Dating across the color line

I know I said last week that I would be discussing Asian Americans and inter-racial dating. And then my week got away from me. And I know that in July I began to broach the subject of inter-racial dating and why some inter-racial couples may seem to be more acceptable than others. For example, Asian American women paired with white men seem to be a prevalent pairing that we see out and about and reflected in popular culture, television.

[Of course, the reality is that Asian Americans are barely visible on tv or in films, but on the rare occassion when they are, the Asian American woman-white man as a romantic pairing is not uncommon--Lucy Liu in the Charlie Angels movies is paired with the former Friends guy, for example.]

And in this previous post I also acknowledged that inter-racial pairings between black women and men of other racial groups and Asian American men and women of other racial groups seems to be the least common pairings that we see.

And interestingly enough, since I am not the first person to make this observation, there are people who have started websites and dating blogs that are dedicated to "BlAsian" couples: black women romantically linked with Asian/Asian American men.

[For example, see this recent Asian Week piece]

And I do wonder about this. I mean, not the specific pairing of African American women with Asian American men, but the idea that these two demographics may be in the category of those who do not date across the color line.

[And I suppose I should add the caveat that I am concentrating largely on straight relationships, because that's the population that has largely been studied in Sociological circles and that I'm familiar with in terms of anecdotal evidence, although I think that interracial dating taboos and issues are similar within queer relationships.]

And one of the other things I have been thinking about regarding inter-racial relationships, is whether there isn't also a correlation between community acceptance and/or the prevalence of certain pairings. I'm not a sociologist and don't have stats readily at hand, but from what I recall from reading various articles on this subject, Asian Americans of either gender are more likely to date and marry white Americans than other groups. And part of me wonders about the acceptability of dating and marrying inter-racially outside of a white demographic. Because anecdotally I have heard of some Asian American families being very opposed to their sons/daughters dating let alone marrying African Americans.

I'm not trying to say that all Asian families are conservative and racist. Nor am I saying that all Asian Americans support inter-racial dating/marriage with white Americans. But I do think that Asian American families have their own prejudices to grapple with--and I wonder how we can start to address these issues in Asian American communities (I don't mean within academia or activist circles, I mean literally in the suburban areas where people live).

But maybe I'm wrong. My own family has varying attitudes towards inter-racial dating, whether white or black (or any other identity--although interestingly enough, my paternal grandparents were livid when they discovered one of my cousins went to the prom with her Japanese American childhood friend because they had lived through the bombing of China by the Japanese army during WWII and hated the Japanese with a loathing that can only be bred by living through war).

Any thoughts?

I feel patriotic today . . .

because I voted.


If you CAN vote, you SHOULD vote. This is the most American thing you can do, but more importantly, it's your RIGHT to vote and your RESPONSIBILITY.

Almost every state in the nation has early voting--and if you missed registering, most states allow you to do one-stop shopping by registering AND voting at the same time.

Please vote. I'm not going to tell you who to vote for or tell you who I voted for (although regular readers of this blog can easily guess). What I will say is that everyone CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. And to quote a very wise man:

"Be the change you want to see in the world" -- Mahatma Gandhi

Wise words from Colin Powell

By now everyone who isn't living under a rock has heard of Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama--his explanation is very eloquent but even more his wise words about not confusing and equating Muslim Americans and Arab Americans with terrorists is a bucket of ice water that we need on the anti-Islamic rhetoric that keeps popping up.



[tip of the hat to Poplicks & for a link to the image that Powell references, click here]

P.S. Yes, I know I promised a real post about inter-racial dating taboos, and it is coming, but it is too tempting to post these videos, especially because the political junkie in me just can't resist.

SNL on Thursday

Two for the price of one (and originally aired on a Thursdy)


[spoofing the third Presidential debate]


[Weekend update with crazy McCain lady]

Asian Americans: we're not as conservative as you think

I recently came across this entry in Angry Asian Man about the National Asian American survey that polled Asian American voters across the nation (in 8 different languages--so it's the most comprehensive political polling of this particular racial group to ever happen) and discovered that overwhelmingly Asian Americans supported Obama (41%) over McCain (24%).

But what it also revealed this past Wednesday was that 57% of Asian American voters in California opposed and planned to vote against Proposition 8. For those of you not in the know, Prop 8 is the measure meant to overturn same-sex marriages--you know that post I wrote in May making the connection between banning gay marriage and anti-miscegenation laws and those happy pictures of couples I posted back in June? Well the forces of hate are at it again. I tried to think of something less polemical, but it's hard not to think that someone is in need of a hug when a Prop 8 supporter like Mr. Bill Tam goes on record in a prominent newspaper as saying the following:

Gay marriage supporters "have very cleverly portrayed homosexuals as a kind of minority,'' Tam said. "They've been very effective in portraying it as a civil rights issue, and this is very much a concern for us. We hope to convince Asian-Americans that gay marriage will encourage more children to experiment with the gay lifestyle and that the lifestyle comes with all kinds of disease,'' Tam said.

