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<p>You do, if it’s your children who are treated differently from others because their parents are of two different backgrounds.</p>
<p>Well, I also don’t want to smash the Southerners, either. Notice my screenname and location: here I am in BUffalo, but grew up in Maryland. My dad volunteered as a civil rights lawyer in Mississippi in l964, 65 and was kidnapped at gunpoint there for an hour by white toughs not wanting anyone to disrupt the racial “balance”. My dad was released, others not so lucky those summers (Goodman, Schwerner, Cheney; Viola Liuzo…). </p>
<p>Although the South was tough, and probably still is, I also recall Martin Luther King writing that the worst racism he ever encountered in his work in the Civil Rights Movement was not in the South… but in Chicago! I lived around Boston for awhile and heard racism there that made me weep with frustration. It was said in sophisticated, coded phrases, however. </p>
<p>In those days (in case it carried forward), MLK said that in the North, it didn’t matter (to white people) “how high” a black person rose in society, just not get “too close.”
By contrast, in the rural South, white families knew black families well and by name (so they were “close”) but felt threatened at any black person rising above them (“High”) in education, income, political stature, and so on. </p>
<p>So I really don’t want to exclude the North from having leftover bad attitudes about race relations! </p>
<p>As well, if white male students post that they find Asian girls hot, I’m not sure that’s the entire evidence of racial equality, either.</p>
<p>There’s a long way to go everywhere. I am impressed, however, that the upcopming generation of milennial students (now h.s. and college age, a bit beyond…) is the least racist of any of the people I know. So I have much hope in YOUR generation (speaking to the OP) to transcend these prejudices, all the while maintain an active interest in the history and traditions of each people and culture. Learn, admire, appreciate others without expecting them to give up a heritage, either. Can a couple extend mutual respect to each other? You tell me…I hope so.</p>
<p>I’ve also found that when people can’t cope with their own thoughts and feelings, they project that onto what “other people think” or “what will happen to the children.”</p>
<p>That’s a way of avoiding confronting one’s own biases, as an adult, to fob prejudice off on “others.”</p>
<p>paying3tuitions said: <<there’s a=“” long=“” way=“” to=“” go=“” everywhere.=“” i=“” am=“” impressed,=“” however,=“” that=“” the=“” upcopming=“” generation=“” of=“” milennial=“” students=“” (now=“” h.s.=“” and=“” college=“” age,=“” bit=“” beyond…)=“” is=“” least=“” racist=“” any=“” people=“” know.=“”>></there’s></p>
<p>I concur completely. My D attends a very diverse (about 60% African-American/Black and 40% White/Asian/Hispanic) urban high school and I have been impressed over and over again how race just does not seem to be a big deal to these kids. They are comfortable with one another and mix with one another (at school and socially) in a way that my generation (late 40s and early 50s) only dreamed about. It’s quite heartening, at least to me. It’s what I wished would happen when I was a teenager growing up in the 70s in a very segregated community.</p>
<p>Having been a military wife for over 2 decades, I know of many interracial marriages. Mostly it’s been African-American male soldiers married to foreign-born Caucasians from Europe and Asians from Korea and Japan as opposed to marrying US-born Caucasians or Asians. I haven’t met any female AA soldiers with other than AA husbands. </p>
<p>In short, you see a lot of mixed-race kids on military bases. Our kids have grown up color-blind so to speak.</p>
<p>Want to reiterate that there is a distinction btwn ethnicity/culture and race.</p>
<p>I can understand when parents (say Greek-American, Cuban-American, Viet-American) prefer or want their children to marry a person within their own ethnicity/culture in order to preserve their ethnic/cultural identity (as much as they can in an increasingly assimilated environment in the US).</p>
<p>Race, otoh, generally is a different matter.</p>
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In particular, AF/WM marriages are more acceptable than AM/WF – and has become a bit of a clich</p>
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<p>Fetish was tongue and cheek kind of statement. Sorry I did not think of checking it with a PC officer. [/sarcasm off]</p>
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That’s a legitimate concern but not a good reason to discourage an interracial couple already in love not to be with each other.</p>
<p>I tried to post here 3 times, but I had a hard time to do it because it is a complicated issues. In principal you shouldn’t care about what people think, and love should conquer all, but that’s not always the case.</p>
<p>Both of our kids were born in NYC. In the City, most of the time, people thought our kids were very exotic - if I may say so, they were beautiful babies/toddlers. The school they went to were mostly ambassadors’ kids. Our older daughter described her best friend as someone with dark, curly hair, and a bit chubby. It wasn’t until I met her that I realized she was black. Our daughter never though it was a notable feature to mention.</p>
