I was raised in the suburbs and I attended a high school with a low rate of minorities. Being a minority, I always felt as if I was perceived differently by my peers. I had moved from a school that had an abundant rate minorities to a school that was filled with a extremely low rate of minorities. In high school, I struggled to truly find myself because of my social status at school, and the fact that I was “brown”. I sat in a bus where someone shouted “sand n***er” to me, and I didn’t know how to react. As you can probably tell, this school barely had any interracial couples.
As I started to spend more time in the city, or as most non-chicagoans call it, “The city of Chicago”, I started to notice there were interracial couples surrounding me everywhere I went. I realized how different the environment of the urban life was versus the suburban life. In school, there were only a few interracial couples, and apparently they stood out. People would gossip to one another commenting on how a white girl was dating an African American boy. I found this pretty offensive because of how unaccepting and close minded people were. I, myself, did not ever tell myself that I will only date a man of my ethnicity. However, in school, when kids would tease me, they would tell me that I should date so and so. Keep in mind, the only people they would name were other boys of my ethnicity. There wasn’t any range of area in their mind that contained the thought that I could be with someone of another race. They had this thought that Indian girls will only date Indian boys.
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Growing up in the Indian culture, it is true that Indian parents only want you to marry someone that is Indian, but to add to that, the same kind of Indian you are. For those who don’t know, Indian is not a language, and there are a multitude of distinctions of Indians. I am from the southwest coast of India, an area called Kerala. Within our community there are churches, such as the catholic church, orthodox church, and etc.I noticed that most people date within their church groups. There are many who don’t, but a lot of these church groups grow up together so they all end up dating each other. This is where I come in as the outsider to my own community. I attended a very small church, where there were barely anyone my age. I also came in as an outsider because almost every guy I had a crush on was not even Indian. It’s not that I have anything against my own kind, but naturally I have always tended to like different colors of men. I have always been open minded, and I also see everyone as a human, not their color. Let me tell you, this caused a lot of drama in my life.
When I first turned 21, I started to see someone, and we instantly connected. After dealing with many men that just viewed me as an object and not a person, I finally found a man that treated me like a queen. I hate to bring zodiac signs in, but capricorns and Scorpios are known to have instant trust in each other, because we are both extremely blunt and honest in life and to each other. If you are wondering, I am the Capricorn and he is the Scorpio. We found trust in each other almost instantly, and both of us were in it for the long run. At the same time, we are physically attracted to each other. He is also biracial, so you already know he is fine. However, this man happened to be half Puerto Rican and half African American. It makes me sad to say, but I received a lot of hatred not only from my family, but other members of my ethnicity because of the fact that he was African American. I hid the fact I even had a boyfriend from my family, but they eventually found out. Screenshots of my pictures were sent around, and it caused a great amount of drama.
So why is interracial dating not accepted by many? Why is there still a mass amount of racist people in this world? It boggles my mind that I am constantly surrounded by people with preconceived ideas about certain races. The fact that one just assumes I am being cheated on or will be cheated on because my boyfriend is black is absolutely disappointing and ridiculous. This is only one example of a preconceived racist idea that I personally have heard. This world is never going to be in peace if we all keep hatred trapped in our minds. In the end, we are all the same underneath the skin. I believe it is going to take maybe another century for the world to move on from all the race related issues and violence. There are also a great multitude of people that are unaware of their race privilege and take it for granted. Peggy Mcintosh, a feminist and anti-racism activist actually has a great list of what the white privileges are. I strongly urge everyone to read this list because there are many things on this list that will have you thinking about instances in your own life, white or not. I will leave a link to this list at the end of this article.
Race is a part of our daily lives. We can’t escape our color, but we can escape the negative thoughts and preconceived ideas with more knowledge of other cultures and races, and being aware of the race related problems that is drowning our society. Interracial dating should be something that is normal to see and not a double-take or surprise. At the end of the day, interracial relationships are beautiful because two people come together, and put away their racial differences, to connect human to human, not race to race.
Peggy McIntosh:
