Beauty Standards Pt. 2

Part 1 here

Would a Queer Woman Find You As Attractive As You Find Yourself?

In my search, I ran across an article, which I'm pretty sure features/is basically talking about white women, that got me thinking--do women generally hang out with groups of women who match them in terms of looks? I would describe my female friends as women who are generally a little bit above average, definitely not standouts to most people--or shouldn't be, I feel, except maybe in terms of personality. I think being a woman who likes women romantically, hanging out with straight women and hearing what some women think about their looks, is advantageous to me because I get to compare what I think with what they think, what others think, etc. I don't think straight men really get that kind of opportunity, i.e. to sit around hearing women talk about their own attractiveness level and he has his own ideas about that going on in his head as someone who could prospectively check that same woman out.

Interesting to note that while I think all my female friends are kind of average, except a few of them, the black ones are the only ones who don't have men in their lives right now, except one and she's in her late 30s. In fact, let me break down the women I'm thinking of as of right now:

-Nikki: so, I've mentioned her several times in my blog before. She's black, a little bit younger than I am, parents are African immigrants. I know I said I would leave Africans out of this, but I guess technically she's American. She is very confident that she is attractive, yet she is bewildered by why men don't seem interested in her. She has a really good personality; I don't think anyone dislikes her. She's not the kind of black woman that people like to think most black women are, i.e. I really don't perceive her as the kind of woman who would be much of a problem in a relationship. Thing is, she's not as good-looking as she thinks she is. I would say she is my least attractive friend. Though she has a good personality, for me, it's not the right kind of personality to make me overlook her level of physical attractiveness. If she were queer, we wouldn't be a match; in fact, I wonder how we're even able to be friends. We simply have very little in common.

-Best Friend In Law School (BFLS): have mentioned her before, too. White female, my age. I think she is perfect in every way except physical attractiveness. There's just no attraction there, physically. I do think she is average or a bit above. Sometimes, I feel that the outstanding nature of her personality would be enough if she were queer. There are guys here who think she is perfect, including physically, and she has a lot of male friends and a lot of female friends. Some [straight] women here agree she is the total package. She is extremely humble about all these kinds of compliments. She is engaged and will be marrying a man upon graduation.

-South Asian Friend (SAF): I think she's pretty in a very realistic way, i.e. nothing glamorous about her. She's not someone I would feel awkward hanging out with or dating because they look too good for me--and, trust me, I've been there with some females. A relationship would be a crazy idea, though. We're both too straightforward and controversial, i.e. a little too similar in ways that can be bad. It would be a little like having a relationship with a stereotypical black female. Last I heard, she was dating a South Asian male.

-Korean Friend (KF): I think she's pretty, too. Good personality. I guess she's pretty enough, combined with the fact that she's Asian, for me to be a little surprised that she seems to like me as much as she does, even in just a friendship capacity...I suppose partially because I perceive Asian females around here to be stuck-up and/or very interested in white people mainly or only. I've never thought about dating her, but she has been in a relationship (with some white guy or another) ever since I've known her.

-Best Friend In Music (BFM): White female, engaged to be married. Men of all races love her, but she has no idea why (and neither do I). That article I linked to above? She is so one of those kind of women, from having men approach to the point of viewing it as a major annoyance to women hating her to talking about how difficult it is...only she doesn't think she's attractive and she's not friendly. I have never thought she was that attractive, so on one hand some of the male harassment stories she's told me have been amazing to me, but on the other hand I understand this is a white female, blonde hair, blue eyes, "innocent" or "girl next door," "tiny and cute" kind of look. But partially because of her, I believe pretty much everything the women in that article say, can see how it's a problem and have even been thankful myself for not having to deal with stuff like that, especially the more black men get away from liking black women (though older black men still seem to like and annoy us). In fact, this friend and I joke about how she needs to be a black woman so she won't have to deal with these things, as my theory is that black women who are good-looking don't experience the problems in that article except maybe when they're in black environments. Aside from having no physical attraction to her, I would never want to date her because, as with SAF, we're too similar in ways that are problematic and just too similar for a relationship to be interesting.

-Black Religious Friend (BRF): mentioned her in my last post (i.e. the religion post), she's a little older than I am, single. She looks alright, but...I don't know, she's another one of my friends I've never had the slightest interest in...absolutely no chemistry or anything. I can tell she cares about how she looks by her appearance, spends time on it and that she feels confident in that area. We have really good conversations, but I can tell we're pretty different in many ways. We still have a lot more in common in terms of how we think than Nikki and I do.

-Angel: mentioned her before, she's in her late 30s, married, half-Asian/half-white, GORGEOUS, GREAT PERSONALITY--too damn perfect, hence the name. In fact, if she were any other woman, I would likely have issues being friends with her. But for whatever reason, I feel very comfortable with her, and I can tell she genuinely likes me. I see her as the kind of woman that, despite coming off as perfect, you just can't help but like her. I can't see her having the issues with other women that women in the article do, and she strikes me as the kind of woman who doesn't realize how great she is and won't run around talking about being attractive, but is still just confident in general. I want to marry her, but I'm pretty sure some white guy beat me to it! haha. Oh, well. She's very much like all the great things I see in BFLS, plus the looks, and seems humble about her looks and everything else. In fact, I kind of joke about the way she responds to compliments. She's like, "That's nice of you to say," as if I'm not being serious!

-Black Successful Friend (BSF): who is also religious and mentioned in my last post. Late 30s, married. Don't really know her and this guy's story because that's not the kind of thing we talk about when we speak. I do think she's pretty. But I also never thought about her "that way," probably for several reasons--when I met her, I didn't like older women; I could tell she was straight; she lives far away; she's really more in the role of a career mentor. Like BRF--and, really, Nikki, too--I can tell she works on keeping herself looking nice and feels good about herself in that area.

I would say my closest friends are generally the more average ones, in my eyes, i.e. BFLS, Nikki, and BFM. Angel, BRF and SAF are the next bracket. I'd say BFLS, Nikki, BFM and Angel are the friends I've bonded with on some level, very special friendships and the kind that come about just from clicking without a real explanation...just could never have other friends like them, most likely, or at least not female friends (remember, this list doesn't include the male friends I have). Yet, it seems among these four women, you have differing levels of physical attractiveness. BFM is a guy magnet physically, even though she doesn't want to be. Nikki probably wishes she could get even just a little of what BFM gets. Angel's been with the same person for almost two decades and still looks better than most females who are 20-25 years younger than she is. And everybody thinks BFLS is the total package, even straight females I know. The one commonality that maybe exists? Good-to-great personalities.

What does this say about me? Hell if I know.

But I guess ultimately, most women have a warped sense of how they look, at least vs how others see them. Is there a racial correlation as to what way? I think it's a good question.

Black Women & Beauty Standards

For a change, let us not talk about Halle Berry and Beyonce, white women or light skin vs dark skin. In fact, let's take African women out of the picture, as well. Let's just talk about everyday American black women and how we feel about us, physically.

This is one of those times I would really like to open up comments to see what others think about this--and, therefore, wish I had a blog that I could control to my satisfaction--because, unlike pretty much every topic I write about, this is the one topic I have not been able to find anything online about. There are many similar topics, but what I want to know--and can't seem to find the answer to--is...do adult black women generally think of themselves as attractive, or no, despite all the negative media and trends in interracial dating that leave black women out?

So, in this case, this is not my non-PC, no-limits response to a popular topic and response that I hear and see everywhere, per se. I'm aware that you can't generalize a group as far as some black women surely have issues in terms of their physical appearance just like many other women do, while some black women are very happy with their looks. I'm curious about black women for two main reasons, though: 1) I feel that we hear all the time how white women feel about their looks, and 2) as I've mentioned before in my blog on more than one occasion, my experience with black women is that, at least compared to what we hear about women/self-esteem/beauty standards in general and all the degradation of black women physically alone, black women are surprisingly very happy with their looks and have a higher rate of self-confidence in that area than other women. As I said, I have nothing to back this up, and it really could just be a result of the kind of black women I find myself around.

My search around the internet actually did turn up more items that indicate, at least, a mindset of celebrating black femininity, not to mention topics about interracial dating. I could find topics about issues of black women and self-esteem, but these issues never really had anything to do with the self-esteem of black female adults in relationship to physical appearance--it was either how some black women felt when they were younger, issues of colorism among blacks--which also tended to relate to being younger vs now--or just general self-esteem issues.

There are a lot of reasons why I think this question should have been raised and explored by now by someone other than myself, the bulk of them mentioned above at some point. But the main reason I'm bringing it up right now is because I find myself seriously wondering if I'm the only black female adult who does not view herself as physically attractive. Now, like I said, this topic today has nothing to do with white women, the media, or even body image--though I don't like my body, either, but I think every woman hates something about her body. I'm just plain-old talking about, I don't think I'm a good-looking person. Although the topic is raised in the context of race, my issues are not race-related. I think there are many attractive black women, including many dark-skinned black women and black women without permed hair; I just don't think I'm one of them.

