Interracial Relationships & Multiracial Families

http://www.healthcentral.com/sexual-health/relationships

Angel Fleming
SOC 321R- Dr. Tom Saunders
May 20, 2009

Interracial relationships are becoming more common. When some think of interracial relationships, the first thought is black and white. All over the media and all over the world, you will discover a lot of interracial couples and multiracial families. If you look back 30 years ago, you would not have found this to be as common as you see now. The presence of an interracial couple would have been considered unusual. Our world has come so far with racism, but we still have a long way to go. I found a website from www.healthcentral.com titled Interracial Relationships. This article explained this issues interracial couples and multiracial families go through. I chose this topic because it affects me personally, but not in a negative way. I have a biracial brother. His name is Chris and he is 18 years old. I didn’t know anything about him until he was about 2 years old. My father kept this a secret from us until he was strong enough to let us know. I was 10 years old when I found out that I had a little brother and that he was mixed. My father showed me a picture of him and I remember saying, he’s white. I didn’t know what to think at the time, I just knew that my father had a baby by a woman other than my mother. I was embarrassed to tell my friends because I knew that they would have been asking me questions about why his appearance. That was a pretty hard time in my life because my parents had separated after that. It was kind of odd getting used to him being my brother, I did not know how to act or even what to say around him. I did not want to make my father feel bad, so I tried to play with and spend time with him when I seen him. I still was very torn. I can remember my mother crying all the time and saying bad things about Chris’s mother and that fact that she was a white woman. Hearing all this when I was young made me think that if a black man cheats on his wife with a white woman, then that is bad. From this experience and witnessing this happen to other black women has shown me that in this society if a black woman is being cheated on by her boyfriend/husband for a white woman, then it’s like an insult. It’s made out to be that if he cheated with another black woman, then it wouldn’t be as bad. This has always been a question of mine. Why does it matter if the person is African American, Caucasian, Asian, etc? Then I have to remember where our world has been and where it’s going. Our world comes from the whites being with whites and blacks being with blacks. It is not like that anymore and people need to realize that it is not by color of your skin, but by the content of your character, as Dr. Martin L. King stated. Slowly, everyone in my family knew and most of my friends knew that I had a mixed brother. After everyone found out, it didn’t seem to be so bad. As I got older, I started worrying about Chris’ self-esteem and the confusion that he would run into growing up being black and white. I was always wondering if he would be accepted into the same places after people found out that he was mixed. A good thing is that everyone on my father’s side of the family accepts Chris for who he is and I am happy that he is not being treated differently than the rest of us. My father continued to stay in a relationship with Chris’ mother. I had a hard adjusting to that. I could only see my father with my mother not anyone else. People asked my how did I feel when I found out that my father was with a white woman. I wasn’t mad because she was white, I was mad because of the simple fact that he cheated. I met her in person a few times and that was awkward. They are no longer together and my dad and Chris stay together in their own place. I was happy when my father left her because she was part of the reason my family was torn apart. I don’t dislike her because of her color, only because of what she was involved with my father.
Based on the information found form the website, it states that interracial relationships are still targets of stares and expressions of disgust from strangers. It is also disapproval and alienation from family members. Interracial couples experience discrimination in employment, housing opportunities, and victims of hate crimes.
My older brother Fred is in an interracial relationship right now and I was a little shocked when I found out but I have to remember that it’s not by the color of her skin but by her character. I met her a few times and she seems to be really nice. I just wonder if her family accepts my brother or not. That can be a huge problem in some families and I hate for my brother to run into any racial conflicts. Racism still lives today because I hear people say things about my brother like, “Fred better watch out, that girl can have him in jail”. Is that because she’s white? That is still the problems that people are facing today. Fred has no shame in his girlfriend and neither does she. That’s where our world should be and people should realize that it is not the 1940s anymore.
The article also explains ways interracial couples can be successful. Couples need to sit down and talk with each other societal discrimination and how it could affect them. Identifying and working through cultural differences within the relationship will help one another on how to communicate and express feelings. When a conflict arises, he or she should be clear about the different values that each holds.
