There is an interesting discussion on one of my online groups about racism and interracial dating. I think the general idea most people have is that anyone who would date outside of their own ethnic group could not be prejudiced, much less racist. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because you love someone of a difference ethnicity does not necessarily mean that you can not be prejudiced or racist. My parents are different ethnicities and I would definitely say they are both biased and prejudiced. My mom definitely feels superior to the average black person and often refers to my black step-father as "ignorant". Which he is in many ways. I think she was attracted to my father-her first black husband partially because he is black. My mom grew up in a very small all-white yuppie community. Her mother-my maternal grandmother-was a "boater" from Norway and extremely snobby. She felt that farmers were beneath her, I can only begin to imagine how she felt about blacks. My mom and grandmother often knocked-heads and ideas. My grandmother was fairly openminded and liberal for her time and area. She rejected traditional Christianity with its fire and brimstone policy and instead focused more on meditation and Jesus' true message of love and acceptance. She gave money to the Black Panthers out of Chicago when they came to her door collecting long before my mother met my black father. In her own way I think she very much supported the Civil Rights Movement. I think she just had no real interest in it involving her family. My mother, who went to college even though she did not have the grades for it; who worked 12 hour-a-day shifts at the local truck stop diner while going to community college until she had raised her grades enough to qualify for the university and until she could save enough money to go and until she could get someone to sign for her to get student loans-my grandmother had refused to help her. She wanted my mom to marry and settle down with a family. My mom defied her mother and put herself through college. Their relationship was never easy and as both a daughter and the mother of a daughter I can understand how that happens. My mom saved $1,000.00 dollars and my uncle-her older brother-signed for her to get college loans after he returned from the Vietnam War. My mom still had mediocre grades and her first choice for university-Western Michigan-rejected her telling her she was just not college material. She persisted and eventually Central Michigan accepted her and she enrolled to finish her bachelors degree. There she met my father. My grandmother used to say that there were only 50 black students on the entire campus and of course my mother would find one to marry. My mother has a more romantic view of it. She says my father was on the football team and somewhat glamorous and she sang with the school choir and they started dating. He asked her out because he said she looked like some semi-famous folk singer-the name escapes my memory right now. He walked her home and rather than making out with her infront of the dorms like all of the other couples, he pulled her behind a tree for privacy and out of respect for her reputation. My father is a couple of years younger than my mom and I think in the beginning he loved her more than she loved him. She told me once that after they had been dating for awhile he asked her to marry him everyday for a whole year. She says she always said no because he was from the city-Detroit-and she was from the country and she did not think that would ever work. She also told me that when she took him to meet her family she had never told them he was black-she claims she forgot that, she just saw him as a person and never as black. I believed her for many years. However, as I grew older and saw my mom more realistically and lived in this country I began to see how untrue that was. I also saw how typical it was of my mom-who is the Queen of deNile-to never acknowledge anything she does not wish to see. I can only begin to imagine what that must have been like for my father. Here it was the 60's the height of the Civil Rights Movement-he was a native son of Detroit but his parents were children of the south and so I know he knew what it meant to be black in an all white area. He goes to meet my mothers family and they think he is lost and looking for directions. It was bad. Niether of them have ever gone into a whole lot of detail, but I have gathered that my aunt M-the middle sister and my uncle, both were quite rude and racist to him. I highly doubt my grandmother was any nicer. I am sure my mom tried to smooth it over by largely ignoring the difficulties-choosing not see them as only my mom can. She told me that my grandmother begged her not to marry him and asked her to come home and think about it first. She did come home, for a whole year after she had finished college while my father finished. At end of that year, in January after my father graduated from college, she married him in the chapel on campus. She told me that many of her white friends dated black men, though she was the only one of two couples that actually married black men. She thought by the time I was born and grew up the whole country would be mixed and I would be the rule rather than the exception. She also told me that when she was pregnant with me her mother convinced her that I would be born with mostly white skin with dark patches. Like that skin disease that some blacks have where they have no pigmentation in their skin in certain places. She said that although she knew in her heart