<p>We then decided to move out to NJ when our oldest was in 2nd grade to have a more main stream American upbringing - a hourse, yard, and public school. Our oldest daughter went to our local school for 3 months. She was teased because she looked different. One day she was asked if she spoke Chinese. She said no because her father was not Chinese. Kids asked, “Well, how do you speak with your mother if you couldn’t speak Chinese?” My daughter (in second grade) said, “we use sign language.” We live in a very nice/affluent town in NJ. After that incident I offered to come to our local school to speak to students about Chinese culture. The school informed me that it would not fit into their curriculum. My husband and I had a long discussion about whether we should move back to the city or put our kids in a private school where the adminstrators would be more sensitives to different race issues. Our daughters lucked out and got into a very nice private school in NJ. Both of our kids were very happy at the school and at the same time received a great education. We didn’t move to the suburb with the intention of sending our kids to a private school. We decided to put them in a private school because at our local school they were singled out for their differences. We were willing/had the resource to pay for a very expensive tuition to make sure they would be treated properly. </p>
<p>What I am trying to say is inter-racial couple shouldn’t not get married, but should try to figure out what you are willing to put up and sacrifice for your love. If you think it doesn’t matter what people think, then your kids would be the first to prove you wrong. As an inter-racial kid, you don’t belong to any race. I remember a guidance counselor said to me once that it is very important for kids to belong to a group, even if it’s the biggest loser group.</p>
<p>As our oldest daughter is faced with race issue again in college, we realize this time she will need to deal with it herself. We are hoping that we have given her enough confidence to not let some ignorant people to question her place in the world.</p>
<p>We hope young men our daughters would have relationships someday would love them for themselves, not because of their race.</p>
<p>We live in the south (Virginia—of “Loving vs The State of Virginia” fame). I’m an AfAm female, and my H is white. We have two children (ages 17 and 21). we’ve been very fortunate, having experienced little to nothing in the way of racism because of the racial composition of our family. I believe this is largely due to the number of military bases in our immediate geographical area. Within a 40 mile radius, there are probably 10 major facilities, representing all branches of military service. The military was one of the first major social institutions to desegregate, and relative to the rest of society, interracial marriage is much more prevalent among military families. My H and I met while in the Navy, stationed in Tennessee. Our kids are in no way unique in the Hampton Roads region. We live in a very racially diverse neighborhood, and our kids have always had friends of every conceivable racial makeup. </p>
<p>Back in 1982, prior to getting married, a surprising number of my white friends used to ask me if I was “concerned” about the way my kids would be treated, coming from a “mixed marriage”. I always use to laugh and tell them that if I was to let concern about my children experiencing racial prejudice enter into the decision to have them, I most certainly would not have children at all. I’m a black woman for God’s sake! Any child of mine might possibly be at the receiving end of racial discrimination, whether their father is black, white, or something else altogether. I pointed out that, because they are white, they are not used to having to consider how their race will impact their social status. They conceded that that was probably true.</p>
<p>Well, I’m a Southerner living in California. Some members of my extended family – grandparent still living and others of that generation – still think of mixed marriages as something that’s only lately become legal. It wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme court ruled that such laws were unconstitutional. Before that time, there were still 16 states where miscegenation was illegal.</p>
<p>Additionally, Southern states also frequently had laws and social norms related to the “one drop rule” – that having so much of one drop of “black” blood made you black for the purposes of racial classifications, and thus subjected you to Jim Crow laws. “Mixed race”, multiracial or biracial children whose ancestry included sub-Saharan African blood were thus not excluded from discrimination and legal limitations of “full blood” children of color. (I use quotation marks to make clear I am using the terminology of the era and culture, and for no other reason.) Basically, for much of the 20th century, if your white child married and had children with a black person, then the resulting children were black, and were subject to the terrible discriminating laws that followed such status.</p>
<p>My understanding is that bigotry aside, many parents still have sense of social taboo that comes in part from that fear, that the children/family would be separated from the parents because of the social and legal repercussions. Even though those repercussions are no longer the law of the land (or state), they still echo in some social institutions. I’m not defending it, but that’s my understanding of where it comes from, in part.</p>
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<p>What’s not “PC” is not the use of the word fetish – but the BEHAVIOR (which whatever you want to call it, is certainly NOT progressive).</p>
