Tag Archive | "interracial"

Participate in an Interracial Marriage Study!

Monday, November 30, 2009

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As most of you probably know, there is very little quantitative data out there on interracial marriages, especially anything beyond a basic count of how many there are. I recently stumbled across a study currently being conducted regarding satisfaction within interracial relationships, and I'd like to take a moment to encourage everyone here to consider taking about 20 minutes out of your day to help out a doctoral student completing the study, if you meet the requirements listed below.

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Friday Connections 27-11-09

Friday, November 27, 2009

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Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I'd blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are mixed families, cross-cultural food, and gender inequality issues in India (with a really sweet video).

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Interracial or Intercultural Relationship?

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

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What do you use: intercultural, interracial, or something else? I generally refer to my marriage - and speak of other relationships on this blog - in terms of cultural similarities or differences - mainly because cultural differences are where my interests lie. Thus, Aditya and I have an inter-cultural marriage, I write about the positives and negatives of intercultural relationships, and explore the values and beliefs of Aditya's and my cultures. And yet, culture alone does not tell the whole story. Race does matter in our relationship - at least in how the rest of society views our marriage.

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Broken Traditions? Intercultural Marriage and Cultural Continuity

Thursday, July 16, 2009

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A new commenter, Lurker frequent, brought up this interesting topic in regards to intercultural marriages in the comments section of my last post: As an Indian in the USA; the only reason I would not want to marry a local is to not "lose" my own traditions and culture. Minds meeting , and matching interests and hearts are more important, but certainly , coming from an old and rich tradition, one would want to preserve it by having a completely Indian family, no? Thoughts? It seems to me that there are several issues in play here, some of which Aditya and I discussed in the comments section when Lf first wrote out his comment (do check it out). What is meant by cultural continuity? Is it something we should value, and if so, why? Does intercultural marriage (which often leads to Third Culture Kids) automatically mean that the cultures of the parents is ending? What does it mean to say that India has an "old and rich tradition" (compared, presumably, against America or other Western cultures' younger and poorer traditions)? Is it something we should value? What exactly do we mean by tradition, anyways? What sort of culture - or cultures - do we want to have in our own lives? For those of us in intercultural relationships, what (if anything) are we losing by not creating a monocultural family? Will our lives be richer for it? Poorer? What about extended families? Well, that's a lot of questions! Enough for a book or three, certainly, so I'll just give a simplified sketch of my own views on this matter, than open it up to the rest of you.

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Intercultural Interviews: Indian Parents’ Perspective (Part Two)

Monday, July 13, 2009

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This is the second part of the interview I held with my husband Aditya's parents (you can find Part One here). This part starts off with an interlude on Maa and Baba's first meeting for their "semi-arranged" marriage, then continues on the topic of their first impressions of me. I finally got them to discuss some negatives: what they find difficult in having a non-Indian daughter-in-law and my (apparently) one fault. We also discussed some of the things they dislike about general American culture (as it relates to interpersonal relationships), and ended with some advice Maa and Baba have for intercultural couples, both generally and for those having some difficulty with Indian in-laws.

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To Hug or Not to Hug: More on Meeting the Parents

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

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Aditya's parents are visiting us again for the second time - they arrived late last week - which has cut into my blogging time as we catch up with them. Of course, it also means plenty of blogging material is being generated with our temporary extended family living situation. The last time they visited I only got out one substantive post on the topic - I hope to do a bit better this time. Of course, that post - which was on the (eek!) order that Aditya's parents tried to bring to our home, disrupting my chaotic-but-somehow-functional mess of a system - still haunts us. Today Baba and Maa dusted and vacuumed the house while we at work - and then jokingly pointed out after I arrived home that my piles of mess were exactly where I left them, just cleaner. (Little do they know that if I am stymied in blogging about their dastardly actions of cleaning our house & cooking delicious meals I have no problem in getting irrationally upset about some other minor issue. For example: the fridge has been reorganized without my express permission, and the dishwasher was inefficiently loaded, resulting in one less cup being washed than if I had loaded it. I'm still reeling!) Since I haven't had a chance to sit down and think through a post lately, I thought I'd share with you the transcript I've typed up in spare minutes from an NPR segment called Intercultural Relationships: Can They Work?. I'm not a professional transcriber, so there may be errors - but I figured something was better than nothing for those of you who can't (or don't like to) listen to podcasts. The segment (and my post title) was developed from an article in East West Magazine. The article, which you can find here, is quite complimentary to the NPR segment, and I encourage you to read it as well as the transcript below. I've bolded the parts I find particularly interesting, and will post my thoughts on it tomorrow in the comments section.