that was not the case she still worried about it a lot. She said my uncle-her big brother-who has always been somewhat of a hero for her showed her pictures and studies where that was not true at all. Well, I was born, pretty darn white and I think my mom was relieved in her secret heart of hearts. Eventually she and my father divorced and my mom dated men mostly white for a while. Once I was an adult she confided in me that many white men liked her but were uncomfortable with her having been married to a black man and having a black child. She even told me about an Italian man she dated who teased her about black men being so good in the sack and how she had not had good sex until she had sex with an Italian. However, apparently he was so nervous about how he would measure in comparison to a black man that he was unable to perform. My uncle also was not very nice to her about being a 30 year divorcee' with a black ex-husband and child. Even going so far as to say no white man would have her. That was not true at all, but my mom chose to stay in the city where I could be near my father and other black people. I have to give my mom credit for that as it could not have been easy for her. She told me once that shortly after she and my father divorced an opening with the state near her mom and her home town became available and she seriously considering applying for it and moving home. She did not and I am always grateful for it. I shudder to think what my life would have been like being raised in an all white community like that. Either way she re-married another black man and had my middle sister who has darker skin than me but has white hair like my mom's. Neither of us look like her-we both are the spitting image of our respective fathers-and she was often confused for my social worker. She says that when I was in grade school I even lied and told other kids I had a black mother-I have no memory of this at all. I wonder what that must have felt like for her to be so completely absorbed into black culture. I know she often caught flack from her black female co-workers, many of whom were unmarried and very angry about white women "stealing" their men. She weathered it all and I think it was healthier for my self-esteem. My close friend who is also biracial with a black father and white mother was raised in small all white areas and was ostracized for it. She has never seriously dated a black man and all of her children have white fathers and she considers them to be white. She has told me some of what it was like-never having a boyfriend, never being considered attractive, actually over hearing conversations of boys talking about how they would NEVER date a black girl-yuck. For many she years she did not associate with black people and I think to this day she considers herself as white as I consider myself black. Surely there is a healthy middle ground but it is difficult to find in this country where issues of race are more than myth and it seems like every issue has clearly defined side-no shades of gray or I guess in this case tan. For my fathers part he never said much about his experiences married to a white woman. He did tell me once that he was afraid when my mom was pregnant with me that I would be one of the mixed kids with red hair and freckles and he finds that very unattractive. He need not have worried. I am simply a lighter female version of himself. He never said what his family thought about it. To my knowledge neither of his two brothers nor his younger sister ever dated anything other than black people. He once told me that he would never date another white woman and when I dated a white man seriously for a few years he told me it would not be what I thought it was and that I would not like it. He was right. It was not what I thought it would be and I found myself more worn out by issues of race than I would have believed possible. Yet I still date based on personality and not color.
I have my own prejudices and I have dated men of about every ethnic group. I think people can see the person they are dating as an exception to the rule. Or see them and love them inspite of their ethnicity. I am not sure that is such a good thing. I have many co-workers at work tell me I am not really black. I am "really black" I just do not fit their stereotype of black and instead of seeing their stereotypes as faulty they see me as different. This has also been the case with different men I have dated. I have dated white men who thought it was sexy or erotic to be dating a "sister". I even had one guy tell me he was kind of turned by the fact that I was black and asked if him being white turned me on. Needless to say that was a one date wonder as the idea of him being white most definitely did NOT turn me on. I have dated black men who have informed me they ONLY date "light skinned" women with "good hair". I tend to date neither of these types once I hear that as I find both sentiments equally distasteful. The problem is I am socialized to be black and that is my comfort level and preference. I was raised in Detroit and my preferences are black in many ways. Yet, I am different as a pagan and Buddhist and witch and sci fi/fantasy nerd and more recently as a vegetarian than the average black woman. I still ultimately define myself as black yet most black men who would be interested in a woman like me are already dating white woman and so it is seems likely I will end up with a non-black man, in all honesty, probably a white man. Interesting how life develops.
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!