand that by not being black you cannot know what it's like to be black any more than we can know what it's like to be Asian+white.

[zengirl]

Zengirl

 

I don't want you to feel gulilty and neither do your students.

 

We simply want you to understand that by not being black you cannot know what it's like to be black any more than we can know what it's like to be Asian+white.

 

I didn't think my students wanted me to feel guilty. They're teenagers. They couldn't care less about that stuff, really. I just wasn't sure what your point was there.

 

And my point was no other group of people (racial or cultural), except MAYBE strongly traditional Middle Eastern men when I was visiting there (but I was there such a short time, hard to say) has ever told me "You can't get it. You're not ______________." They've all tried to have me get whatever version of it I could get. So, this to me has become a defining characteristic of black culture in the U.S. (I have a friend who is black and from Britian and does not understand this at all either, for obvious reasons. He gets it even less than I do, though people wouldn't tell him he didn't get it, instinctually.) I don't really care, at this point, that they do that. But then to say that black and white America are "the same" seems odd to me (the point I was originally making that your posts always seem to stray from). To me, they really don't seem like, culturally, they are quite the same---though neither is ALL of black America or ALL of white America; there are definitely pockets.

[Mrlonelyone]

Zengirl. Let me put it in physical terms for you.

 

Our Sun is closest to a star that is 4 light years away. That is Trillions of miles away a cold, dark distance that we could not cross right now in hundreds of generations.

 

Yet in comparison to the distance to other stars 10 20 50 100 light years away... that star is close.

 

Black and white culture are kinda like that. We have the same language, religion, foods, Tv, music, clothing, laws, mores, folkways etc. With relatively minor differences.

 

YET over those differences we have fought with eachother in the streets and in battlefields.

 

OR consider the culture of India VS the culture of Pakistan. To the outside their cutlures look very very similar yet they are pointing thermonuclear bombs at eachother. Yet still when brought here to america who do they choose to live next door to? People from India or Pakistan only when coming here do they see how similar they really are.

[Bettylou]

I'm mixed race and all my relationships have been with "white" guys.

 

I'm currently in a six year relationship with my boyfriend.

[zengirl]

Zengirl. Let me put it in physical terms for you.

 

Our Sun is closest to a star that is 4 light years away. That is Trillions of miles away a cold, dark distance that we could not cross right now in hundreds of generations.

 

Yet in comparison to the distance to other stars 10 20 50 100 light years away... that star is close.

 

Black and white culture are kinda like that. We have the same language, religion, foods, Tv, music, clothing, laws, mores, folkways etc. With relatively minor differences.

 

YET over those differences we have fought with eachother in the streets and in battlefields.

 

OR consider the culture of India VS the culture of Pakistan. To the outside their cutlures look very very similar yet they are pointing thermonuclear bombs at eachother. Yet still when brought here to america who do they choose to live next door to? People from India or Pakistan only when coming here do they see how similar they really are.

 

As someone who's lived in several parts of this world, I disagree that distance is the deciding factor of similarity of cultures. I still find your assertions in this thread contrary to each other, and I think you are assuming other countries are much more different from us than they honestly are, in most cases.

[Mrlonelyone]

@Zengirl

 

I was using distance in space as a metaphor.

 

I also said that black and white culture share the same ( or mostly the same) mores, folkways, laws, customs, clothing, religion, food, music, entertainment, etc.

 

In other words they are close, metaphorically, the way we are to Alpha centauri... when compared to those cultures differences from cultures that don't share any of those things I listed.

[zengirl]

@Zengirl

 

I was using distance in space as a metaphor.

 

I also said that black and white culture share the same ( or mostly the same) mores, folkways, laws, customs, clothing, religion, food, music, entertainment, etc.

 

In other words they are close, metaphorically, the way we are to Alpha centauri... when compared to those cultures differences from cultures that don't share any of those things I listed.

 

And yet I'm saying you've said many things that CONTRADICT this. You cannot tell me "I don't get it" in one breath and then say we share most of our culture in the next. I just find that completely unfair and absurd.

[Mrlonelyone]

It's possible to share much culture yet not get what someone else feels.

 

Riddle me this.

 

Can a man who's 100% gender identified as a man in every way get what it's like to be a woman in the same exact culture? Or will a man who's 100% ID'd as a man just never really understand what it's like for a woman in his culture.

 

The races are as different from eachother as men are from women...