As a black female who is racially mixed, very light-skinned, usually has long hair and has hair of a certain texture, I have probably been assumed on occasion to be a black female who automatically believes herself to be good-looking and/or who is standoffish or what have you because of these features. There has never been a time in my life when I have found myself physically attractive--ever. I don't think that will ever change. However, lucky for me, my self-esteem has always predominantly come from my intelligence (and in the last decade, from my talents, as well), so not feeling attractive has never been the kind of thing to keep me sitting around feeling bothered or bad about myself. Throughout my adolescence, high school and probably college, too, I pretty much never thought about how attractive I was.

I worried about weight, but I think I usually think about weight for me. For the past couple years, weight has been more about feeling good than feeling attractive, especially after having gotten on a healthy regimen and seeing results from it--results being things like not just weight loss, but having more energy, not feeling gross internally from eating junk or greasy foods, having an easier time doing certain things, not having as many headaches or other medical issues, being able to workout without being in pain the next day, etc. Still, the reason I say my issue isn't body image is because I could finally achieve my ideals in terms of working out and how my body looks, and I will still not see myself as physically attractive. I will like my body, but I will not think I'm much prettier.

As I've said before, it amazes me that pretty white women or even pretty Asian women can seriously think they aren't attractive, but a range of black women know--or "know"--they are good-looking. That is, some black women look good and they know it; some black women don't look good, but they still think they're all that. Now, obviously, I'm not saying "all" here...but I am saying it seems like you'll encounter more white and Asian women who underestimate their looks than black women. Ironically, they are the most desired women in the US, black women the least desired.

I also must say that I have wondered for years how people know they are attractive. Even if I thought I were, I would never say I was to anyone, and I don't understand people who do. One time, I did put this question to some people, and they told me, basically, that they know because they're told. Do I think everyone who is attractive is told as much, though? Not really. Do I believe the people who have said it to me? Absolutely not. With family, I feel like they say it because they're family. With others, I feel they are either trying to be nice or, frankly, trying to trick me in some way. Now, I have heard other non-black women say the same thing or something similar, so I don't know why I have never heard a black woman say this.

For example, my oldest sister had to know on some level that she was physically attractive, even though she had self-esteem issues, because, at one point, she was trying to become a model. My mother has essentially always been one of those people who, as I mentioned, will announce that she is attractive and still brags on her high school and college days as one of the most attractive women at her schools. Nowadays, she's a little more like those black women who seems like her mirror is not quite the same as everyone else's...no offense. My white friends and I laugh about it, though, because she would unquestionably be overweight to white people. And even to blacks, I don't think she would be considered obese or anything like that, but, still, they should be able to see she has some weight on her.

However, until recently, my mother has insisted that she is "thin." I don't think she understood that's not true until a doctor told her how much she weighs and let her know she's overweight. And, honestly, I still don't think she understands fully, because she keeps blaming the weight on things such as digestion problems, failing to see that she has been overweight for some time now. She, as does my oldest sister, also insist that I weigh more than they do. For example, my mother refuses to believe that I wear a smaller pants size than she does, and my sister's stomach is bursting out of shirts I have given her...um, she goes to work like this! I'm sure people there can see her stomach all day.

You remember my last post on religion and how I said many religious people seem to have difficulties in conversations sometimes, though I specifically meant conversations about religion. Well, make that conversations in general. I remember I asked my mother maybe a year ago why she feels that she is physically attractive and was telling her I don't see myself this way. And her response was basically something like, "Of course, you're attractive. Your parents aren't ugly. I was Mrs. Blah Blah Blah in high school and La Di Da in college, and women were after your father blah blah blah." And, come to think of it, I really wonder how my mother was considered very beautiful back in the day, because we do look similar sometimes. Again, no offense to her, but I have a hard time thinking about people in my family in terms of attraction, so I always find it odd when people describe their mother as the most beautiful person in the world, for example.

Cont'd here

Does A Fetish Matter?

I think it depends on who you ask. I'm not sure anyone would ever come out and say, "No, it doesn't matter to me." But I believe I hear/read people brush it off on a regular basis.

In my last post, I linked to Carmen's video podcasts on YouTube. In one, which I watched almost a week or so ago, if I remember correctly she lists a few of the most common myths about interracial dating. One of those myths was that people who engage in IRs have a fetish. Now, don't get me wrong, Carmen doesn't completely brush it off. She just deflects a bit by saying, "Well, most people are in relationships for the wrong reasons, and nobody ever says anything about that." Fair.

Except...how do you compare dating someone for racial stereotypes and/or more because of their ethnic background than having an interest in who they are to other "wrong" reasons? And I actually do think we make a big deal about some of the other more common reasons people "use" others in dating. The next biggest reason besides race, I'd say, is money. We talk about that all the time. How often do we hear people, particularly women, referred to as "gold diggers"? I think black women know that one really well, despite the fact that we now make more money than the men we typically find ourselves interested in, i.e. black men. How often does a male celebrity hook up with a woman or get a divorce, and we're all looking at the situation like, "This chick is after his money...how can he not see this...when will men learn?!"

Another reason, which I think is very similar to dating "preferences" based on race, is how we tend to value the most agreed-upon attractive people above all others. What the two have in common is being interested in someone for how they look rather than who they are. Often, people in these shallow relationships do see negative qualities in the attractive person but they try to ignore them because the person is so good-looking. Nowadays, we talk about the media's influence on self-perception/esteem and beauty standards as if this is a problem just as serious as the war in Iraq (sorry, but, to me, it's not...perhaps because I'm not influenced as much by the media and don't understand women crying on shows such as "Oprah" and "How To Look Good Naked" on Lifetime because they hate some aspect of their bodies). And we complain about people valuing looks over personality nonstop. People worry about their looks because of how it makes them feel, sure, but it's also about attracting others and competing with attractive individuals, especially for people who are single. Several industries make millions off this year after year.

Then there's age. Boy, do we harp on age differences. You think all of these relationships are 100% about love? Neither do I. The appeal for many people in these kinds of relationships, much like IRs, is stereotypes and the actual age. We look at couples such as Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore and wait for the day they break up. We wonder what the hell those two have to talk about, because we assume they're too different. When is Demi going to get over using Ashton for sex, and when is Ashton going to see signs of Demi being her age and run for the hills?

So, yes, there are other relationships that seem all wrong to us and, in fact, probably include at least one partner who is in it for the wrong reasons. But what are relationships anyway? To me, there's always a self-serving element. You wouldn't be in one if there weren't. We all get something out of relationships. But with the way our society makes the biggest deal of them all about race in everything, it goes without saying that when race is the reward--and then, in turn, seems like a punishment for others who are being left out--that that is the relationship where we stop and look at the trade-off and really have a problem with it. Anything that hints of racism is going to illicit that kind of reaction.

With something like age, you can't really have a group that gets left out/disadvantaged the way you can with race. And so, the thing that I've noticed is the people who brush off observations and criticisms of IR trends are usually those in the more advantaged groups. It's easy to say that those of us who claim we have no problem with IRs as long as the couple really is in love truly do have a problem with all IRs when you're among "the chosen." Of course we have a problem with IRs. And that problem goes beyond just your being an Asian woman with a white man or a black man with a white woman; it's about what these kinds of trends mean for black women and Asian men, the people sitting, watching all the same groups of people with long lines leading to their doors while we have nothing going on.

Do black women and Asian men have to be more proactive in their relationship search? I mean, is IRs to blame for every single black woman or Asian man who is single? Despite the answers to these questions, however you answer them, it's still just not a good feeling when you're the equivalent of the ugly layperson vs the media beauty, the blue collar nobody vs the six-figure executive. What some people fail to understand is there are winners and there are losers in IRs dynamics, and the majority of the people who have no complaints are the winners. Black women and Asian men have no false positive stereotypes following their groups around romantically, and we can't trade a fetish for a fetish with anybody.

In other words, a white man with an Asian fetish can meet an Asian female with a white fetish rather easily. Whatever kind of fetish a black woman may have, she may eventually find someone, but it's going to be a lot harder than for every other kind of woman and odds are pretty good that the guy doesn't have a fetish for black women, though some guys like that exist. In a way, the fetishes are besides the point; it's the result of them, the effects, the disproportionate desire for some and not others, that make some of us feel like sh!t and respond in turn. For some black women, it could be like being slapped by both the media and everyday life. Mix in racism, and it's three slaps. Sexism and the fact that women outnumber men...and, well, black women never stop getting slapped, basically. Where to go to find someone who thinks you're beautiful and worthy, for the right or wrong reasons? Just any reason?

Therefore, I find it, at least, insensitive the way some people think 1) nothing's wrong with "preferences" that exclude entire groups of people, especially when certain groups emerge consistently as more preferable than others, and 2) when the "fetish" arguments are dismissed in any fashion. If you don't have a problem with someone using you because they think people of your group are better in bed and/or because you see a benefit in that in the form of more dating partners, it being a compliment, your being able to get more dates from X race or whatever...or you just decide to be one of those people who, until someone makes it blatantly obvious to you that they're fetishizing/stereotyping you, you choose not to think they are...that's on you. I'm not going to get mad for you and, indeed, in general I'm not really mad for you.

But think a little deeper about the issue and what the fact that there are tons of relationships out there like yours means for people like me. I'm not asking you to care or to refrain from dating whomever you want; I'm just asking you to get the entire issue, so that you can stop addressing the issue as if it's not problematic at all, or is but isn't especially problematic for some just because you benefit from it even if you don't want to accept it.