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Oldfort – my first “best friend” (in kindergarten in NYC) was a black girl as well.</p>
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I too, lived in the burbs in Jersey and yeah, I’d say that pretty most Asian-American kids have to deal w/ these issues (such as teasing, name-calling) at some point (usually earlier).</p>
<p>But such name-calling tends to end as kids get older and more mature (tho, not always the case). </p>
<p>Luckily for me, where I went to Jr High/HS, race was never an issue.</p>
<p>The irony is (nowadays), your daughters as they attend HS, college and beyond are likely to meet people (both Asian and white) who think they are “special”.</p>
<p>While it is NOT the only reason parents might not like interracial or interwhatever relationships, I think a lot of it has to do with parents being suspicious of the motivations involved. People sometimes get a “thing” about people of another group, and will focus on dating a person of that group rather than that particular person. In other words, they want to date a person of group x in order to rebel against their parents, get revenge on a past love interest, to try to attain some sort of status, or to soothe some traumatic incident from the past.</p>
<p>For example, I had a very close relative who was Catholic, but went to elementary school in a predominantly Jewish suburb. On Jewish holidays he was one of a few kids in class; he stood by the side of the road while his friends went off to Hebrew school in busses after school, etc. When he grew up, he sought out only Jewish girls to date, much to his parents’ dismay…not because the parents were anti-Semitic, but because his major motivation for liking them was so obviously based on their religion, not on who they were.</p>
<p>And he had no trouble at all finding rebelllious Jewish girls who seemed to enjoy irritating their parents by dating a Catholic.</p>
<p>I’m sure this sort of thing goes on with many combinations of religions and ethnicities.</p>
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<p>I was not referring to the fetish part. The Asian fetish came from the Princeton Review website. I should have put a quote in around the word, it was not my word, I have no fetish:). The progressive part is that I have never heard people make a big deal about multiracial children in California or at least where I live. My DD has friends from all sort of mixed-race(1/2 black, 1/2 white or 1/2 Fillipino, 1/2 black or 1/2 Japanese, 1/2 hispanic).</p>
<p>Wow, thanks you guys.</p>
<p>And whoever said that they are just “bigots” that is not a good enough answer for me. Naturally, I could meet someone who disagrees with me and just say “Oh, well they’re a bigot. Doesn’t matter” I want to understand what they are thinking.</p>
<p>I’m gonna go against the PC crap and say the white folks don’t take kindly to other races. There are many other reasons, religion for one, etc. People will generally have different reasons for not being so opened to interracial relationships. In many cases it is a socioeconomic issue as well. Many adults do not want their daughters dating men that are not in the same economic classification as they are. I’m sure with sons there is more leniency with this.</p>
<p>It depends on which circles you travel in. Try being an “interfaith” or biracial couple living in parts of Long Island, Connecticut, Palm Beach. There are clubs that won’t allow anything but WASPS, let alone a Catholic or a Jew. You won’t read it in their by-laws, but its an “understanding”. You might say, (like me) “who wants to be there, anyway?” and that’s your prerogative, but its proof that major bigotry is still very much alive and well. Your daughter marries “one of them” and the clubs she grew up in won’t let her in. To some people. that sort of thing is incredibly important.</p>
<p>Well, that certainly perpetuates the bigotry. I once had the fantasy of everyone in the world intermarrying and sharing grandchildren. Imagine how many fewer wars there would be!</p>
<p>I really recommend THE GREAT DEBATERS, Denzel Washington’s new film about a Southern African-American debate team in 1935. We have and haven’t come a long way.</p>
<p>And I do live on Long Island. My H shot a wedding at an exclusive golf club he wouldn’t be allowed to be a member of. Neither would the groom! How the bride could be happy with that venue, I’ll never know.</p>
<p>But my feeling is I can’t do anything about other people, only myself. And I know I would welcome any partner of either of my kids without concern based on an ethnic or gender group.</p>
<p>Teaching at a very multiracial institution and having students of all persuasions and transgender colleagues has put me in a place where I just see people. For that, I’m very grateful. Nourishing my own humanity is certainly worth more to me than membership in any exclusive group. I don’t like exclusivity anyway, and feel the maintenance workers at my college are just as worthwhile as we professors.</p>
<p>membership @ exclusive club > all else</p>
<p>I agree, Mythmom. I knew at woman at work who was so proud that her Jewish husband “made it” into her parents’ club “on his own” (Long Island) without any help. ( He’s probably the only one) Why he’d want to be a member of a place that felt that way about his people I’ll never understand. Ditto on the workers at your college. I"ve had more than one contractor, plumber, whatever express how well I treat them. WHAT?? Why wouldn’t I treat them with the respect that they deserve.(?) Then I realise that other women in this neighborhood apparently aren’t. It makes me feel terrible.</p>