How I Crossed My Racial Divide

I truly want to believe that one day the color of someones skin will not matter but is so so hard when you experience things first hand. Im 31 yrs old, mother of two beautiful bi-racial children. My husband is african-american and Im hispanic very light complexion. Back in 2004 I started to date who is now my husband. My mother accepted it because she was 100% sure that it was not going to last, as the time passed she realized that "he" was not going away and became angry and within months she forced me to make a choice...either her or him... (long story short) i chose him, and my mother disowned me. Her hate for black people, her ignorance has prevented her from being part of our family, our lives, she missed our wedding, my pregnancies, births, everything... she still cant come to terms that my husband is a good man, a hard working man, but she cannot see that, she cant see that my husband will work 24 hrs a day to provide a better life for his children, will do anything to make we are safe, the only thing she sees is the color of his skin. It is so sad to see, to know that a mother is willing to turn her back on her own child for something so stupid.
As a parent, is hard to let our children make their own choices, but because we dont want to make the same mistakes, we must let them and be there for them.
Im glad that you understand and accept it, and realized that you thought your son good values, he doesnt judge people by the color of the skin but by their character... I hope that your friend can understand that.

Hello, and thank you for sharing this. This has always been a touchy subject for me, in a way. My father damn near disowned me when I began dating my daughter's father. I am white, he is black. We were engaged, which outraged my father, and then of course I became pregnant, which was the icing on the cake. He called in my grandmother to intervene, to "talk some sense into me" by letting me know how she felt about the situation, which was the exact same way my father felt, no surprise there. Anyway, I had to deal with a lot of crap from family and strangers. It hurt me that my family couldn't accept him for who he was. He was a good guy (still is) and has always been a part of my daughter's life, after we broke up. She even lived with him for a period of time, which broke my heart, but I knew I had to share her. The point is, my family got over it, eventually, when they saw this was not some sort of experiment, and that me dating black men was just part of the norm for me. I'm attracted to black men, I can't help it. Many years ago, a stranger (a black woman) asked me why I couldn't find a man of my own race (after seeing my daughter). I told her I could, but that it was not my preference. I like what I like, and I wouldn't apologize for that. I asked her if she loved "her" black men and she said of course. I asked her, "if you love them, then what makes you think someone else can't?" She didn't have an answer for me, but I don't think I got through to her the reality of the situation. You can't control who you are attracted to, you can't control who you love, and you can't control your heart's desire. I've heard all sorts of stories about why this (dating outside of our race) is wrong, from all sides, and none of them make any sense to me. I have heard that it is disrespectful to black women for a black man to date a woman who is not black. To that I ask, would it be better for him to date a black woman, and not be fully interested in her (this applies to the men who exclusively date outside of their race) whether it be physically or not? Would it be better for him to marry a woman he doesn't love, just to preserve the black race? I don't think so, but that is only my opinion. The same goes for any other race, white included, who date outside of their race. I'm not going to compromise myself, my heart, to appease my family, because it is my life, and I'm the only one who can live it. This is all just my feelings on the situation. Thank you for letting me share :)

Being Caucasian, I remember taking my bi-racial nephew places when he was a baby and feeling like explaining to people, "He's not mine." What? Rediculous. So I decided to take him out with me more often, until I got past that. After all, he doesn't know if he's green or purple. And I came to really love the little guy, who is now fifteen and has a great attitude about his racial status, which pales in contrast to his academic abilities and other talents and interests.

Being from Seattle area and Caucasian, our kids had some Asian friends with similar family values to theirs: Strong father figure, both parents at home, great sense of humor; then we lived north of Dallas, Texas during middle school where they had many Black and Hispanic friends who were warm, joyful and festive, and then in the UK during part of high school where their many Asian and Black friends had never lived in America and were culturally very different. It was interesting to find that it was the cultures they most identified with. Hispanic friends were from both South America and Spain and similar to American Hispanics. But the Asians and Blacks in the UK didn't know that they were "supposed" to be cracking jokes all the time and doing silly stuff. So it was the cultural background our kids were trying to identify with, not the colors, although the colors carried expectations of certain behaviors and attitudes.