I can't remember if this was in one of Carmen's videos or not, but I heard a good point recently, which is something that I've always known: just because a relationship started from a fetish or includes one doesn't mean the two aren't really in love or can't become so. I know this. I'd say my parents' relationship includes some fetishizing; how many mixed kids actually think about that or admit it, I wonder? Well, this one does. But still. Like me for me, 100%. I can't stand being stereotyped. See, my being fetishized, whether or not someone comes out and says something squarely stupid to me, matters to me. If you hint that you find my being black or being mixed especially exciting at all, I'm not interested. And can people of the same race fetishize each other? You know it. Black people say crap all the time like, "We'd have cute/light babies" and/or "Our kids would have 'good hair'." I don't want to hear that, either. Saying you want someone who understands your culture and that's why you'd prefer someone of your race is fine, understandable even. I don't see that as a fetish. But comments about how cute our kids would be because of my skin color or hair stinks of same-race racism and a "white is right," "if you're brown, stick around" kind of fetish.

What is a fetish, even? To me, a fetish is about either 1) being interested in someone and/or finding them attractive solely because they are from a particular background or have a certain kind of look, and/or 2) being interested in someone and/or finding them attractive because, due to their background, you assume/hope they have certain characteristics. Basically, you have a formula for your ideal man or woman, and race is very central to it. For example, sometimes people disclaim a white male's having a fetish because he likes Asian women who are feisty or Americanized, not the ones who will do anything he wants. But that's still a fetish because it's a specific race-related formula. It's not as if the guy likes any kind of woman who has an attitude; indeed, a black woman who acted like that Asian woman would be branded a "typical black b!tch" or unfeminine.

And point #1 is often a joke among black women, i.e. black men liking fat and/or ugly white women vs attractive black women. Very important to #1 is that a woman of that background can be unattractive by many standards, but her race makes up for it or keeps that man from noticing her unattractiveness. In other words, any woman from that background will do/is attractive. Recognition of this is very important for black women, who would otherwise start to agree with everyone else that we're not as attractive as all other groups of women in terms of the physical or personality. This is another reason why brushing off the existence of such fetishes or taking them lightly isn't a good idea.

What's important for those in the more privileged dating groups to know is if these descriptions don't fit your relationship, then don't take people's criticisms about fetishes--whether addressed towards your relationship or you, if you're single, personally. If you feel that you're genuinely attractive, for example, and a man of another race shows interest in you, as an Asian or white woman, and you hear black women discussing the aforementioned dynamics in IRs, why think we're talking about you, specifically, or even all non-black women? Or if some black women are talking about you, why let it get to you when you feel you're good-looking enough for comments about preferring ugly non-black women aren't justified in your case? Either way, just know that as IRs become more and more common, the topics of IRs and fetishes aren't going away; if anything, we'll talk and write about them more and more.

Asian Males, the Media and Interracial Dating

So, I've touched on black/white and Asian female/white male interracial combinations. Let's talk about one of the least discussed match-ups: Asian men interracially dating.

Whenever I do read something about this topic, it usually puts Asian men in the same boat as black women. However, I think the Asian male case is more bleakly forecast than what's happening in reality simply because of the perceived influence of media portrayals of Asian males and the comparison to how Asian females are doing in relationships. Admittedly, I wouldn't know what's really going on. My perception just has been that, in heterosexual relationships, though Asian men are less in demand than Asian women, whites as always and now even black men, they are still able to attract white women and some Asian women, as I see Asian men with white or Asian women all the time. In queer relationships, it seems that the script is almost entirely flipped--Asian men are very much in vogue, essentially getting the same kind of attention as Asian females get in hetero relationships.

Another thing I must admit is I'm not very educated on the media stereotypes of Asian men. I can count on one hand the number of movies or TV shows I've actively watched that had Asian males in them. I do notice, though, that Asian males don't play leading roles and that they are often somehow involved in martial arts. What is this all about? Is it white racists in Hollywood? Is it a lack of Asian male actors or Asian males trying to succeed as actors? Is it typecasting?

Here's what I've noticed about how Hollywood--and, essentially, much of the US--works: you have to complain. White people hate it, but complaining seems to work for minorities in some cases. While there are many differences between Asians and blacks, one of the biggest differences I've noticed is that blacks complain, complain, complain publicly...and Asians don't. In fact, I've found that in order to find out about certain Asian issues and general sentiments/opinions among many Asians on various issues and current events affecting their group and others, it has really taken digging deep, going into spaces that are very specifically Asian...whereas if you don't know some of the things going on with blacks or how many blacks think on a topic, it's because you're not listening. With blacks, you're gonna hear it, whether you want to or not! With Asians...ehhhh...visit an Asian American message board, an Asian American journal/magazine, a blog about Asians by an Asian or a site devoted to Asian American issues.

So, when blacks aren't seeing enough blacks on TV, they let everyone know this is a problem...and then, sometimes, they demand to see a black character on a really popular show. This has happened with shows like "The O.C.," "Friends" and "Sex & the City." Oftentimes, blacks have their wishes granted...but not quite the way we wanted. For example, usually when "white" shows or movies stick a black character on, it's a black male--not a black female. And then these white writers and producers proceed to create storylines for these characters that kind of piss many blacks off, such as having the black male strike up a romance with a white or Latina leading lady rather than bringing a black female in (and worse yet, race is never an issue in these storylines), having the black character play a stereotypical role and/or meet a tragic end, portraying the black woman as needing a white male to save her or sex her up, having the black character play an extremely minor role such as the janitor/Principal/waiter or a character that is kind of like the @sshole or b!tch of the show, and so on.

Roles that seem perfectly harmless to the average white person result in all kinds of things that black people see. The black guy's a cop, but the cop is basically this nuisance to all the white characters, harassing your favorite characters unfairly rather than helping them. He's this dumb@ss who won't listen when the white characters, who always know more and are more proactive than the black cop, tries to tell him what's really going down. Ultimately, some white guy saves the day in the end, and the idiotic, useless black cop shows up a second too late to be the hero or just do his job. If you've never seen this before, just turn on pretty much any soap opera. These seem to be the only kind of black characters these people can keep on the show. Blacks in love, enjoying a normal relationship? Forget it. As soon as their contract is up--if they're even lucky to get a contract in the first place--their @sses are blown to kingdom come.

I've gotta tell ya, this is just like everything else with whites in this country--they do these racist things unintentionally and subconsciously. The average white person doesn't know anything about blacks or Asians other than the mass-produced images and stereotypes, so that's what they keep putting on TV and in movies (though because of Asian fetishes, whites tend to have more accurate information about Asians than blacks). They think they're doing something good by putting black men and Asian women opposite white characters in love stories. They think they're showing race no longer matters...which is, in itself, an ignorant thing to show since it's not true. This is not what they're showing us, though, right? They're telling us black women and Asian men are undesirable or incapable of playing lead roles (except black women who look white enough).

You can ask viewers and people in Hollywood who is sexy, and you might get a Lucy Liu or Sandra Oh on the list. You'll get the same standard black women, i.e. Halle Berry and Beyonce, but not Gabrielle Union or Angela Bassett. You'll definitely get black men like Will Smith, Denzel Washington and Taye Diggs. And, for sure, countless numbers of white men and women will make the list--in fact, all you have to do is say their first names and everyone knows who you mean: Brad, Angelina, Ben, Cameron. You'll even have Latinos (which I know Cameron is part-Latina), such as J.Lo, Jessica Alba and Mario Lopez on some lists. But how many times have you heard an Asian male counted among the hot? Aside from Jet Li and Bruce Lee, how many Asian males in Hollywood can you even think of? And by that, I mean men people know and acknowledge as Asian males, i.e. not Keanu Reaves or even Tiger Woods (not that he would make a "hot" list)?

Back to the Asian fetish thing. That tends to be more prevalent among white males, no? And white males are predominantly in charge of the entertainment industry, right? So, sure, they'll put an Asian woman on TV and have her be their sexual and romantic interest. After all, this is both consciously and subconsciously what white men want anyway. And these women are usually not all that "Asian." In fact...I'm not all that into TV and especially not into movies, but I can't help but notice that Lucy Liu plays a lot of "sexy" roles where she's always around whites and involved with white men. She's not that submissive Asian stereotype; she's the other one, the same thing Hollywood tries to do to black women every now and again. She's the sexual fantasy come to life, the f*ck toy. No doubt, once again, whites probably are off somewhere congratulating themselves for doing something good and "right" by showing an Asian woman as just as attractive to white men as white women are. So, Asian women get these stereotypes while Asian men get to either be martial artists or plain invisible, maybe sometimes breaking the mode to be that nerd-boy stereotype.

Oh, and let's talk about those nerd-boys! See, TV and movies aren't the only effed-up media. You know, it's sad when there are Asians out there who can really sing, but the one Asian to get a record deal and actually get the necessary exposure is William Hung from "American Idol." Asians have tried out for that show every season. One even made it to the top 3--Jasmine Trias. And Jasmine put out a CD (which I actually like, btw, and I usually don't like mainstream-sounding CDs that come out nowadays, so...) that, if you live on the mainland and watched "American Idol" when she was on it, you probably never knew anything about it...unless maybe you're Asian. But people in Hawai'i (where she's from), particularly the hapas and "full" Asians who live there, knew. Her music and voice were good enough to fit in with the pop/R&B that has been coming out over the past few years, but...oh, we get William Hung and Sanjaya. And then there are other talented Asians who have secured record deals here, but the record labels let them flop, like Coco Lee.

