Interracial marriages

[Tabouli]

Naama:
> I have a question to the Americans amongst you. I couldn't help 
noticing that on practically all the American TV shows (sitcoms, 
dramas, soaps) there are no mixed - black and white - couples. I know 
it's not an expression of racism - these shows are all mainstream and 
seem to bend over backwards to be PC.<

OK, OK, a topic which could hardly fail to flush me out of hiding!  (glances uneasily at the monstrous "Things to Do before the 11th of June" list).  As the product of a mixed race marriage myself (Chinese/Anglo-Australian) I too have noticed this.

Ebony:
> Also, there is the sad fact that skin color and socioeconomic status 
is interconnected in the American mind.  So for a black man, to marry 
a white woman, no matter what her class or educational background, in 
out community has been subconsciously seen as a "step up".  On the 
other hand, in my experience the black women who are married to 
middle-to-upper class white men tend to be of a certain class and 
educational background<
(...)
> At the present time, I'm dating a wonderful guy who happens to be 
white.  You wouldn't believe the things I've heard, the looks I've gotten.<

In terms of mixed couples, one other thing I notice is *which races* comprise the couple.  From what I've seen, it's white/African-American couples that seem taboo in the American media.  Note that white/Asian couples seem to be more acceptable.  I assume this is because of what Ebony mentioned: black people are perceived as of "lower status", the "model minority" Asians less so.

I too have noticed that American TV and movies, with few exceptions, always *scrupulously* pair blacks with blacks and white with whites.  Also, a few years ago I was researching biculturalism for my postgrad degree, and found a few sites devoted to people of mixed race, which had links to articles which really alarmed me.

There were one written by an African American, apparently as a call to their people to stick to their own, with comments like "If you are dating someone who is not of your own race, ask yourself why this is.  Why don't you find people of your own race attractive?  Why are you buying the white people's message that whites are more attractive and worthwhile?"  There were other links to KKK type organisations, who were arguing that for a white to betray his or her race by marrying outside it should be condemned (or worse) for promoting the genocide of the Caucasian race!  After four or five of these articles, I started feeling quite scared.

In Australia, there are very few people of African origin, so the white/black issue doesn't come up much.  However, in middle class people born since about the seventies, white/Asian couples are becoming common.  In fact, of the eight or so weddings I've attended since 1990, all except one have been Eurasian marriages (one Indian/white, the others Chinese/white).  Even in 1970, when the White Australia policy was still mostly in force and my father brought my mother to Melbourne from Malaysia, they didn't get spat on, or refused service or anything (though my father's parents made it clear they didn't approve).  It's the Aboriginal people and the Muslims who receive the worst prejudice here.  Aboriginal people are regularly refused service, and many a middle class white Australian parent who wouldn't mind if their child brought home an Asian or African American would go into seizures if they brought home someone Aboriginal.

Ebony:
> The few black women who *do* date outside of their race tend to get 
flack from male *and* female, whereas black men tend to only get heat 
from one side of the fence--from black women.<

I noticed this when I watched a few African-American films recently (Spike Lee, and whoever did "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (which had a very dishy black guy),  and "Waiting to Exhale").  With Asian/white couples in Australia, it's very much the other way around.  Things are changing with the second generation Asians, but it's still usually white man/Asian woman, which makes some people uncomfortable, as it's seen to have the ring of "exotic trophy wife" about it.  And it's the Asian men who get angry about it.  Rumour has it that Asian women are rather taken by white men, leading to a backlash against "white trash stealing our women" and so on in Singapore, Japan, etc.  (I have a number of theories about this, but they're definitely off-list material).

Australia has a bad reputation in the racism department, but from my observation, (outside the inevitable nasty rednecks who hate Brits, Americans and Anglo-Australians from the wrong *suburbs*, let along people of different race from themselves) what we have here is more ethnocentrism than "biological racism" (prejudice based on skin colour alone).  Among the educated middle class, what seems to be most important is being culturally Westernised.  You can be African, or Vietnamese, or Indian or whatever, but if you speak good English, have an Australian accent and exhibit Australian behaviour and interests, that's quite all right, and you might even score an exotic bonus card.  OTOH, woe betide you if you have a foreign accent or bad English and no "Australia-friendly" interests.

Some cases in point:

I met a rather beautiful Swiss Kenyan woman in Geneva, who said she'd like to go to Australia, but had heard such horrible rumours about the racism there that she wouldn't dare.  Everyone present who'd lived in Australia (3 of us) emphatically disagreed.  She was a Westernised, English-speaking, physically attractive black woman with a French accent... she would be not only acceptable (outside Redneckville, where even I am not acceptable, despite being born and bred in Australia), but sought-after, fawned on.  By contrast, the story would be very different for the recent wave of Muslim immigrants from the Horn of Africa, who speak poor English, dress in traditional clothes, have very different values from the Australian norm, etc.

In 1995, I worked in a student dormitory where 50% of students were from overseas.  The Australian country kids (most of whom had had little if any contact with people from overseas) steered totally clear of the mostly Chinese international students from Malaysia and Singapore with strong accents who didn't like to get drunk and weren't interested in football, etc.  However, there were a couple of Chinese sisters who'd been born and raised in Australia, and they were fine with them, asked them all about what it was like to be Asian (!) where they'd never feel comfortable approaching "the real thing".

Also, on the subject of how people identify *you* by skin colour, regardless of how you identify yourself:

At the same dormitory, I met my Swiss Chinese friend (soon engaging in her own interracial marriage, to a Frenchman!), who is, looks notwithstanding, culturally very Swiss.  The minute she arrived, all the other Overseas Chinese international students embraced her as their own.  However, within weeks she made them extremely uncomfortable.  They found her opaque, strange, they felt uncomfortable with her, couldn't communicate with her at all, and within a couple of months, abandoned her altogether.  Racially she looked like one of them, but she wasn't at all.  Interesting reflection on the relationship between race and culture.

Any American thoughts? How much of a factor is skin colour alone in the States?

Tabouli.


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