Believe It or Not, It's All About Love

Believe It Or Not, It's All About Love

Helin Tran

3/12/2017

        In today's society, relationships of all different kinds become more and more accepted each day. However, when it comes to interracial relationships, people still hold opposing viewpoints on the matter. For the most part, peoples' viewpoints all boil down to two beliefs; the traditional belief and the popular culture belief. People who follow the traditional belief are seen as more proud of and loyal to their culture/heritage and tend to be more segregated than others. They feel that when someone of their own culture dates someone outside of their own culture, he or she is "wanting to escape" from his or her cultural identity. On the other hand, popular culture belief sees people not by the color of their skin nor by their culture, but rather by their character and value as a person. To them, it's not about escaping anything. Instead, it is simply about love. Personally, I've always seen dating as being driven by love, never as a way to escape anything, especially one's culture, values, or themselves. Whether a relationship is interracial or not, in my opinion it always boils down to love, which is the common theme among the two, regardless of traditional beliefs or popular culture beliefs.

        Growing up as a Vietnamese American woman in California, I have had my fair share of relationships with people of different cultures and races. I've always noticed how different my parents are from my non-Vietnamese friends' parents but never really understood why. I always thought it was simply something about me being their daughter, that they felt they had to protect me in whatever way with whatever I get myself into. However, I noticed a great difference amongst my parents' reactions when I would be dealing with another Vietnamese American compared to someone who is Caucasian or African American or Hispanic. It always seemed like they were happier and less afraid when I was with another Vietnamese American person, and I guess I just thought of it as simply a coincidence. Now, I know that there are different perspectives and beliefs about interracial relationships, and I must take that into consideration moving forward when I am dealing with my parents' drama regarding my relationships.

        In David Mura’s “The Colors of Desire", he posed a question, "Father, mother, / I married a woman not of my color. / What is it I want to escape?"^[1] With that question, he exemplifies the traditional belief that dating a person outside of one's culture is just a way of him or her trying to escape. Not only does he mention that he married a woman not of his color (showing that he is aware of this fact and it causes him concern), but he also asks what it is that he's trying to escape. In "Reflections of My Daughter", he discusses his desire for assimilation and his realization of what he was doing regarding his cultural heritage. He discusses his traditional belief, that he was trying to escape from his identity as a Japanese American and instead be viewed as a European American. However, he goes on to say "By assimilating, I could erase my cultural sense of difference. I could not, though, erase the way I looked. Or how others regarded me because of that."^[2] Even though a person might be attempting to escape his or her own cultural identity by dating outside of the culture, he or she will never fully be able to escape, simply because of the fact that race exists and is usually determined by the color of one's skin, not of one's cultural identity. Therefore, in my opinion, since you can't fully escape, interracial relationships aren't about that. Instead, they are all about love.

        In Spike Lee's 1991 movie, "Jungle Fever", Wesley Snipes performs the role of Flipper Purify, who is a happily married African American man. During the movie, he falls in love with Annabella Sciorra, who performs the role of Angie.^[3] Their interracial relationship is one that is created by love and passion, a viewpoint of the popular culture belief. On the other hand, Flipper's father is offended by his son's lack of a traditional belief regarding interracial relations. He sees him as being ashamed of who he is and where he comes from, just trying to escape from his cultural identity by hooking up with a white, Italian woman. However, because they have contrasting skin colors, Flipper's father is blinded by the fact that they are simply in love and instead, insists that it is about race and trying to escape one's cultural identity. They exemplify the struggles of interracial dating in the 90s, where a lot of people at that time held traditional beliefs which conflicted with the popular culture belief. However, over time people have become more and more acceptable of interracial relationships. Professor Rick Banks of Stanford Law School stated that "I think the racial barriers have almost, have blurred to the extent of almost being socially insignificant".^[4] In fact, "since 1960, the number of interracial marriages in the United States has increased dramatically. There were 157,000 interracial marriages in 1960 and by 2010 there were 2,413,000".^[5] Thus, the question remains as to why interracial relationships have become more and more common if the traditional belief still exists.