Kind of funny that the Asians they wanted to put out there were Asian males--the kind of Asian male that is "typical" in white and black people's eyes. William Hung was an engineering student at the University of California-Berkeley and totally looked like a geek. He had absolutely no singing talent. Sanjaya, while less typical of the Asian male in America's eyes, fit those stereotypes of Asian males being feminine and not having any creative abilities/talents. But, as I basically said, Sanjaya and Hung have gotten more love from "American Idol" and the American public than pretty much any legitimate Asian singer who has ever tried anything in the US. Why? It was funny to people. The Asian male is a joke to the US. They don't want to see any Asians who can sing R&B, but especially not an Asian male since there have been many Asian males who have tried out for AI but none of them make it to the top 10. Or do they?

What's the excuse for not showing Asian males as actors and good singers, other than wanting Asian females all to the white-man self and thinking all Asians can't do much more than math and science? Well, I do suspect that some of it is career selection among Asians. But that has been changing; the question is has/will the industry? Ask people who run Hollywood, and I suspect their explanation will be something along the lines of the public not wanting to see Asian males or to support their music, just like they try to justify releasing the kind of rap music they do and canceling shows that actually deal with racial issues by saying the public wants this and doesn't want that.

As someone who used to work in the music industry, all I can say is: it's a lie. The public doesn't really care who entertains them. They might care who's in their boardroom or even in their bedroom, but...make good music or good TV, and it's all good. None of us who were trying to make it in the industry as some kind of musical artist cared creatively what race someone was, and we all recognized talent when we heard it, regardless. I chased down several Asian singers, trying to get them to work with me, and I heard/interacted with Asian music producers who were intelligent and talented, not to mention had white clients. And, to me, the public does this weird thing where anyone who is a celebrity immediately becomes hot...which means get more Asian males on TV, and, like with Latinas when J.Lo first really got on people's radar with "Selena" and her own music, Asian males will probably be the new thing...both in the media and in society.

The industry has this totally new source of revitalization and trendiness, and they don't even realize it! J.Lo is the reason why I am forced to keep seeing Jessica Alba and Eva Longoria everywhere I turn around or why people care that Eva Mendes is now allegedly an alkie, and one Asian male actor or singer really could do the same thing for Asian men. Whether or not whites will get hip and cast more Asian males or if Asians will start to complain loudly enough about this issue, I think the same problems blacks experience after complaining about the media will happen to Asians, i.e. more Asian males in the media but in stereotypical and degrading roles.

Is the lack of Asian males--and the way Asian males are portrayed to date--in the media the reason for their lower position on the interracial dating hierarchy, at least for heteros? Well, I'm not a white woman, the group of women Asian men seem most interested in attracting interracially (and, for some, regardless), so I couldn't say. But I've seen a lot of talk over the past ten or so years that black women and Asian men should get together because they are the ones being left out in the cold. As I said, I don't think the situation is quite as bad for Asian men. But when I say I find Asians among the most attractive, that does include Asian men. I can't see how anyone would think otherwise of Asian men, despite the stereotypes (getting everything you know/believe about a group of people from the media is unfathomable to me).

But, as a black female, I never really think of them as realistic options because they seem to show the least amount of interest in black women of all the men from every racial & ethnic groups. I dated two Asian males roughly 10 years ago, but it's different when you're a teenager. The more conscious people become of race and racial issues, the more that seems to result in narrowminded-ness. Obviously to anyone who reads my blog, that includes me. Ten years ago, I wasn't hesitating or thinking anything of dating Asians at all. Now it just seems so impossible.

I've noticed that Asian males aren't free from the double standard I've discussed in other posts, though, i.e. they seem to feel negatively towards Asian women dating white men but they, themselves, would like to date white women. It makes me wonder, for the Asian men to whom this applies, would they feel differently if white women were as interested in them as white men are in Asian women? Although a lot of Asian women don't seem aware of/to mind/to believe that many white men who approach them have a fetish (and though some are aware and do mind, many seem not to attribute that to why guys approach them or to their fathers, if they're hapa, or their own boyfriends/husbands), I've noticed that men pretty much never care if a woman is not truly interested in him for who he is (perfect example being the way so many men try to use their socioeconomic status to attract women, essentially encouraging women to use them for money or their position in society, i.e. many white male/Asian female and white male/Asian male relationships, in fact). So, it seems, then, that white women having a fetish for Asian men would be quite ideal for Asian men.

More On Being Mixed

I found a couple new websites that have been diverting my attention away from schoolwork (if it weren't these sites, it'd be something else). Yesterday, I finally got fed up with reading about a white/Asian binary to the point where I went searching for sites that specifically addressed issues between blacks and Asians. I found a perfect site, and it has led me to so many great readings on other sites, in addition to the pieces on its own site. I'm going to comment on some points made in some of the readings I've done in connection with the site and its links.

Some Latinos Are Black
This point was also made, I believe, in response to a post on Blackprof about how Latinos do not/will not support Goodblack Obama, i.e. the two groups are not always mutually exclusive. Now...I discuss them as if they are, and so do most people. There are reasons for that.

First of all, one of the pieces I read was basically saying, at one point, that mixed blacks aren't really forced to choose black as their identity or only be seen as black because nobody makes Latinos do this or sees Latinos as black, despite many of them having mixed heritage that includes African descent. Then I saw another piece say something similar, i.e. Latinos aren't involved in the discussion of how mixed people identify, how they should identify, etc, even though they're mixed. They can get away with refusing to identify as black, so why can't mixed blacks?

These people didn't realize a couple really vital things about how society works. It really reminded me of the issue of Asians as "perpetual foreigners," and here's how: I explained before on my blog that, in general, (I believe) that when people ask Asians where they are from, they're doing so not because they don't believe that Asian individual was born in the US but because they don't know the difference between things like race and ethnicity, ethnicity and nationality, and so on. Furthermore, it is my belief that if you ask people what "ethnicity" or "nationality" means, they wouldn't really know. If they did, if you asked them the difference between some of these terms, they wouldn't know. "Where are you from" for Asians is really a very sloppily-phrased/termed way of asking "what is your ethnicity?"

Asking that doesn't mean we don't feel you were born in the US or are American, especially if you speak good English and we haven't bone-headedly commented on that to you. The answer people are looking to hear is that you're Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese, or whatever...in terms of ethnic origin. And I'm sure most Asians know that, but they haven't made the connection to the question being more about ethnicity than nationality, not to say that I'm referring to Asians when I say people don't know what these cultural terms mean. I'm also sure that they and everyone else in the US who does know the difference among these terms has seen several times when the terms have been used incorrectly.

Well, another term that is used incorrectly all the time based on our lack of knowledge is "Latino," or "Hispanic" or even "Mexican." And I can't claim to be an expert on who is Latino or what that term means, but I know some of the ways it's used incorrectly. The most prevalent way, to me, is as a race. "Latino" is not a race, and I can't tell you how many people I've tried to explain that to and they still really don't believe me or remember. But because most people think of it as a separate race, they think of "black" and "Latino" or "Latino" and "white" or "Latino and "Asian" as mutually exclusive. But, indeed, most Latinos I've encountered in my life have looked no different from any of the white people running around the US. Racially, they are usually white, and I would bet that's the race they mark on the US Census.

But this is part of the reason why I use "Latino" and "black" mutually exclusively--more Latinos are obviously white than obviously black. And even though Latinos who look like George Lopez and Jon Secada--and probably even Tony Orlando--should send bells off in people's heads about their African heritage, it's still not obvious to most people that, hey, these guys are probably really black racially (via the one-drop rule), or at least mixed blacks, instead of just the "Latino" labels they use to evade the question of race. The other part is the racism among the Latino community towards blackness and darkness. There are plenty of Latinos who look like Lopez and Secada who refuse to identify as black or even refuse to admit to any African heritage, and lighter Latinos who know they have "black" uncles or grandparents but state very adamantly that those people are not black.

Latinos basically get a pass because of people's lack of knowledge, not because of something mixed blacks and Latinos have equal control over. Latinos merely exploit everyone's ignorance. I could never fervently disclaim being black or that my mother is black because I look too black, but because black Latinos have slightly different facial features than black people and nobody understands that "Latino" isn't a race they can get away with, in some ways, inventing a separate racial category for themselves based on mixed-race identity. They get to opt out of blackness, and they keep it their little secret. Makes you ask a question I've asked myself several times before in relation to myself: if other minorities physically could pass as another racial or ethnic group, would they do it?