[zengirl]

I feel like you're prone to tangents, so I won't address the inaccuracies there, re: gender metaphor, because I'm already quite tired of this discussion and repeating myself. I will simply say that you cannot say two cultures are inherently very similar and then say there is still a lack of understanding between them. A lack of understanding is a MAJOR difference, culturally speaking. Again, I think you assume cultural differences are vaster than they are. The difference between solidly black communities, solidly white communities, and then the sort of mixed up race-doesn't-matter-so-much-anymore communities (I would say this is where many educated, urban people do fall, and it's all it's own cultural identity) are pretty vast in the U.S. I experience as much 'culture shock' in the American South between different groups -- if not more -- as I have traveling to foreign countries. So, I continue to repeat, your premise is flawed in calling them essentially the 'same' culture.

 

American culture is hard to define because it is very much NOT homogeneous (and there are countries -- many -- that have fairly homogeneous culture; not everywhere is like the U.S. in this way).

[mr.dream merchant]

I'm actually tri-racial. Mixed with Indian, African American, and Native American. Most of the time, it's women who ask me about my ethnicity. As far as the most available, it'd go to African American women (they are honestly the easiest to bed for me). But nonetheless, I tend to blend in with most races except for Asian. This works to my benefit, as women of most races do find me generally attractive. But I have a personal issue with non-African American women who have a fetish for African American men. Guess it's just experiences with one or two....or three women. :/ Honestly speaking here, they strike me as typically loose women who are heavily into the mainstream Rap culture that the media pumps out by the tons. This culture doesn't promote too much sophistication nor women having self-respect for themselves. And generally, women into this culture portray just that - lack of respect and sophistication. My two cents.

[Mrlonelyone]

@Zengirl

 

It's not a tangent it's a metaphor.

 

A woman can't know what it's like to be a man and a man can't know what it's like to be a woman (leaving out of course transgender people or those who otherwise gender bend)

 

A white person canot know what it's like to be black or in your case a white+Asian can't know what it's like.

 

Read the book "Black like me". It's about a white man who used a medication to make himself look very dark skinned and his travels through the southern US.

 

Do what he did and you will get it. Until then you won't. Or at least until you have the humility to listen.

 

@mrdreammerchant

 

I have the same sort of background racially as you and I have noticed the same things about some of the white women I have dealt with. Especially the hip hop culture thing. That is most true of women who haven't had a great deal of direct experience with black people. White people who know black people directly and personally know better than to think hip hop culture represents black culture at all.

 

The way my father puts it, he dealt with allot of white women before my mother who is also triracial, "They would talk to me with a phony southern accent and the truth is they don't want a black man they want a ni**er."

 

These women act one way around you because they don't really take you or any other black man seriously. They want to "experience" a "black" man or they want to just have some fun with you. They may even want to have your baby... that does not even mean they want to have you.

 

The black man much like the blonde woman has to contend with being a fetish object to allot of people.

[mr.dream merchant]

From past experience, and things around me, most Non-African American women tend to perpetuate the hype about African American men being in better physical shape and well endowed. So to see and hear these women say things like that, it only further makes them look like a loose/trashy woman. The same goes for non-African American women with the thugged out "hood" African American men. I honestly just shake my head, it's as if they view African American men as some kind of fashion statement, and are only opening their legs just to be "in". Disgusting.

[MissJoness]

Im not sure if other races would be attracted to me being darkskin with kinky hair and all. It's already bad enough within my own community with black men having a preference for anything that is light with long hair...so I dont know if I would even have success if I dated out. I do see more interracial couples when I go out between black men and white women...just makes me feel kinda down cause there's hardly any good men to go around already

[zengirl]

@ Mrlonelyone, your whole post here is a tangent. My point remains that you are saying contradictory things. If there is something that is cultural and cannot be "gotten" then there is a pretty HUGE cultural divide, is my point. Yet you state that all American culture is 'the same.'

 

I'm not going to go to any lengths to "get it" and I don't really care if I do, or if a particular culture wants to "let me in." If they don't, they don't. I'm not losing sleep over it. This has just been my experience. In my experience, this is not true of MOST cultures either. I've been allowed in to many cultures that are not my own without having to be humbled or feel some sort of humility in order to do so. I'm very willing to listen, but I'm sick of tangents against the actual POINT I raised ages ago. You continue to be tangential. My point was you are illustrating the opposite of what you said --- you are illustrating that black culture is a very distinct culture in America and that not all American cultures are the same, particularly this one.

Edited April 25, 2011 by zengirl

[Mrlonelyone]

@mr.dream.merchant.

 

This is something I have spoken of here on LS before. Allot of non black women, who don't have personal direct experience with black people, think that a man who's all of what you said is "authentic". An authentically black man would be "hood" and thugged out and yes more than likely dark skinned but not necessarily.

