reader request week #3 (MUCH belated): interracial relationships

[jlundberg]

Over a year ago, I put out a call for reader requests, questions that LundBlog readers were keen to get the answers to. For whatever reason, I stopped after one entry. I don't even remember now why. It was a lame move, and I've felt bad about it all this time. Well, I have the rest of this week before going back to school, so I want to try to knock

Comments

[lingtm]

I think the same thing as you. I'm in an interracial relationship too and I don't really see my husband as white but rather a geek who likes SF and plays video games with me. We have a lot of stuff in common that we both enjoy doing together.

And I met my husband on World of Warcraft. I didn't know what race he was when we were battling monsters together. I just enjoyed playing with him and I thought he was funny.

[rsheslin]

I remember when I was in college and dating all sorts of guys, I was aware of being different colors but surprised about how different cultures could be (I grew up in the palest of south Orange County in SoCal and was terribly provincial.)

However, I do remember one time when I was dating a very dark skinned Puerto Rican, and I saw the two of us in a mirror together. I was startled at the visual contrast, because I don't really think of myself on the outside. I suddenly understood the double-takes and stares we got when we were out in public, arm in arm.

[vivian2112]

I appreciate your post. I do not have anything intelligent to offer in comment but being in an interracial marriage with a biracial child myself, I can empathize with some of your feelings (not seeing one's self as merely an ethnic group member, but as whole person, frex.).

Get ready for some really racially insensitive comments on your daughter after she's arrived, btw. They WILL happen.

[articulate_ink]

I can't imagine how there would be anything offensive in anything you wrote. That was a very thoughtful post. One thing that's been refreshing about leaving the US is how much less abashed people are about discussing racial and ethnic differences. Even though they may be obvious, they're a source of much discomfort in American discourse. We tend to prefer to avoid the subject altogether. That was my experience growing up in the South, in any case. Now, as a gay white man in Asia, I recognize that there are a lot of stereotypes out there: about my motivations for being in Asia at all (white men, gay or straight, are presumed to be perpetual sex tourists), about who dominates the relationship in and out of bed, etc. This is annoying. At times I'm patient with it; other times, not so much. Long story short, I appreciate your comments on the issue.

[jlundberg]

I've run into some of those same assumptions, not in Singapore but elsewhere in Southeast Asia. In Phuket last year, a woman propositioned me right there on the sidewalk, with Janet not three feet away.