"Mixed" As A Separate Race
There has been a lot of discussion and commentary about this. I saw about a year, maybe less, ago a blog post over at Racialicious about the consequences of developing a new racial category for mixed kids and identifying as "multiracial" on forms instead of as each race. I've also seen many people claim that, at least for mixed blacks, wanting a separate racial category is tantamount to wanting to move up in the world and be seen as distinct from/better than blacks. When I learned of this argument and when I read the link on Racialicious, I decided not to tell what I think about the issue. But here it is:

On a personal level, I would like a distinct racial category for all mixed people (i.e. one parent is a different race from the other), regardless of what they're mixed with. This is not thinking about benefits conferred on the basis of race or what it would mean in relation to other black people. I'm thinking about what it could mean for me. You're talking about somebody who feels incredibly uncomfortable around white people, especially white men, and alienated by black people, especially black women. So, for me, it's about personal social benefits, not hierarchies or the government. I used to think that maybe if all mixed kids had their own racial group, then we'd do like all the other minority groups do, i.e. create a culture, social and support groups, flock to each other and segregate from everyone else...only this time it wouldn't be alienating.

Unfortunately, I'm starting to see that the reasons why I'd want to be just considered mixed or multiracial wouldn't happen, most likely. I mean, there are social and support groups out there, but I don't think they're everywhere. I feel that the fact that we're not a formally recognized racial group makes it more difficult to find these sources or these people because they get swallowed into or submerged by the dominant, recognized racial groups--they don't stand out. This university is the first place I've been that I've known of a mixed organization, but I'm finding that there are still reasons to be alienated--like not being in the right program, not knowing anyone when you first attend the meetings and everyone else is already in comfortable cliques, being queer probably could still be a problem, and so on.

Frankly, I also just have a personal problem with ever using race to connect to other people. I just do. And I can't get over that. And I think, more than the fact that I'm defensive about what a group of blacks at a Black org meeting would say or do to me, or not fitting in at a Women's org that is full of white women, I feel so awkward in these environments because I'm aware that there is a racial segregation undertone that is, especially with the Black org, actually being celebrated. I think about the fact that I quite naturally have made friends in the past three years who are from African families, mixed black/Asian, mixed white/Asian, just plain ole white, just plain ole black, Southeast Asian and queer, and that's what I like. In fact, one of my white friends and I have a joke that we need to find a Latina or Latino to be our friend.

I understand needing your space because being black or gay can be alienating in this kind of environment, but, for me, being in all-anything environments is alienating. There is just never anywhere I go and feel totally comfortable/at home, not even mixed-race meetings, except home or when I'm having one-on-one time with a friend. I don't understand people who suddenly feel okay just because everybody in the place is of their sex, racial background or sexual orientation. I guess I focus more on the individual.

I've also realized that most mixed people would probably segregate even further than that based on their particular racial mix. Someone can be white and Asian, but that doesn't mean they think it's okay to date blacks or a mixed black person just because they are the product of an interracial relationship--and, honestly, their parents probably would have instilled that in them anyway like my parents wouldn't be happy about my bringing home an Asian or Latino/a. And they still might not be interested in having black or mixed black friends, or their interest might be more on finding other white/Asian kids because of the assumption that they go through exactly what they experience.

My approach to identifying racially is to identify both as mixed and as black/white French. I think the same could and should be done for forms. Identifying simply as multiracial or mixed raises the issue of denying a parent's background just as much as identifying as only black or white, or Asian or white, does, because the word "multiracial" or "mixed" alone doesn't tell you much. As far as mixed blacks trying to escape blackness or become better than blacks...all I can say is I thought this is what blacks already believed was the case. In other words, when black people talk about things like colorism...the issue of having white blood and how that benefits those blacks with white blood is implicit in the discussion. Is the problem having this formally recognized?

For some mixed black kids, I would bet snobbery is the issue. But for others, I think a lot of it is basically the situation I described for myself. And then there are other mixed black kids who don't have an immediate drop of white blood, i.e. mixed black/Asian kids. How does colorism come into play here, or is it just being exotic? With or without the formality, everything and everybody will tell you that at least mixed black/white kids are treated better by most people anyway. We're already a higher rung of people, along with light blacks who aren't mixed.

For mixed blacks who realize that, escaping black identity, at least for that reason, is not really the issue to us. We don't need a separate category to be better than you in the eyes of society nor the eyes of many in the black community even. We do need somewhere to feel totally accepted, a group of people to identify with completely and some kind of group unity or community to feel part of, and we don't exactly have this. Unfortunately, my recent thoughts shared above indicate that some of us, with a separate racial category, still wouldn't have this. This is not to say I've changed my mind on a personal level.

How I Became Aware of Race or Being Mixed
I really couldn't tell you. I have no idea. I bring it up because I've seen Rachel at Rachel's Tavern express interest in how kids become aware of or curious about race, and books about mixed kids sometimes seem interest in exploring these kinds of stories, as well. The first thing I remember is being in pre-school--maybe four years old--and recognizing that almost everyone there was white and I wasn't. If this was my first awareness of race, it was very subconscious. The other kids didn't seem to like me or want to play with me, but I didn't exactly know why. And I think that was when the brainwashing began...when I started wanting white friends more than black friends, thinking whites were more attractive, being mean to dark black girls sometimes and not liking my black mother. In other words, if my parents made any mistakes with me in terms of race, having me in that white pre-school was it. Mixed kids should always be in racially mixed environments.

And, honestly, you could say everyone needs to grow up in such environments, but there are groups of people it's more crucial to than others for identity's sake--first and foremost, mixed and transracially adopted kids; then black, Asian and Latino kids; then white kids.

I really don't know how I came to understand I was mixed. It was definitely earlier on, though, because I remember being in elementary school marking "other" on standardized tests and later seeing that a teacher had erased it and marked "black." Back in the day, you were either white, black or other on standardized tests, at least in the South. Maybe the teacher thought I was saying I was Asian...??? I know I had asked my mother if my father was white a couple times when I was really young, but I don't know around what age.

When he was six, one of my nephews started questioning race. But before that, my sister and her husband had been talking to them about color anyway. I can't recall my parents ever talking to me directly about my color. My sister's husband is black--dark. So, we have a first in our family--a dark-skinned black girl. Though my mother is darker, she's not "dark." Anyway, it seems like the kids sometimes like to compare their skin colors and say what other people's skin color is, another thing my family has never done. Twice, my nephew has indicated to me that he doesn't know or is confused about my color/race...which makes no sense to me. I am light enough to be the lightest person in my law school--and a lot of mixed black kids attend this school--and I have white features...but, to me, it's obvious I'm black, and I think it's obvious to most people.

But when he was six, he asked why my sister--his mother--was black and why I was white. Then probably about six months ago, at age seven, he and his sister were naming everyone's color--he called everyone to that point brown, as they were--and he asked me what color was I. I said I was brown, too, but I guess technically I'm not. My mother responds happily to crap like that, talking about how I look like an "Indian"--which, Native American Indian, no, Asian Indian maybe. She is happy that my sister and I are light-skinned, and she always tried to attribute my problems with black girls growing up to their being jealous of my skin color...which I guess I never really believed. My mother has tried to falsely pin, I feel, a color complex on my niece just because she noticed she's darker than others. It could be true--my mother would probably know better than I do since she's darker.

I would hate to think the brainwashing has started with them. But it probably has. They are always in white environments, except when they're at home. All of my nieces and nephews like me much more than family members of my sisters' spouses, who are all darker. I know some of it is they are not as fun. But I remember once when I was in college and I tutored at a majority black elementary school, I walked down the hall and I heard a little black girl say "her hair is so long!" in amazement. What the hell??? I have never had so many black people like me in my life, either, as when I tutored at that school--all little kids, many of them black girls looking at me with wonder. And it's probably for a sick reason.

It's Not Always About Choosing

With both a woman and a black man both running for President and being the frontrunners for the first time ever, an incessant amount of discussion, blogging, news reporting and commentating has been going on...to the point where I'm tired of hearing about the whole thing. Of course, it's not going to stop--it's only going to get worse. But one thing that really bothers me, perhaps the most, is this idea of choosing identities...and not just in the context of the election.

For one thing, take the fact that Oprah is endorsing Obama. Okay, everyone has to make this about Oprah choosing race over sex. Well, as I commented on AOL once to that argument, Oprah doesn't care about black Americans. I mean, she'll go build a school in Africa, but she'll also disparage black Americans in the process. I do suspect that race is part of the reason why she endorses Obama, but I also think it's the kind of black person he is. She wouldn't endorse just any black person because Oprah herself is not just any black person. Oprah is the kind of black person black people hate, and, indeed, most black people really can't stand Oprah.

In case you don't get it, it's the fact that she did go build a school in Africa and talks about helping blacks in Africa when there are all kinds of blacks in the US who could easily benefit from her assistance. It's the fact that she has a nearly all white [female] audience...because of the fact that her show has topics, guests and features books that basically cater to white women. So, no, we don't get the sense that she cares about or identifies with black Americans. Unfortunately, white people, being white people, can't see this and they yell "racism" towards whites and ignore that if she supported Clinton--as many seem to want her to do, or, at least, want her to have Clinton on her show--she would be doing...what? Would she being doing, in their eyes, the same thing, only this time choosing sex over race? I mean, could the woman possibly win for losing? Yet, some white people have the nerve to be angry with her over this or somehow think she's automatically supposed to side with sex.