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Interracial Marriage in the US: Some Simple South Asian Demographics

Monday, May 11, 2009

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Want to settle the debate on how much interracial marriage there is in the US? I know I'm tired of hearing the occasional uninformed comment on how South Asians just don't marry people outside their ethnicity, and isn't it downright odd that my supposedly proud-of-his-Indian-heritage husband would do so? (Hmm, well, he is an odd, odd dude. But not because he's married to me. Or, I mean, not 'cause he's married to a white woman - I'll admit you might have to be odd to voluntarily marry me. We brought matching crazy to the marriage table as dowry.) Well, the statistics on interracial marriages in America are now here, courtesy the US Census, so we can put this baby to rest. Actually, the statistics have always been "here" since the 2000 Census information was released, but I'm not such a numbers nerd that I felt like crunching the raw data myself with SAS or STATA. Luckily for me, a pair of sociologists have already done the dirty work, and their results have been made available at Dr. C.N. Le's Asian Nation website. I'm going to only present the South Asian related statistics here, but Dr. Le has the same sort of information available on all Asian ethnicities, and you can tease out information about other ethnicities as well.

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Of Love and Race

Monday, February 16, 2009

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An excellent short documentary on interracial couples by Tim Tsai featuring four different intercultural marriages in the US. I was most struck by the first third of the documentary, which focused on the (negative) attitudes that the couples have experienced by being in an interracial marriage. My personal experience has been quite different from that of the couples' in the film. I have had very few negative encounters regarding my relationship with Aditya. I have cared about very few of the negative encounters I've had regarding my relationship with Aditya.

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Any Chicagoites Interested in Some Press?

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

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I know we have some ladies (and perhaps gentlemen) here who call the Windy City home. Well, if any of you are interested, I've recently been contacted by a Chicago Tribune's Red Eye reporter, Alexia, about an article she's preparing to write on "meeting the parents." Alexia would like to include an intercultural couple in the article, and was wondering if anyone here would be interested in being interviewed: I'm a reporter with the Chicago Tribune's RedEye newspaper, a daily aimed at readers in their 20s and 30s. I stumbled across your blog while doing research for a story I'm writing. I'm wondering if you might be able to help with the story, given your blog's focus on intercultural relationship issues.

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Indian Parental Problems: When Your Intercultural or Interracial Relationship Is Suddenly an Issue

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

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A new reader to the blog, jbf, recently posted her personal story as a detailed comment in the post Initial Family Resistance to your Intercultural Relationship. Jbf's problem, however, is a bit different from the one highlighted in that post, so, with her permission, I'm hoisting her comment up into a post of its own, along with the comments from others that followed her original one. I'm sure she'd appreciate any further advice or suggestions you guys have. My own advice will be coming in the comments in a couple of hours. Of course, I'm not sure if I can do any better than what's been said so far - I'm very impressed with the level of thoughtful dialogue occuring here! Jbf's story & problems: I’m not sure if it is too late to comment on this, but I just came across it while searching for comfort in my situation. My friends and family have given me their support, but in matters of intolerance I do not know if they can offer anything more. I (a 25 yo white American girl) have been dating an Indian guy (born in America to Punjabi parents who moved here 2 years prior) for two years. I will call him B. We both hold graduate degrees and have careers. We met while in graduate school through mutual friends. We lived in different cities but found out that our parents lived only 15 minutes from each other. We quickly became close and decided to start a relationship despite the distance. I met his family very early on. They were receptive and welcomed me into their home. I even spent the night on multiple occasions. When he would come visit me he would bring small gifts from his mother, candles, potpourri, etc. I spent Christmas with his immediate family the last two years (I have not met extended family beyond cousins as dating is not a part of Indian culture). He graduated and started a job about a year ago. Within a few months of this we decided that when I graduated in a year I would find a job where he was and that we would move in together with the intent of being engaged within a year. Although untraditional it was important to both of us to be together in the same place before making such a commitment.

