Forty years today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against state anti-miscegenation laws. I’m too tired to analyze this right now, but I wanted to acknowledge that I’m the child of a mixed-race marriage, and though I rarely think of it in this way, I guess you could say I’m in a mixed-race marriage myself. I’m curious–how many of you are of mixed race or are married to someone of a different race?
I’ve always felt pride in my mix of Asiany-White goodness. In general celebration, I’m linking to this music video that is a collaboration between white gaijin musicians in Japan and Japanese shamisen players. It’s hard to go wrong with rock shamisen and fox-magic.
11 responses so far ↓
1 TammyT // Jun 13, 2007 at 9:34 am
Hey John,
My hubby is 1/2 Japanese - hence the Japanese last name. I love my name. It makes people think.
My husband has a 1/2 brother, who is not Japanese, yet shares the same family name. He married a woman with Mexican heritage, and they had kids. The kids also have the Japanese last name. I love it!
My husband is very proud of his Japanese heritage, as he should be! I’m proud to be a part of his family.
2 Amber // Jun 13, 2007 at 10:55 am
Me me me! I wasn’t always proud of it, though. I grew up in a VERY VERY white community, and it was hard growing up and looking different. I grew into it more in college—I guess when you are in a more diverse population, suddenly it’s cool to be different.
3 Elise // Jun 13, 2007 at 10:57 am
I’m white and married to a white guy by pure chance that I happened to fall in love with a white guy.
I do, however, think that black men are generally the most attractive men on the planet….
Interesting topic. I’m pretty sure my mom is totally opposed to inter-racial marriages, although she never came flat out and said it. As a kid, though, I remember her pointing out a couple (she was white, he was Polynesian) and commenting on how difficult it must be for their marriage because of the different traditions they were raised in. Anytime inter-racial marriages are brought up, she’ll say something along the lines of “Marriage is already hard enough with two people raised in the same religion and same culture, imagine how much harder it would be to be married to someone from a different religion or different culture!” That is, I think, her politically correct way of saying it’s better to marry someone of the same religion and same skin color.
It seems to me that the stigma attached to mixed-race marriages is dying down - perhaps it is a generational thing? My great-grandparents thought it was a sin, my grandparents would never have even considered it, my parents aren’t 100% opposed but think its better not to, and my sisters and I don’t think it matters at all.
I can’t believe it the ruling you mentioned was only 40 years ago. I would have thought it would have been a law done away with much longer ago than that.
4 Amber // Jun 13, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Elise’s comment just made me realize I have more to say on the topic :). My parents did not have a happy marriage, and my mom liked to blame their different “cultures”… and so she’d always try to push me into dating white, Jewish boys. As if I, as a mixed race atheist, had anything more in common with white, Jewish boys than with, say, black, Muslim men.
Hmph.
Maybe that’s why I was never proud of it as a child… my parents didn’t even think it was a good thing.
5 Miko // Jun 13, 2007 at 5:29 pm
heh, you beat me to it! My general comments/thoughts:
- According to the article I heard, only 7% of current marriages are considered to be “mixed” (by whom, I’m not sure).
- I dated a Vietnamese boy for a while & when we broke up, he always said it was because of the race thing. I found that baffling, since I met him online & thought his personality was the most important part of him.
- I’m currently married to a Jew…although, I’d just call him “white”. His step-mom was convinced that I & my family are anti-semites because I didn’t tell them his last name immediately. I just didn’t think it mattered & anyway, we’re both white! :-p
- My sister married a man from the South & when she brought him home, one of my first thoughts was that he was mixed (half-black was my bet)…so I’m not colorblind. It wasn’t until they’d been married about 5 years that his mother admitted to him that one of his ancestors was black. In the South, according to her, it was better to “forget” that kind of history & just be white. Personally, I think it’s obvious, but no big deal…
- In keeping with my lack of colorblindness, I’ve always thought that mixed-race people were more beautiful than anyone else. Doesn’t really matter what kind of mixed, either, I’ve had debilitating crushes on asian/white, black/asian, black/hispanic, & Irish/Italian, although I’ll leave it to you whether that last one counts.