Each partner will have to figure out their own identity, not base it on what others are labeling them as. One might choose to identify themselves with only one group, while others find a way to identify themselves with both sides of their heritage. The article gave a great example of the classic 70’s television series, The Jefferson’s, with George Jefferson complaining about the interracial couple next door. These days having interracial couples on television are just reality. Another example in the article is Ally McBeal recently dated a black doctor; their different races were never brought up on the show.
It is sad what interracial couples have to go through when it comes to getting married, having kids, or just living together. So many people put themselves in other people’s business trying to tell them what is right and what is wrong. No one has the authority to tell someone they can’t date a black man or a white woman. In the society that we live in today, it is still hard for interracial couples. It really depends on where you live as well. You would probably find more hatred in the south more than anyplace.
I am proud to say that I do have some white in my family. My great-grandmother on my father’s side was white. I am not sure how much that makes me, but it doesn’t bother me. I want to be different. Having your own identity should make a person feel great, but sometimes it doesn’t. When I was a kid I used get teased because I was light-skinned. Boys used to call me white girl all the time. Soon enough, I began to just ignore it but it was just pure ignorance. My great grandfather on my mother’s side was Indian. I didn’t know that until I was a teenager. People didn’t believe me when I told them that I had some Indian in my family. I am not that close to my mother’s side of the family. I would like to find out more information about my great-grandfather, because that’s part of my identity that’s part of who I am. I consider myself multi-racial, but if you go by the “one drop” rule, I guess I am just a black female.
I have a couple biracial friends and the stories they tell me are very sad. One of them told me a story that when they were in the school, they used to get teased and called bad names. She told me that the black girls didn’t want to hang around her. She said she has always had more white friends than black because she wasn’t accepted or didn’t fit in. She was always nervous when we hung around my friends because she thought they automatically didn’t like her. That is because when she was a little girl, that’s the way she was treated. I told her that my friends are not that way and they did not care if she was mixed. She became more and more comfortable being around them and that made me proud of her. That is a perfect example of what interracial couples have to go through with their children. They have to be prepared to explain to them that it is okay to be mixed, that’s who you are.
This topic interests me because I am happy to live in a time where it does not matter what color your skin is. I am proud to see that our 44th president of the United States of American is black. I am proud that my grandmother, who is 84 years old, has the chance to live with a black man as our president. My grandmother told me that she didn’t think that she would live to see the day, but she did. That just shows everyone that we need to stop living in the past, and move on. There is so much opportunity out there for everyone but if we let racism interfere, will we never progress. I am proud to say that I have mixed brother and I support my brother s interracial relationship. Looking all the way back to slavery days and then now. So much has changed, it is amazing. We fought hard to get where we are now, but we need to fight harder to get further. As you can I don’t have a problem with interracial relationships, as long as love each other that’s all that matters. I have a 4 year old son and I want him to understand that he can play with anyone he wants; just because his skin is brown and the other kid skin is white doesn’t mean that they are different. I want him to be able to have friend of many different races so he can learn about other cultures and how fascinating they can be. I don’t want him to ever feel that he can’t play with someone because they are a different color. As a mother, I will do my best in teaching him about different cultures, but also letting him know that we are all the same.
I picked this topic because of its relevancy to my class Cultural Diversity. Interracial relationships and multiracial families can bring upon lots of hatred and racism from people. There are a lot of prejudice people still in our society that we must be careful of. People need to understand the changing dynamics of race and ethnicity around us. Our world is not how it was 50 years ago, a lot has changed. If you go into a shopping mall, you will see maybe five to six different cultures in one setting. The convenient store down the street from you is probably owned by Koreans, while another is owned by Arabs. No matter where we go now, you will see cultural diversity. There are lots of celebrities that are in interracial relationships such as Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey. Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Jennifer Lopez were a couple at once, but their relationship did not seem to last. The article explained how parents can help their partner and/or their children with these issues by connecting with other families of racially mixed backgrounds. It mentioned the AMEA, which is the Association of Multiethnic American; a group that helps individuals interacts with other interracial families. The 2000 census was the first one that included multiple boxes to check on forms that ask for racial/ethnic information. This shows how much society has accepted interracial unions.

Reference:
Mc Grath, E. (2009). Sexual Health Connection. Retrieved May 20, 2009, from Health
Central: www.HealthCentral.com/sexual-health/relationships