My husband and I considered that our children would likely date and possibly marry interracially with this background, so we had lots of opportunity to discuss it and wondered what we would do. The answer, we did nothing. Our daughter dated a nice Asian guy when we returned to Seattle, but it was the core values she really observed. We didn't try to push her one way or the other, and as it ended up, both our kids are now happily married to Caucasian Christians from large home-schooled families, and maintain a number of very close interracial friendships from college and the military. It just happens they didn't marry interracially, but I am pleased in retrospect that we worked through our attitudes to where it has been a non-issue for our kids and they could make their own choices, and that our nieces and nephews feel completely accepted by our family, being able to have light-hearted conversations about anything, including race.

This is a great post, with one exception. There are many indications that people are genetically predisposed to homosexuality, especially in men.

Differences have been identified in the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men, there are also certain secondary sexual traits which are seen more often in homosexual men and differences in the response of homosexual men to pheromones.

I am not gay, but have close relationships with gay people. I am white, as is my sister, but she CHOOSES to date black men. We've had many conversations about her pros and cons. My gay friends have NEVER done that. I have no issue with either, but I believe that one is a personal choice (interracial dating), the other is not.

I am retired now but spent the last 10 years of my working life in the office of a manufacturing plant. We had about 300 employee's of every ethnic and nationality you can imagine. We called our plant the United Nations of hard work, as we had people from at least 20 countrie's at any given time. Those ten year's were the best year's of my working life, I learned first hand that people are all alike in the important area's and only different in the unimportant area's. I learned the most important thing is to love with your heart and be open to new experience's as opportunitie's to make life better for everyone including yourself. I am grateful for those ten year's and they for sure made me a better person.

I was raised in an Irish family. My parents taught me that color did not matter, and all people should be treated equally. I took them at their word and started dating a Chinese man in high school. We married after dating for 7 years. My parents accepted this, but pretty much everyone else in my family reacted with shock. (My grandfather fought in WWII, and to him all Asians were Japanese.) Unfortunately, interracial issues and biases do not only exist in black/white relationships. This was an eye opener for me, when I found out that what people say is not always what they truly think or believe inside. All of this aside, though, I have a happy marraige of almost 10 years. And we have a beautiful "half-breed" son who is the darling of both sides of our family. It takes strong people who are willing to be open minded and open hearted to make this a truly un-prejudiced world. :)

Denise I love your subject. We are white and when asked by one of my Aunts via phone call 5 or so years ago what I would do if my son brought home a "black" girl and told me he was dating her I laughed, well I said is she cute? Does she respect my son and is she polite and caring? The Aunt went silent. I told her we live in a time that those things matter more to me than skin color. My oldest is ten so we haven't started the dating scene yet and I am not sure I will ever be ready for that roller coaster ride but eventually I wil deal as it all comes. By the way I think my older sister dated every ethnic boy she new and my mother in-laws last boyfriend was black so when my aunt asked that question I had to giggle. Thank you for your motherly advice and a great blog.

I think we have passed the cusp of change on this, but it doesn't show clearly yet--my daughter is 16, and it seems to me that she and her friends don't even think about whether a couple is the same race or not. Just as many people now proudly identify as bi- or multi-racial, the differences are fading. However it's hard to see because of the critical mass of older people still holding on to their prejudices. It's hard that change takes so long. I enjoyed your post and your support for your children.

My daughter's best friend was black and white. She married a man from Korea in college! My son married a black woman and my other son married an Asian woman. My daughter is with a Mexican man and so I told my other daughter it was up to her to find a man from India, South America, Italy, etc.! When I was a child in Minnesota raised on a farm going to a small little country school house, I saw in my school book all these children of different colors and clothes. I told my Mom that when I grew up I wanted a baby like each of them. She laughed! But God has blessed me with children of the world in my family child care home and now in our family. I didn't see a person of a different color until I was 15 years old in Minneapolis. My sister told me to stop staring, but I thought he was so beautiful! Then I moved to California as a teen and saw hoe cruel some whites were to blacks. I was shocked. This was in the 1960s. God created us all as brothers and sisters and to enjoy the beauty of each. My dauhgter is getting married next May and sad to say she is not adding any more color to our famiy but he is a really sweet and special guy. Thank you Heavenly Father for all the people in the world and may we show love and pray for all of them/us. In Jesus Name. Amdn.

I strongly believe that it is most important that my children find someone who is kind, has a strong work ethic, is polite, is caring, gives back to his/her community, has a job, has goals, has strong personal values and moral that match ours and so on. If the racial dating situation comes up (and I'm sure it will), I will be open about the challenges and my personal experiences. I will not discourage the relationship based on race. I would discourage a relationship (regardless of race) based on the aforementioned factors. It's a tough game...this life of ours.