 

I honestly think that Pdiddy and Kanye West would not be Authentic enough for some since they lack a serious criminal record.

 

@MissJoness

 

Your not alone in that observation. Statistically most black white interracial marriages are black man white woman.

 

That said I have had two german teachers in my life and both were married to black women. DARK black women. So it could be an american thing. In Europe you would have an easier time of things.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#Gender_Disparities

 

The table of census Bureau stats are very revealing.

[Mrlonelyone]

@Zengirl

 

IT's NOT CULTURAL IT"S ABOUT SKIN COLOR. THAT'S WHAT YOU DON'T GET. ugh.

[MissJoness]

I wish I could move to Europe maybe my self esteem would be a lot better there..

[zengirl]

@Zengirl

 

IT's NOT CULTURAL IT"S ABOUT SKIN COLOR. THAT'S WHAT YOU DON'T GET. ugh.

 

And that forms a culture if you make it a significant difference in your view or if society does. That's what you don't get.

[Mrlonelyone]

Here is something that you all may find interesting the case of Jack Johnson and his white women.

 

When he won the heavyweight title there were race riots. Anti Black pogroms really. The search for a "great white hope" started after him.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(boxer)

 

In fact after his marriages to white women laws were passed against black men transporting white women across state lines. A proposed constitutional amendment read....

 

No brutality, no infamy, no degradation in all the years of southern slavery, possessed such villainious character and such atrocious qualities as the provision of the laws of Illinois, Massachusetts, and other states which allow the marriage of the negro, Jack Johnson, to a woman of Caucasian strain. [applause]. Gentleman, I offer this resolution ... that the States of the Union may have an opportunity to ratifty it. ...

 

Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant to the very principles of Saxon government. It is subversive of social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation a conflict as fatal as ever reddened the soil of Virginia or crimsoned the mountain paths of Pennsylvania. ... Let us uproot and exterminate now this debasing, ultra-demoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy

—Congressional Record, 62d. Congr., 3d. Sess., December 11, 1912, pp. 502–503

Those being the words of congressman Seaborn Roddenbery

 

No intellectually honest person can deny that the black man white woman combination has a certain special place in American history. Just to prove that white male with a black woman was also persecuted I submit this.

 

To the tune of "Yankee Doodle"

 

Of all the damsels on the green.

On mountain or in valley.

A lasso luscious ne'er was seen

As Monticellian Sally.

 

Yankee doodle who's the noodle

what wife was quite so handy,

to breed a flock of slaves for stock,

A blackamorr's the dandy.

 

Search every town and city through,

Search market, street, and alley;

No dame at dusk shall meet your view,

So yeilding as my Sally.

 

Yankee doodle...etc.

 

When press'd by loads of state afairs

I see to sport and dally

The sweetest solace of my cares

Is in the lap of Sally.

 

Yankee doodle..etc

Yet yankee parsons preach their worst-

Let Tory Wittling's rally!

You men of morals and be curst,

you would snap like sharks for Sally.

 

Yankee doodle etc.

 

She's black you tell me--grant she be--

Must colour always tally?

Black is loves's proper hue for me -

And white's the hue for Sally.

 

What though she by the glands secretes;

Must I stand shil-I shall-I

tuck'd up between a pair of sheets

There's no perfueme like Sally.

 

You call her slave and pray were slaves

Made only for the galley?

Try for yourselves, ye witless knaves-

Take each to bed your Sally.

 

Yankee doodle, who's the noodle?

Wine's vapid, tope me brandy --

For still I find to breed my kind

A negro-wench the dandy!

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=c4VT7_0NbxUC&pg=PA355&lpg=PA355&dq=jefferson+thomas+yankee+doodle&source=bl&ots=f9pxRG3HyB&sig=984f6kLXnpIptpY5kGXAZQr0_z0&hl=en&ei=_dO0TfLHLaHw0gGhxZWzCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

... it goes on and gets raunchy even by our standards. That was written during the first term of Thomas Jefferson about his well known relationship with Sally Hemmings. So much for the idea that a lonley slave massa could have sex with his slaves with no social consequences.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Mrlonelyone
To quote the full "slanderous" but apprently true dirty yankee doodle.

[zengirl]

@Zengirl

 

IT's NOT CULTURAL IT"S ABOUT SKIN COLOR. THAT'S WHAT YOU DON'T GET. ugh.

 

Furthermore, on this, race is a cultural construct. It does not biologically exist, really (obviously pigmentation is biological phenomena but race is not a biological descriptor). So, unless we're discussing how pigmentation affects the human bodies (sunburn protection?), we're talking about culture when we discuss skin color. I don't see how you separate the two.