My very best friend comes from interracial parents (father black, mother white). I have known this girl for many years since high school, she has always had a problem with dating and making friends, for whatever reason. For dating purposes it seems the black guys were okay with dating her while the white guys didn't give her much of the time of day. And in the friend department she had such a hard time because it seemed the black girls thought she was "trying to be one of them" and the white girls also thought she was a "wannabe" and therefore kinda shunned her. Now today, years later, as a grown adult, she doesn't have the problem with making friends but still in the dating, the only guys really interested in her is either black or hispanic.
Has this been the same experience from others from interracial parents?
Yeah, but it's not much of a problem. Shrug it off. There's a difference between racial bigotry and personal preference in the physical appearance of significant others. I know I have one. Heh. The only problem is that though we generally still appear to be black, unless you're like my brother, who wound up with fair skin despite having the same parentage as my darker, not-going-to-be-mistaken-for-white sister and I. Of course, we've been mistaken for everything from Greek to Latina to Native American to Arab before, so anything goes, right?
I've got a Korean-American to treat me right.
And I'm related by marriage to Nathan Bedford Forrest! That whirring sound is him spinning in his grave.
The only thing that ever bothers me is that when people are posed the question about whether they would have a problem with their child dating/marrying interracially, people tend to point out that no, their child is involved in such a relationship and it's going well. That's all very well, but does that mean if the relationship ended badly or if you just didn't like the person you would disapprove of interracial dating? I dunno. That seemed to be kind of the feedback I tended to get from most parents of white guys and even just parents of some acquaintances in general. "Yeah, my kid is hanging out with a half-black girl/black girl (if they couldn't guess the halfrican-ness, which most can't), but she's the
good kind so it's okay." That's still condescending, moms and dads out there. Just, uh, FYI.
