Friday, February 12, 2010
Jungle Fever: Why are Interracial Relationships still an issue?
Interracial dating has become more popular as racism has slowly become an issue of the past. In today's society we see more people dating, marrying, and baring children with people of races outside of their own. I myself come from a multiracial family, where a few of my relatives are of mixed races whether it be a mixture of Black/Caucasian, Black/Latino, or Black/Asian. So for me interracial relationships were never an issue in my household. For the last four years I have dated girls outside of my race. In New York City where I am from, when I dated outside of my race it was strictly with Latinas and never once did me dating a Latina cause a stir amongst my peers. It wasn't until I came to Wheaton in the Fall of 2007, and began dating a Caucasian girl that the issues or stigma of interracial relationships began to affect me personally. Through this cross-cultural encounter I plan to study the interracial dating culture on the Wheaton College Campus in comparison to my hometown of New York City.
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I like the topic and think it's still a serious issue/ question. :)
ReplyDeleteUpdates?
ReplyDeleteUpdates are coming soon. Im doing some surveys for this blog.
ReplyDeleteoh good. I was beginning to wonder when you were going to post more.
ReplyDeleteThe blog (and comments) raise some serious and very interesting questions. As one of your interviewees (Jen) suggests, the attraction of dating across racial lines can provide an intensely erotic boundary-crossing experience, at least in the initial phase of a relationship. From personal experience I can say that the ability of the couple to withstand the polarizing forces (such as differences in culture, class, family expectations) that threaten the stability of an interracial relationship depends a lot on the context: location (big city, small town, suburb, country), ability to be self-supporting, presence or absence of children, synergy of values and participation in strong community networks that support them (churches, temples, activist groups). As I sometimes have to remind students (and even myself) when teaching about kindship and social organization: sex and marriage aren't the same thing.
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