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I was writing on my personal blog about my reaction to my daughter, who is half-white, half-Japanese, choosing a blonde Barbie. Although we did eventually leave with an African American Barbie in the same outfit, my reaction to her choosing a doll that I thought really didn't look like her caught me off guard. Why did it matter to me that she chose a light skinned doll instead of a dark skinned doll? She is half-white, and my half, nonetheless.
As I thought about it, it led me to think about all the people I know, and made me realize, that although we live in one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, I know very few interracial couples. Including my husband and I, I know three, two are a white/Japanese couple, and the other is Chinese/Japanese, which maybe really isn't interracial, but for some reason I think of them that way. And I live in Los Angeles. When I think about it, even give the opportunity, it seems to me that people seek out and congregate with people of the same race. Why is that?
I have recently entered the computer age and joined Facebook. Reconnecting with my friends from high school and college has been fun. I like seeing where everyone wound up and with whom and seeing their kids. And none of them married outside of their race. Now, I did grow up in Minnesota and go to college in Colorado, so granted, their is a whole lot of white going on in those states. But I do have friends in both places who are not white, and they have married within their race, too. They all dated white people when I knew them, but when they got to marrying they stayed within their race. Why is that?
My husband and his friends are another example of people marrying within their race. He went to UCLA, a very ethnically diverse school, yet all of his college friends, and believe me, there are a lot of them, are Asian. And in fact, only one is not Japanese. And they all married each other or within their race. The Chinese friend married a Chinese woman, and all the Japanese friends married Japanese. It really strikes me funny. It really almost requires conscious effort to stay that racially segregated.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think for a minute any of my friends or my husband's friends are racists. But it makes me wonder if we are somehow programmed to be attracted to people of the same race. Or is it that culturally we really are too different? Is it that dating outside your race is one thing, but when it comes to actually marrying, we find we just can't co-exist based on cultural differences? Kind of like having opposite financial ideas or religious views. If they're too different, the relationship just doesn't work out.
It doesn't just seem to stop at race either when choosing a mate. Height is another area where I notice really traditional man taller than woman relationships. I can think of only one couple I know personally where the wife is taller than the husband, and it does always take me a little by surprise. I find my self thinking, oh yeah, she's taller, that's kind of strange.
I don't know the answers, but I find it interesting to think about. What do you think? Are we attracted to people who are like us on some primal level? Are you in an interracial relationship or other non-traditional relationship? Do you feel you could marry outside your race or do you think their are too many differences for it to work out?
Jessica Anne
adventureswiththreegirls.blogspot.com