Let's get this straight--the "normal" (read: not famous or rich) black people who support Obama overwhelmingly do so simply or predominantly because he's black. This is not Oprah's game. She has never supported a black candidate before, as far as I know and even by her own comments. She's supporting him because he's a "good black," or as I like to call him Goodblack Obama (pronounced much like "Barack," i.e. goodBLACK)...and I believe also because, like so many non-black people, she is, in my opinion, putting something new and "hope"--and for non-blacks their desire to prove they're not racist and neither is this nation any longer--above looking at political experience/longevity and who actually can beat a Republican. To me, the more I hear about Clinton and Obama going at each other, the less appealing either of them look...and the less "new" Obama looks than anybody else who has ever run for President. But, you know...the undertone of his being a change agent and taking things in a different direction relates a lot more to his race than anybody wants to admit. Suddenly, white is the face of evil and stagnation, even if it's feminine.

Even so, how would Oprah or my endorsing one or the other automatically translate into our choosing either our race or sex? First of all, Clinton nor Obama are Oprah or me. So choosing them isn't choosing my anything. Other blacks might identify with Obama solely based on race, but I don't. And I haven't planned on voting for Clinton simply because she's a woman. I just don't care that she's a woman. Honestly, if there were a white man running who had the best chance of beating a Republican into the White House, that's who I'd be supporting instead. There's not one running. And there's not a black female running--if there were, that way maybe Oprah and I could keep the public from sawing us in half, because her supporting Obama then wouldn't have to be about choosing race or sex and my supporting Clinton wouldn't be about that to everybody. The way things stand, if you're a black female you can't help but make the "wrong" choice to somebody, even if you're not making the choice they think/say you are.

And then there was this piece I read today. Now somebody's got to bring the sexual orientation angle into it! I mean, please! So what, now because I don't support Obama I've chosen sexual orientation over race? What...the...hell???? First of all, there is no way to make that choice, because none of these candidates truly care about gays or gay rights. So, much like with the example of the non-existent black female Presidential candidate, there is not the option of a solid candidate who represents us fully. You have no choice but to pick someone who doesn't care about that, regardless of race, sex or anything else. Just because other candidates might not have made that explicit, as Monroe claims Obama has...it's a silly distinction.

Second, there are so many other issues of importance than to make voting and endorsing all about one, even if that one issue is incredibly important to you. We all have to make choices when it comes down to voting in terms of having issues that don't neatly fit with a candidate's issues. Nobody is strictly partisan. I have many conservative beliefs, and yet I buck all those to vote Democratic--why? My liberal slants matter more to me, personally. I can live just fine without abortion being illegal or the right to shoot a gun at someone who invades my property, but I can't say the same about no affirmative action and high rates of unemployment.

And queers have to know that conservatives will do a lot more damage to the queer agenda in office than any Democrat--whether that person is Obama or not. And yet, much like 2004, a lot of queers will not see the forest for the trees and will refuse to vote...but will have the nerve to whine and whine and whine if a Republican gets back in office. Seeing the forest for the trees, though I can't say that I like or agree with any of the Democratic candidates, is the main reason I vote Democrat. I didn't like John Kerry, and I voted for him. If Obama somehow beats Clinton out...hey, I don't want him to be President, but I will vote for him because he's better than having McCain or Romney in office. All these minority groups who can't think beyond themselves or one issue shoot themselves in the foot ultimately.

Third, when will the dumb parallels between Asians and blacks and gays and blacks stop? I mean, sometimes the parallels make sense. But I don't think that because Obama is mixed and there used to be a law against interracial marriage that he somehow magically is supposed to get and support gay people. I get so tired of these dumb, overly-simplistic arguments. First of all, people act like mixed kids are, what, supposed to be ever-so-grateful to the Supreme Court? What do non-mixed people know about it? Many mixed kids, at some point in their lives, wanted to just be one race, and many more mixed people than that generally tend to identify themselves as one race only, as does society. It's not like we don't love our parents, but at the same time--more races more problems is a motto many mixed kids really could run around using. The major problem with a lot of these analogies is that the person raising them usually doesn't know much of anything about one part of the analogy, only seeing what's positive about it but never having to live the negatives of it. It's like white [gay] people with Brown vs Board of Education.

Second, I don't understand people's mentality on thinking being in the same/similar boat as someone else means you automatically understand or support them. Besides, Obama technically is not in gay people's boat. He was the beneficiary of an interracial marriage--he didn't engage in one, per se. As I've explained my theory several times before, it usually tends to mean the opposite because we create so many hierarchies based on differences and being treated differently ourselves. I wouldn't automatically attribute any opposition Obama has to gays to his being black, as approximately half the white population has a problem with homosexuality, as well, and so do many Asians and Latinos--facts that white gay racists conveniently like to forget or ignore.

And you can argue that being a racial minority should somehow breed more sympathy for gays on his part. It's just that, from my perspective, since being gay isn't exactly like being black, it's easy for a black person to take what's different about being gay--i.e. the sexual act--and say that makes something gross or unacceptable about it that isn't there with blackness or interracial relationships. The fact that it's similar to arguments made about blacks and interracial marriages in the past doesn't matter--it's still a different type of people wanting something that is different in some way from what these people wanted in the past. I'm definitely not saying it's right, but I'm not bothered if he can't relate to me as a queer person because I recognize that's it's not as similar as so many people would like to think. After all, white gay people don't understand blacks, and I don't understand white women, but we all had/have our struggles for equality. The bottom line--the fact that rights are involved and being treated badly based on differences--is similar, but that's about it.

And then, not dealing with politics--being multiracial is often, to other people and sometimes to the multiracial individual, about choosing one identity over another. And being a queer minority is often, to white gays, about choosing race or sexual orientation. And, last year, when I was involved with a Women's organization on campus, they framed the lack of black, Asian and Latina female membership in terms of choosing race over sex. As one black woman angrily pointed out to me, the black women were not "choosing" race over sex. If they wanted to be involved with the Women's organization, they would be. They hadn't even thought about the sex aspect, and this is often true with black women.

We don't arrive on campus saying, "hmmm, do I want to join the Women's org or the Black org? I pick the Black org!" It's not like we can't be involved in both. Many black women will arrive on campus and automatically not even think about the Women's org. While the white women are sitting around acting like this is a big problem or wondering what they've done alienating, the black women are off happy as can be at the Black org event. And if the Women's org has an event that's interesting, the black women will go--not because it's about women, but because it's interesting and personally relevant.

Another reason why it's not a choice--and this is true with sexual orientation and multiracial identity, as well--is that we already have an idea that we're not truly welcome in these spaces. In that sense, we haven't really even been given a choice, i.e. it's the black female President again. Face it, the best chance for a black woman to fit in somewhere is a black space; a queer black person, a queer black space; and a mixed person, a mixed space. Out of these three groups, mixed people probably do more "choosing" than anybody, but they probably wouldn't if people weren't asking them to so frequently. For these other people, why everything has to be a grand, indirect statement of choosing identities is beyond me.

Everybody's Talking But They Don't Really Know

I found an interesting discussion today over at a blog that is dedicated to interracial dating from the perspective of white men favoring black women. I've been to this blog before on a few occasions, but I don't follow it because I find something creepy about following a blog such as that one. I respect what the guy who started it is trying to do, in a sense, but, to me, there is just something creepy about 1) devoting an entire blog to your interest in another race, and 2) people who claim that we all should be open to different races going day in and day out to a blog that is specifically (but, in a way, indirectly) about not dating people of your own race. In other words, it strikes me as a fetish or obsession. I'm sure that's not the intention of the blogger and that many of the visitors date people of their race. Still...hard to really describe the feeling.

Anyways, here is the discussion. Several thoughts/ideas are mentioned that I want to discuss.

First of all, I didn't know who Kola Boof was, either. In fact, I found the link--and, in the process, out about Kola Boof--because I was reading a message board where someone had as their signature a quote by Boof. The quote really caught my eye to the point of doing a search on Boof because she said something nearly word for word that I've written on my blog before--it's in one of the links to the right for Newbies, i.e. "How White Are Asians & Latinos"--that I hate phrases like "women of color," "people of color" and so on because minorities don't have any solidarity with/much total similarity to each other and so forth, and that's what those kinds of phrases imply. I wanted to find some of her other works to see some of her opinions, specifically wishing to find whatever piece that quote came from.

In the search, I was led to that interracial dating blog and found a discussion about Boof/sparked by Boof's comment to another comment made about her on the owner's blog. As many of the comments indicated (and I haven't read all the comments yet, as there are nearly 300), while I don't totally agree with Boof's comment I do agree with some of it completely and see where she's coming from with other portions of her comment.

A few things about her comment/other people's comments made me want to comment, particularly what she and others say about not wanting mixed kids/wanting to be able to see themselves in their kids/not wanting to deal with the issues, the possibility of having to reluctantly bite the bullet and date/marry outside your race, double standards, feeling betrayed by black men and how to identify/teach mixed kids about their identity.

First, obviously, I've written a bit about my being mixed. I don't find it offensive that some people don't want mixed kids. To each his own. I see some reasons for concern. I think that, at some point, blood has been mixed to the point where there's a real danger of if the lineage is mixed one more time one of those identities will disappear, at least in a particular family. After all, it would be hard for a white/Asian person who looks near-white and is married to a white person to have a kid who looks 100% white to teach that kid about being Asian and send that kid out into the world talking about they're part-Asian, too. You can try, but there will be a lot of confusion--not necessarily on the kid's end. The parents themselves can be confused about what to do, and you know society in general will treat that white-looking Asian kid like he/she is crazy. I understand not wanting a part of who you are to drift off into the mainstream.

