INSIDE:
NEWS/STORIES/ARTICLES
Book Reviews
Columns/Opinion/Cartoon
Films
International
National
NW/Local
Recipes
Special A.C.E. Stories
Online
Paper (PDF)
NW RESOURCE GUIDE
Archives
Consulates
Organizations
Scholarships
Special Sections
Upcoming
The Asian Reporter Tenth Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet - Saturday, April 26th.
Asian Reporter Info
AR
Merchandise
Contact Us
Subscription Info. & Back Issues
ASIA LINKS
Asian Studies
Currency Exchange
More Asian Links
Public Holidays
Time Zones
Copyright © 2000 - 2008
AR Home
My Turnby Maileen Hamto |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V18, #5 (January 29, 2008), page 6.
Love and its complications
On a recent road trip to Seattle, audio CDs of Toni Morrison’s Sula were my companions. Sula is a complex and rich tale about the lives of women, choices they made, their relationships with men and their children, and, more importantly, their enduring friendships. The characters are women who took one look at the prescribed mold for a woman’s role in society and said: Na-uh. Not today. Not my life. Not like that.
Sula is set in a small town in Ohio during the time of segregation, the years immediately following World War I. The protagonist, Sula, is a free-spirit, a woman vilified by the entire town for not sharing its moral code. Yet the one "crime" for which she was considered a pariah was the unthinkable: having consensual relations with white men.
Interracial couplings are common these days, but that doesn’t mean men and women are free of the stigma attached to such unions. When I was in college in the early ’90s, I remember being at a party with friends, mainly American-born Filipinos and other Asians. Dating soon became the topic of conversation, and how some Asian-American men feel betrayed when Asian-American women date outside of their race.
I found myself becoming defensive, because I mostly dated men outside my ethnic background. In Manila, I was raised in an evangelical Christian sect, very narrow-minded in its views of the world. I wasn’t drawn to white, American-born men whose brand of Christianity is familiar at best, dull at worst. It was refreshing to learn about the Muslim and Hindu faiths, Buddhist teachings, and the cultural gifts of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
I looked at my friend and asked, "Do you consider me a traitor because I’ve dated Indians and Pakistanis?"
"No," he said. "That’s a little different." Although he couldn’t quite articulate why. Inter-ethnic dating is all right, yet dating men from the dominant culture is considered a blow, an emasculating act.
I’ve talked to a number of Asian-American men since that conversation, and found that many tend to be more forgiving of foreign-born Asian women who marry white men. The widely held view is that foreign-born women from impoverished countries in Asia marry white Americans because it is a way to marry up, a way to improve their economic status.
On the Asian Nation website, <www.asian-nation.org>, sociologist Dr. C.N. Le notes that in the United States, interracial unions provide tangible benefits to Asian-American women, both U.S. and foreign-born.
"Whites generally occupy the highest socio-cultural position in the U.S.’s racial hierarchy. Even if a working-class Asian American marries another working-class white, her social status will still improve, compared to if she married someone else in her ethnic group or even another Asian."
With all due respect, this perspective hits me as a gross oversimplification of the rules of attraction and compatibility. It’s rather harsh to state that when an Asian-American woman decides to date or marry a white man, her decision is solely driven by the need to elevate her socioeconomic status or to assimilate more readily, more easily into the dominant U.S. culture.
Sociologists point to recent trends to support their theories. As Asian-American women move higher up in the social strata through higher education and professional opportunities, a new trend is blossoming. In recent years, interracial marriages between Asian Americans and whites have declined, according to Census Bureau statistics. For Asian Americans age 25 through 44, there is a considerable rise in Pan-Asian marriages. As Asian Americans attain socioeconomic gains, there is greater social interaction among Asians from various ethnicities, especially when the dominant society still sees Asians as one homogeneous group.
Back to interracial love — it’s complicated stuff. Beyond statistics and trends, what draws people together — and more importantly, what keeps them together — transcends money, social status, assimilation, and other societal factors.
Let’s just leave it at that.