Sunday, July 13, 2008

#5 Interracial/Cross-Cultural Relationships

From the beginning of time, curiosity for the “other” has existed when it comes to relationships. Israelites have intermarried with Canaanites; Master has slept with a field slave; the Indian Desi has danced in Chocolate rain; David Bowie married Iman.

The result of such interracial coupling has resulted, at a most superficial level, in beautiful creations. Don’t deny the beautiful people of the world: Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Shamar Moore, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz…the list goes on and on.

To the Mulatto, there is nothing like seeing before their very eyes the equation that adds up to them. Black + White = Mulatto.

Personally, I get warm fuzzies whenever I look into a crowd of people and see diversity in the form of interracial couples. I cannot limit it to the Black/White couple, as I love it whenever two different races come together in the name of love. However, I am biased toward the Black/White combination as I am a result of such a glorious equation. I’d venture to say that most, if not all other mulattos would agree with me.

I should also state that for the record, the legacy usually continues for the mulatto child. For example, I have grown up always wanting to marry outside of my race. In fact, my first crush was on a Chinese boy in the first grade. The only guy I’ve ever dated was white. To live and experience and learn another culture/ethnicity/race would be a dream come true.

Love, Janara aka Brown Sugar

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It begs the question though that isn't anyone else who isn't mulatto outside your race? If not so narrow, then wouldn't it mean neither black nor white people are outside your race?

I think there are beautiful girls in almost every ethnicity, and I certainly do prefer some to others. However, for the longest time, I've had such a thing for Asian women, and doubly so for half Asian women. The same for other mixes.

Of course, there are some other non-physical things that make people from different ethnicities, or rather, cultures, more attractive (and at times less attractive, or rather, their parents can be a lot less attractive because they can be so conservative). There is something incredibly sweet, soft and feminine about Asian girls born and raised in Asia that's very intangible. Never the less, they carry themselves differently. They kiss differently. They even hold hands differently. It's extremely attractive to a lot of Western guys, myself included. Dare I say it, but a lot of girls raised in the West are not that feminine. Even if I broke up with my girlfriend and left Taiwan, I don't think I'd ever go back to an Australian girl. I lived in eastern Europe for a while, and I found a similar phenomenon there in terms of how feminine the girls were. In both cases (Taiwan and eastern Europe), sometimes, they take it to a stupid degree (eg. girls wearing high heels at the beach here, and there's generally far too much Hello Kitty), but I think from a guy's perspective at least, initially, it may be a physical attraction to "the other", but after that there's a whole lot more. For example, it's pretty well par for the course that a Taiwanese girl (even one you pick up in a club, as happened with one of my friends once) will clean your apartment when she comes over, no matter how much you protest.

On the other hand, and admittedly, this isn't really a great sample of Taiwanese women since most of those I know are the very small minority who aren't that interested in Taiwanese men, some Taiwanese women most definitely prefer Western men for one of two reasons physically: Taiwanese guys are either really girly or complete slobs. Hardly any take care of themselves physically or dress well without taking that to a ridiculous extreme and spending more time on their hair and makeup (yes!) than their girlfriends. Also, in the same way that perhaps Western men like petite Asian women, there's something more masculine about a tall guy who is somewhat athletic, as opposed to a guy who looks like he's just entering puberty, has poor posture and thinks he can get most of his vitamin D from a computer monitor's glow -- even where I surf on the weekends there are a ton of truly woeful male bodies that I certainly wouldn't be attracted to if I were a girl.

In terms of attitude and behaviour, this is where most Taiwanese guys really fall away in the minds of certain Taiwanese girls (those I know anyway). Many, if not most, are workaholics with no hobbies other than online gaming, and who, if they can pluck up the courage to talk to a girl in a bar, think that courting her involves grabbing her arse, pulling some cheesy line and generally embarrassing the crap out of her in front of everyone else in the bar. They have little to no idea as to how to treat a woman, and they're often not exactly Mr Personality -- I call them Jim Morrissons (come on baby light my fire). My girlfriend is a pretty good cook, and I think I'm mediocre, but she goes absolutely bananas whenever I cook for her, which is most of the time. That's something most Taiwanese guys would never do. I can't figure that kind of thing out, because it really makes me happy to make her happy. Why not razzle dazzle her? She's my girlfriend; yet this kind of entry level dating behaviour gets lost on the legions of World of Warcraft fans here.

It's interesting what different people find attractive, but I don't think the physical thing is all that big a deal, at least not for me (although I am very attracted to my girlfriend physically).

Janara said...

Thanks for the comments, Caleb!!!

I enjoy reading your thoughts.

As for your questions, "isn't anyone else who isn't mulatto outside of your race?": my answer would essentially be, yes. When I say that I've always wanted to marry someone outside of my race, I've meant that I didn't want to marry another mulatto (black and white mix).

However, when it really comes down to it, I don't care what race of a man I marry. He could be mulatto and I would be just fine with that...more than fine. It matters to me what is on the inside; what resides in his heart, rather than the color of his skin.

For the purpose of this blog entry, I was more so stating that most Mulatto's love to see other interracial couples.