I don't think that because you have a mixed kid, you can't see yourself in them. After all, some mixed kids don't look all that mixed, and many who do still resemble the "minority" race enough to see yourself if you're the minority parent. I think those kinds of comments also, though, underscore how vital race is to people, because I feel that these people are strictly thinking about skin color. There are so many other ways to see you in your kid. In my family, I don't know if my father really sees himself in us, but I know that my mother sees him in us. She, every now and then, points out ways in which we're like him. My mother calls him by my oldest sister's name whenever she's indirectly trying to tell him that he and my oldest sister are just alike. She says about me and my other sister that we have his analytical mind and his sense of being organized. She talks about how I look like his family, i.e. hair and body build, and facial features. At the same time, there are people who have said I look like my mother, despite the skin color difference (I go through weird phases...sometimes I do look more like her...others, I look more like him).

I also think these discussions have a very implicit notion of heteronormativity in them. In other words, people, including Boof, come off as if they think our role in life is to produce children and keep our race alive. Even if I were completely heterosexual or did somehow end up marrying a man, I don't think I would have kids for a variety of reasons. I understand her point about blackness and black/African history going on through having black kids. But I think the opposite about it--I can't stand the thought of bringing a black kid into the kind of society we have in the US. People talk as if you're torturing kids by bringing them into the US as mixed, but bringing any kind of black kid here is torture, too. My thought has always been, kind of jokingly, that if I had a kid I'd want them to look as close to white as possible.

On the other hand, I did mention in my post about growing up mixed that I think one of the mixed groups that has it the hardest is mixed kids who look white. That's assuming they're not going to just pass. Running around looking white but letting people know you're not just white is a huge mess, because it totally trips people out. People are disturbed that their comfort level with racial identification and visibility are being challenged, and your white-looking black/Asian/Latino self is the reason why. This has been one of the reasons I've been dying to have a discussion about race with my friend Angel, the mixed white/Asian who looks white. I have no idea what she would say, but other stories about such mixed people convince me that just looking more so the minority (or whichever race is more minority than the other, i.e. black/Asian=black) race is actually the easier way to live.

Also as I mentioned in my post on being mixed and as I remember commenting over at Rachel's Tavern once, people really don't know what they're talking about in regards to mixed kids. Blacks are always alienating other blacks for any and every reason, whether they're mixed or not. The aspect of not fitting in is not unique to raising a mixed kid, especially as the class differences that I mentioned in my last post continue to grow and grow among blacks. Blacks generally seem to be in denial that we're not a big, happy, supportive family, most especially the kind of black people who are mainly the ones responsible for the reasons why we're not.

It has always seemed to me that most blacks don't really complain about the standards blacks have for all blacks so much as just go ahead and do what it takes to meet those standards because they think that's the right thing to do. For example, I remember meeting a black guy who told me his story of blacks challenging him racially, and he said he started making himself into the kind of black male he was expected to be. He was one of those kinds of black people to balance himself--he didn't start hanging out on the streets...he went to college and made mostly 'A's in all his classes, which were generally math and science classes...stuff black people tend not to touch.

But he was still, like I say about bourgie black people, one of those who could easily still not be "black enough" to less fortunate blacks but pressuring other black people about it. There probably was not one time he and I didn't speak in which he had something negative to say about how I was. What amazed me about him was he felt like he could do things like tell me I have "no soul," i.e. black/urban soul, and that I'm not the kind of woman who would appeal to most black men, and still think I'd want to talk to him on a regular basis. I didn't, and I stopped talking to him. Nothing "tragic" there--problem solved quite easily, actually. To me, how well-adjusted a mixed person or any black or minority turns out has a lot to do with how they're raised and just their innate personality type. I've never been much the kind of person who needs to fit in or approved of by others. I complain about blacks and whites, but don't get me wrong--I'm happy I can't identify with these people most of the time in terms of personality and I see them as the ones with the problem. I think it's better to be an individual than a mindless victim of group-think.

Reluctance to Interracial Dating for Black Women
I find it weird that a lot of black women would rather do something they talk about in terms of it being something they'd rather not do/are forced to do than be alone. This is probably just my own personality thing, but I don't see anything wrong with being alone rather than interracially dating, especially if interracial dating is, indeed, something you're not particularly interested in doing. But, then, I'm someone who thinks "love" is pretty much fake bullsh!t and will probably be alone forever myself.

I find myself wondering if these people who talk about interracial dating as an inferior alternative really mean that. I know black women who have a contradictory conscience when it comes to whites; in fact, I think more people than you realize do. In other words, there are black women who can say really racist things about whites and/or say they'd prefer a black man, but then they are a little too excited over/into the idea of having a white boyfriend. What can I say, this is the US, where black people have been brainwashed into buying white standards of nearly everything and, at the same time, hate that that's the case and "hate" white people for it.

Double Standards
One of the comments gave, what I believe is, an incorrect reason for her having a double standard when it comes to seeing black men with white women while she can date white men. I've mentioned this before on my blog, too. I think many of us--not just black women--have double standards, and I think the reason is that we know why we interracially date. We don't know why others do. All we have are our assumptions. And with respect to blacks, it's a lot more common to hear black men say what's wrong with black women than to hear black women say what's wrong with black men...not to say black women never do.

So when we see black men with other women, we assume they don't like black women. Even if the black woman doesn't like the man or like black men all that much herself, it's still bothersome because it feels like a snub based on race. In other words, it doesn't feel any different than the racism we get from whites or getting implicit messages that we're not good enough or pretty enough like when we get it from whites. In fact, getting it from people of your own race is worse than getting it from whites, Asians or Latinos.

But we, as black women, are black ourselves and know our reasons for liking who we like perfectly well. We have black female friends we talk to about the issue, so we know other black women's reasons for liking who they like. Frankly, because of that, I know that there are times when black women think pretty similarly to how they assume black men do when it comes to members of their race from the opposite sex.

In other words, sometimes black women don't like black men, either. Sometimes they have a fetish. Sometimes they feel black men aren't good enough. Sometimes they are brainwashed by whiteness. And the more black women interracially date, the more it seems like this is moving towards being the case. It's not that they are all bitter about black men turning them away or beginning to see that black men are not that much of an option. More and more black women are simply skipping over black men, just like black men do with black women. While I think way more black women than black men are still generally resistant/hesitant to interracial dating and some really do just fall in love with someone of a different race (nothing wrong with the latter), I'm hearing more and more black women come off like black men when they talk about interracial dating--either the same naivete of "race doesn't matter" or "black men are too this that and the other."

Betrayal
I think a lot of the women who claim they don't feel betrayed by or a sense of loyalty to black men are the kind of black women as described above. One such woman in the comments mentioned not liking black men herself. You know, I don't feel betrayed/loyal, either, not so much because black men don't "belong" to black women as why feel loyalty to people who obviously don't feel it towards you. Face it, black men don't care about black women. And betrayal? Look--since black people are so into pointing out to the free world every little thing that's wrong with black people, let's talk about some of our more serious issues, for a change. One issue that has gone ignored for far too long is just how badly black men are affected by colorism, self-hatred (or, at least, same-race hatred/internalized white supremacy) and standards of beauty. See, we want to talk about these things in connection with black women and make it seem like black women are the only ones who have mental issues.

And, while we're at it, let's talk about sexism in the black community in this context and give the rap music context a break, because interracial dating is a lot more about sexism than racism, whether it's black men dissing black women for white women or white men dissing white women for Asian women. Bottom line, men don't want women they perceive as too much trouble and not "feminine" enough. To all men, that's black women; to white men, that's white women, too. To me, black men are showing us their mental issues are a lot worse than black women's mental issues.

I wouldn't say black men are betraying me or other black women if they don't want me. If anything, I feel partially relieved because now I can walk down streets without having to worry about some black male harassing me. Ten years ago, I couldn't say this. It's fine if a black male is interested, but it's the way black men tend to approach black women and/or the way many of them can't just take no for an answer or gracefully that is a problem. I also must admit that I'm not particularly attracted to black men, in terms of personality. I don't really have an opinion about whether or not they "belong" to us, but for black women who prefer black men and don't want to be alone--or even for black women who don't prefer black men and don't want to be alone, thanks to black women's low level of appeal to men across the board--I do recognize black men's interracially dating at the rates that they do is a problem. I also think Boof is right on that the rates are abnormal, particularly in certain kinds of black men and in comparison to rates of some other groups (black women, Asian men), for it to just be some coincidence or magic of love.

Identifying As Mixed or Black
I think people who argue that mixed blacks are generally going to be perceived as black have completely valid arguments. I also agree with people who point out that you're denying one of your parents/a piece of who you are if you just identify as one race. What I think neither side is getting is that you don't have to totally be mixed or black. For me, I'm cognizant of whom I'm talking to or what the situation calls for. In other words, you don't always have to say you're mixed or always say you're black. When I'm talking to people whom I know it's not going to make a difference with them what I call myself--I will still be just black to them--I don't waste my time talking about being mixed unless the situation calls for it. Don't fight pointless battles.