6 John White // Jun 14, 2007 at 9:12 am
Oh man, the Yoshida Brothers might be my new favorite band. I always liked the sound of the shamisen, but never new this style of play existed.
I grew up as a child of mixed race, and always felt comfortable with it. I learned about both traditions, had tastes of both cultures (though my exposure to the different religious traditions was pretty one-sided), and never really felt conflicted.
It might be subtly different when one’s background is mixed-race with one parent being black. It’s easy in some situations to just go along with a “black” identification (my personal experience, anyway). Especially since there’s essentially no such thing as a pure-blood African-American.
But my Japanese heritage is very important to me. Just more difficult to wear on the outside.
7 John // Jun 14, 2007 at 9:47 am
Thanks everyone, for chiming in. Tammy, I share your husband’s pride.
Amber, your second comment points to the complexity of mixed-race marriage–the problems of perception are not just external. My parents had their ups and downs, but my dad was enough of a Japanophile (and my Mom was full of Japanese racial pride) that I felt good about my mixed heritage. Living in Japan and gaining cultural/linguistic fluency helped, too.
John White, we’ll have to compare notes. I, too, value my Japanese ethnic and cultural heritage, but am generally perceived and treated as white except by Asian-American friends, Hawaiians and other hapas (Because so many of CatGirl’s friends are Asian, they seem to accept her Asian heritage). I wonder where our experiences overlap and where they diverge.
Maybe you share the frustration of having your Asian heritage minimalized or dismissed because of your appearance, but I suspect that the experience of passing for a white man in the U.S. is very different from being perceived as a black male.
Dang, even picking the words to write this is tough. Like you said, there’s essentially no such thing as a pure-blood African-American. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the U.S., someone with one black grandparent and three white ones is considered black, rather than “one quarter black.” This is different from the fractional descriptions that is typically used to describe hapas.
8 C. L. Hanson // Jun 14, 2007 at 10:59 am
Elise’s comment reminds me of the story I wanted to tell here:
One time when I was a teenager, my parents made some remark about how black people and white people shoudn’t marry each other. This really surprised me since I’d never heard them make any racist comments before.
Being the typical dramatic teenager, I responded to their comment with something like “Heil Hitler!” which inspired them to backpedal a bit. They explained that it would be hard because of the cultural differences, and concluded that a marriage between a white American and a white European would probably be just as hard, if not worse.
Yet here I am, a white American married to a white European, and we’re somehow making it work…
9 Miko // Jun 15, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I am reminded of my sisters kids, who are legally multiracial, tho mostly white. Her husband is Dutch-Indonesian, born in Brazil, with a mother born in China. Due to Los Angeles Social Services, this means that, on their birth certificates, the eldest is “Hispanic”, the next is “Asian”, the third is “white” (my sister got to fill that one out), followed by another Hispanic & another Asian. They all would’ve fooled Hitler in terms of looking like his ideal.
How much of race is culture & how much simply a construct?
10 Miko // Jun 21, 2007 at 5:12 pm
I first discovered I liked this kind of Eastern/Western fusion (although maybe it’s more appropriately called Eastern/African fusion, since it’s the beat that I like when added to the to-my-Western-ears discordant tunes) in that fight scene in Hero that takes place in the Go courtyard in the rain. Love that scene. Yukiko Matsuyama plays the koto annually at LMU’s Japanese Culture Night. Every time, she plays a fantastic fusion piece in addition to her more traditional pieces. I’ve bought two of her (I think three or four) CDs and I don’t think she’s ever recorded it, which is such a shame, since I think it’s one of the best pieces of hers.
Thank you for turning me on to the Yoshida Bros.!
11 Miko // Jun 27, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Folks, you heard it here first! NPR’s All Things Considered today played the Yoshida Brothers’ “Hit Song” between their segments on talk radio & fuel rations. Mind On Fire: on the bleeding edge of cool new music
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