Oh Bill Tam, you poor misguided soul, with your rabble-rousing, fear mongering message of equating a particular type of person, a minority group, with an unsavory lifestyle rife with disease. This sounds familiar...this sounds like... WAIT A MINUTE! This is what people used to say about Chinese people living in California in the late 19th C.! Chinese women were accused of being promiscuous and lascivious and prone to all sorts of venereal diseases, and Chinese men were also accused of being nasty rat eaters who allowed vermin to infest their homes and who subsequently brought about all sorts of disease! Oh Bill Tam, you are using late 19th C. rhetoric by white Californians that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882! Oh Bill Tam, you are using RACIST RHETORIC to support a bill meant to exclude a group of people for no other reason than bigotry and prejudice. Ironic, no?

Here's the thing though, the Bill Tams of the world aside: Asian Americans are not as conservative a group as you may think. I mean, I know that there are these stereotypes of ultra-conservative Asian Americans who only care about money (hence the number of registered Chinese American Republicans, which my Mom likes to remind me of recently--she's a rabid Democrat but has some Republican leaning friends and right now they are driving her CRAZY) or who come from traditional Asian cultures that frown on gay lifestyles (or which don't even recognize queer as as category).

Anyway, for all you Asian Americans in California and across the nation that are taking non-conservative stances in the upcoming election season, I say BRAVO! Especially bravo because you are breaking stereotypes about conservative and a-political Asian Americans. Especially my own family--I want to give a particular shout out to them (you know who you are) because after all, how could I have become so social justice minded if it weren't inculcated in me from the very beginning?

[Next Up: Asian Americans and inter-racial dating--are there still tabboos? Tune in next time!]

Tell it like it is Campbell

Why do you want to know where I'm from?

Recently I was asked to give a talk about race and diversity, specifically to talk about my own experiences as a woman of color in higher education. So I drew upon some of the themes that I've discussed previously in this blog--about the definition of race as we know it (in terms of the "racial pentagram"), the difference between "institutional racism" versus "individual discrimination," about my own identification as an Asian American woman, and about the question that every Asian American person I know has been asked at least once (and usually many times), namely: "Where are you from?" with the implication, oftentimes, that a person isn't looking for your current home address; rather, what the questioner wants to know is what your ethnic ancestry is.

The talk was really fun--and the question and answer period, which I used more as a general discussion, was the best part, because it was an opportunity for people to talk to one another, albeit through me. In other words, I didn't want to just stand up as the "race expert" because I think everyone has their own experiences, and hence expertise, when it comes to race. And really, after one person has been talking for 40 minutes, the last thing anyone wants is to keep hearing the same voice answer questions.

However, one very good question was posed to me directly. In response to an anecdote I had told about the Staples guy (click here) who insisted I had to be from Hawaii because I looked Hawaiian and who kept wanting to know where I was from, a person in the audience asked this question:

"Is there any kind of question that you would prefer to be asked with respect to your background/ethnicity? Was there a way that the man who insisted you were Hawaiian could have asked his question without offending you?"

I thought about it for a moment and then did the teacherly thing that I sometimes do, which is to flip it around and look at it from a different perspective. Because the thing is, there's nothing wrong in asking someone where they are from or, if it is the ethnic ancestry you are interested in, there's nothing wrong in directly asking someone, "What is your ethnic ancestry?" I've done it recently with a student in my class who appears to be South Asian but had indicated through different references that he might have Indian heritage, and so during office hours I asked him directly what his ethnic heritage was because it was in relationship to a conversation we were having about people taking off their shoes before entering one's home--and it was a point of common cultural practice between Indian households and Chinese households (and I dare say a number of other cultures do this as well, like Korean and Kenyan).

So what I said to the questioner was that it wasn't so much how it was asked or what was asked but it is the motivation behind the question that I'm interested in. For example, a nurse who was inserting a needle in my arm during a blood drive once asked what my nationality was. I am not sure if it was the tone of her voice or the fact that she was about to stick a needle into my arm, but I didn't get defensive or reactionary (for example, I didn't scream I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MY ETHNIC HERITAGE THEN JUST ASK) instead I simply said "I identify as a Chinese American." She got very excited and started to tell me about her Chinese American granddaughter--and at first I wasn't sure if her son had married a Chinese/Chinese American woman or had adopted a girl from China, but it soon came out that it was the latter and that her Chinese American grandchild was always asking her grandmother (who worked for the Red Cross) if she met any Chinese people in the largely homogenous (read white) area of Western MA where we were having this conversation.