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Interracial Hate Crime in Elkhart, Indiana

Sunday, May 11, 2008

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I've finished up with dreadful exams just in time to hear about a dreadful incident in northwest Indiana. According to the AP report: An interracial couple who awoke to find a burning cross in their front yard in Elkhart are praying for peace and asking for privacy. Maggie Williams says the cross burning took her and her husband, Adam, by surprise. The FBI is investigating the cross burning, which police are calling a hate crime. Elkhart police say the 5 1/2 by 3 1/2 foot wooden cross was left burning against a tree about 15 feet from the couple's front door about 2:30 a.m. May 2. The Williamses have met with Mayor Dick Moore and representatives from the police department, the FBI and the NAACP. Bradley Vite, a family friend, says they also expect to meet with a Department of Justice official.

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Initial Family Resistance to your Intercultural Relationship

Monday, May 5, 2008

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I'm hoisting up from the comments a request for advice from a reader, Travelergal, who's run into a bit of a sticky situation with her Indian boyfriend's family. Her boyfriend, R- just informed his family about her, and, well, the response was not as enthusiastic as one might hope. R- has emailed her about their responses, and now Travelergal is trying to figure out the best course of action: I need your advice so here goes…my boyfriend recently told his parents about me (he is in India right now so of course he sent me this by email). I am a white American girl and he is a South Indian man. Are their comments normal? What can I do at this point to begin the process of “Slow Acclimation”? I want them to eventually accept me but I have no idea where to begin or what I should do at this point! Any advice would be great!! Travelergal included her boyfriend's email, which I've put below the fold, along with my responses (in red). I'm sure she'd appreciate all of you chiming in with suggestions, advice, or sympathy as well.

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Who is Affected by your Intercultural Relationship?

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

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Many people subscribe to the idea that your personal life is nobody's business but your own - as long as you aren't maiming others, anyways. While I generally agree with the sentiment this idea expresses, I also think it's important to realize that, like it or not, your actions affect a wide swath of people. In fact, at the margin, your actions affect the entire world. Let's all pause for a moment to ponder that grandiose thought while breaking out into The Circle of Life. Everyone back? Good. I brought up this topic because being in an intercultural relationships has a tendency to disrupt the "social equilibrium," if you will, of the people around you. In almost every country and region an intercultural relationship is the exception, not the norm. So while being in any relationship might affect those close to you - my dad still hasn't gotten over the fact that I'm no longer his little girl - intercultural relationships are both a regular ol' relationship and something of a challenge to the status quo. As if romantic relationships weren't tough enough on their own! In this post I'm focusing on how intercultural relationships, in particular, affect those around us. I'll start out by laying out a (non-comprehensive) list of the type of people who can be affected by your intercultural marriage or relationship, continue with how these effects ripple out through the social web of life, and then finish up with how much you should really care about it all. This post developed as I thought about how parents can react to their children's intercultural relationships - I'll be applying the principles and theory I develop here to that post, which will be the next "serious" one.

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Intercultural Families in the New York Times

Monday, March 31, 2008

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In case you didn't catch it, there was a news article today in the New York Times on interracial people, entitled Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race. Since many intercultural marriages end up producing little beings which grow up to have some of the issues discussed in the article, I thought it might be of interest to you guys here. The article starts off with the obligatory mention of how Barack Obama has churned up discussion on the issue of mixed races, and then transitions into discussing how interracial issues in America have changed in recent years. It's a good, comprehensive piece, and I particularly like the bits that cover how parents feel about their mixed-heritage children. If the topic interests you, try checking out some of the links on the Intercultural Relationship Resources page here on Gori Girl for something a bit meatier.

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What Counts as an Intercultural Relationship?

Monday, March 24, 2008

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Boy, I love me some good, high fiber intercultural friendship! Aditya informs me it's particularly tasty with warmed whole milk. His insistence that cold cereal is best eaten with whole milk that is not in its natural state of refrigerated coldness (oh, the horrors***) is one of many indicators that we might just be in an intercultural relationship. (I suppose his Indian passport, brown skin, and Hindu faith also belong on the list of indicators, although, frankly, I notice the milk-warming thing just as often.) Seriously, though - where is the line between just doing things a little differently, and being from two different cultures? Here on Gori Girl, we're pretty open about the definition of an intercultural relationship (henceforth ICR). Since culture is a broad, nebulous thing, finding someone of a different culture to be in a relationship with isn't that hard to do. "Relationship", by the way, is also a broad, nebulous concept, but we're not going to get into that. If you think you're in a relationship, be it hetro, homo, platonic, "it's complicated" on facebook, or whatever else, then you are, as far as I'm concerned. One concept at a time, and today's focus is on the intercultural part of ICR.

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