In other words, for the white American Red Cross nurse, her motivation in asking me my nationality was very personal and rooted in finding resources for her granddaughter in discovering her ethnic heritage. For the Staples guy? It seems as if his motivation was simply to tell me I should get to know my culture better and to show off HIS expert knowledge about China and Chinese society. And quite frankly, I have all the patience in the world for the nurse and none whatsoever for the "China expert." Because the nurse seems to desire a true interaction and a conversation whereas the China expert seems to want to talk at me rather than with me.

Looking for Republican leadership to talk about racism

Recently there have been a series of disturbing incidents that have come to light at some McCain-Palin rallies around the country. In a Washington Post article, Dana Milbank chronicles someone shouting "Kill Obama" as Palin pumped up the crowd, and then you have this incident:

Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

And over at OpEdNews, documented incidents of racism, threats to Obama, and really disturbing footage at rallies in which people say that Obama is a terrorist, a muslim, an Arab--and one in which a man holds a Monkey with an Obama sticker on it--this is all just too, too troubling:



[IMPORTANT ASIDE: What is VERY disturbing and under-reported in all of these accounts is the assumption people are making between Arab/Muslim = terrorist. First of all, if Obama was a practicing Muslim or Arab American, that would be FINE. Arab and Muslim Americans are NOT un-American and they are certainly NOT terrorists and it is a function of post-9/11 racism that makes the link between people of Arab descent and Muslim beliefs to terrorism. After all, white supremacist groups like the KKK have been engaged in domestic acts of terrorism during much of the 20th century, and have done so under the umbrella of Christianity. Yet we do NOT assume all Christian Americans are a legacy of this heritage of white racism and white supremacy nor do we assume that if one grew up an Evangelical Christian in the Southern region of the U.S. that one is automatically linked to domestic terrorism. I find the links between Arab descent and Islamic religion with terrorism or being "un-American" patently offensive.]

To his credit, John McCain has tried to address some of this ugliness. A New York Times article discusses how McCain tells his supporters that they shouldn't "fear" an Obama presidency and when another woman says she is afraid of Obama because he is an Arab, McCain shakes his head, says no, and tells this woman and the crowd at this Minnesota rally that Obama is a decent family man. And I appreciate that McCain is trying to calm down his crowd and be respectful towards his fellow running-mate, but in a lot of ways, this is reaping what you sow. In other words, certain members of the Republican party have been clamoring to have McCain and especially Palin attack Obama's character and trying to link him to "terrorists"--of course what they are doing is old-fashioned rabble-rousing, with the added element of institutional and historic (and recent) racism on their side.

So this is what I want to know. Where is the Republican leadership? I'm not just talking about John McCain and Sarah Palin and their campaign. I'm talking about others, like the primary candidates, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and the Bush administration. Where are THEY on calling on all Americans but especially McCain supporters (especially members of the Republican party perhaps since I'm assuming this is the demographics at these rallies) to be better than this rhetoric of hate and fear and prejudice. One Republican representative from Illinois has called on Palin to stop attacking Obama, saying that this campaign should be "better" than these tactics. But where are other leaders and politicians saying that McCain supporters, especially white McCain supporters (because honestly, (A) That's the majority caught on tape making these remarks (B) That seems to be the majority demographic at McCain/Palin rallies) should be at the forefront of talking about racism and prejudice and denouncing these acts.

Finally, here's a 13 plus minute MSNBC clip analyzing these ugly elements from recent days:



[Final Note: I'm not saying that all Republican or John McCain supporters are racist or more prone to racist tendencies. Obviously with the recent discussions of independent voters and die-hard Democrats struggling with their own internalized racism, we know this isn't the case--even with Obama's supporters of all hues, there's bound to be a fair amount of internalized racism. But as someone who has been to two different Obama rallies in the last year and a half, I have to tell you that I have not witnessed the kind of animosity and hatred that seems to be bubbling up in these clips. And at a rally during the primary that was held at Southern U., when Obama talked about John McCain and people booed, he told them that John McCain was a good man--and that he wanted his campaign not to devolve into the typical character assassination--for us to concentrate on the future and on a positive message of hope and change. And I think, for the most part, that has been the tenor of his campaign.

Also, this just in (4:57pm EST): an Op-Ed piece by Frank Rich in The New York Times that essentially echoes many of the things I've written above, except that I'd disagree with Rich about McCain being someone who is a stranger to racism.]