There are just certain spaces and certain people where you can get through to them by identifying however you wish. But when that's not the case, I settle for simply knowing who I am to myself. It's not important to me for everybody to know my colorline or assert myself and my identity to everybody. Parents and others can impose on you whatever they think or how they think you'll be seen by the world, but there comes a day when you can make your own decisions. If you want to go out there and tell people you're not black or white but mixed--have at it. If you want to go out there and be just black, whatever. You won't please everybody. To me, some white people love that Barack Obama is part-white while there are others who don't care, i.e. they don't like him because he's black to them. There are blacks who have diverse opinions as to "what" he is. As the discussion on that blog shows, there are people who don't consider mixed blacks black at all, which is just the weirdest bullsh!t...but whatever.

Just know that there are all these different perspectives. It's really no big thang, and it doesn't have to make your life a living hell. For me, I'm not white because "white" is associated with white Americans, in my mind. I'm not a white American, and I'm glad I'm not because I don't want to be like or associated with those people. As I mentioned before, I'm French to the extent that "Asian Americans" are Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino or whatever. I have no problem saying that to anybody, but oftentimes it doesn't make a difference in how I'm viewed, at least not to "Americans." Usually when it does make a difference to people in the US, they're white. At various times, I will call myself black or French or black and French or mixed. I don't have to just pick one and claim it every time. Some whites do the same thing. One of my best friends and I, at various, points refer to ourselves or the other person as German or white, black or French, especially when we're talking about stereotypes.

Personally, to me, telling your mixed kids what they are is not anywhere near as important as telling them what the world and people are like and giving them a racially well-balanced existence.

Reflections on Being Mixed-Race

I recently bought this book that has stories in it from black college students about growing up black. So far, many of the stories I've read have included details about trying to prove themselves to other blacks, as well as whites, and not feeling like they fit in with black people. Whether or not the blacks are biracial or multiracial, the story is the same. Something similar is true for the mixed blacks who have stories in another book I read last year that focused specifically on mixed kids.

Lately, I've been thinking about how I write a lot about being black and black issues but never talk about a mixed identity. I'd actually started a post about it, too, but stopped because I was having a hard time telling what it was like to grow up as a mixed kid. I realized from sitting down and reading, about, three stories tonight that...I was having a hard time because I don't really feel like being mixed was a problem or an issue. It's like trying to make a story where there is none. Sure, there are stories about relating to black kids or white kids, and that has always been a problem for me--particularly relating to black kids. But I don't think the problem was unique to being mixed, and the stories I'm reading confirm that.

Unlike a lot of mixed black kids and even some "full" black kids, I did not think a lot about any problems I had growing up and race. Really, to me, when I look back on some issues--my sexuality and race, in particular--I really was just a dumb, unthinking kid. So much of what happened to me when I was younger was only understood or really thought about in retrospect. So when I was having a hard time with other kids, I wasn't thinking that much about race or really asking/analyzing why. Thinking about those things in retrospect, though, especially when people try to connect adolescent difficulty for mixed kids to being mixed, I don't hesitate to realize that so many black kids had similar problems as I did to some degree.

I've told bits and pieces of my story throughout my blog, and I really don't care to repeat. I just think that, while I was different from most black kids, I also had a different experience growing up mixed than a lot of mixed kids do. I don't think I ever really cared about being mixed, either, until I became an adult. I think mixed kids who look white, part-Asian (particularly black/Asian kids) or racially ambiguous have a harder time, honestly. Because I looked either black or mixed to most people, I thought of myself as black and so did everyone else. My parents didn't have those "you're white and black" discussions with me. If anything, I feel my parents encouraged me to be black--both of them. There were racial discussions going on in the house, but not about our races. I probably heard "she thinks she's white" in a negative connotation about other blacks from my mother more than anything else. When I was a teenager, some Latinos moved across the street, and suddenly I was hearing about them--negatively. Before that, it was mainly whites and blacks being talked about negatively, usually--if not always--by my mother.

I remember writing at various points here about the schools I've attended and the racial demographics. In conjunction with my parents being like they were, I think this also really set my experience apart from other mixed kids, because all of my schools were mixed enough, except for college and law school. I've also lived in really different environments. The first neighborhood I lived in was, I would say, mixed at one point. Then it got more black and started going downhill. Even though I spent about 12 or 13 years living in the city, I don't consider myself a city girl. There are very few "real" cities in the South, and where I was from is definitely just a wannabe city. But we deal with an extreme case of white flight, and, for us, whites move to the same areas at the same time, then middle class+ blacks move to those areas and so on. Whites were fleeing to the "outskirts," the countryside suburbs, and that was the bandwagon my parents got on as middle class+ blacks. I ended up in a white neighborhood, going to a predominantly white school that was still more mixed than most schools in white areas across the nation are.

When I was younger, I was definitely into whiteness. I'm not sure there are ever really black, Asian or Latino kids who weren't. I've discussed this a bit, too. But, basically, I found whites more physically attractive, valued white friends more somewhat, made a couple efforts to fit in with whites and like "white" things--music was the biggest thing, which I'm thankful for now. Other than music, I didn't try to fit in too many other ways because I don't think I knew what to try. I feel confident that my older sisters dealt with a little racial pressure, because they pressured me racially (and because one of my sisters told me how badly blacks treated her white best friend once they got to high school, and that was the end of their friendship)...and I don't think minorities, particularly blacks, pressure others about race unless they feel that pressure on them, as well. After all, you get it from somewhere. For me, with them, this came in the form of music.

When we were young and I was pre-elementary school age, we watched MTV all the time and listened to rock music. I distinctly remember them picking out "boyfriends" from Van Halen videos, and I would jump in and pick out one, too. Then suddenly something changed, and there was a new sound in our house. LL Cool J was on the radio, we were watching BET all the time, and they were bringing home rap tapes and records. At first, I forgot all about rock and listened to nothing but rap and R&B right along with them. But after a few years, I was sneaking to watch MTV and VH1 and was finding rock and pop radio stations on the radio, mainly because I was going to be bused to a predominantly white elementary school and had learned through my sisters that white kids allegedly liked that kind of music. I got my parents to buy me walkmans so that I could listen to this music without being teased by my sisters, because they made it clear that blacks weren't supposed to listen to that stuff. I was a tad confused because I could remember them watching Van Halen, ZZ Top and U2 in the past on MTV. They had liked Madonna and the Bangles, but they would talk about me if they caught me watching their videos later on.

At school, I would only tell my closest black friends that I didn't just like DJ Quik, 2 Live Crew and NWA. They didn't tease me; in fact, I ended up playing my favorite "white songs" for them and, because some of them were looking for my approval, they would learn the songs and "like" them, too. The funny thing is many of those songs are now my favorite songs ever as opposed to rap and R&B songs, and I have them under a playlist on my mp3 player that is composed of all my favorite songs ever. There is only one rap song on the list, and I believe all the R&B songs on it were "crossover" hits, i.e. white people liked them, too. There are probably more country songs on the list than R&B and rap ones combined, and I started listening to country music a few years later based on what my white friends seemed to like to listen to. While I would have been nervous to show anybody who was black that list 15 years ago, blacks have lightened up a bit on the music front and my family can admit to liking "white songs" now. Ironically, they are probably the only people who know I love Celine Dion and don't think that's cause to be a jack@ss like a lot of whites now do.

People talk about blacks as if there is one culture. Personally, I don't think blacks have a culture...but if you were going to talk about blacks in those terms, I think you'd need to acknowledge three race/ethnicity-based cultures within the culture: being mixed, being African and being "full" black. In retrospect, my experience was "full" black females were more aggressive, manipulative, intimidating and--I'll say it--meaner than I or white girls were. It's hard to ignore how class plays a part in what kind of black person you're dealing with, but when I was younger the black females were definitely not middle class. I've noticed since college that, though in high school some of them were middle class for our area, those black girls were not middle class in comparison to the black women I know today. I'm not sure I even am. But I do know I was not raised to be like other black girls, as I'll discuss a little more later when I write more about my father.

I still find the black women I knew in college and know in law school to be intimidating, but more so because of race than I did when I was growing up. When I was growing up, I didn't know a lot about being "black enough" or light skin vs dark skin, though I knew something about "good hair." Nobody ever commented to me about those kinds of things, other than my hair. I've never been accused of not being black enough, though in high school I probably had an inkling that some black students regarded me that way and that kind of thing is a lot more uncomfortable now than it used to be since I'm now aware of it...which is a huge reason why I find black women intimidating. I mentioned this to say that when black girls were mean to me as a kid, I had no idea why and I still don't know why...because they never said anything that would hint at a reason. The older I've gotten, the more open black women have been to me--at least on the surface, i.e. I feel they are being fake. I don't feel accepted by them, and I've only consciously not felt accepted by other blacks because of racial issues in my 20s (I'm almost 27).

Still, unlike a lot of the stories I read, I don't particularly care if I'm not black enough to others. I don't understand caring about that. What would be in it for me if I were--a black community? Why do you want friendship from and acceptance by people who can't accept you for who you really are? It's not worth my time. And, frankly, as much as I complain about white people, I've consistently found way more accepting and supportive whites without my having to do or prove anything. When I was younger, I think most whites liked me because I did seem "different" from other blacks. Now that I don't relate to whites anymore, when white people become my friends and support me it is totally for who I am, not because of how "white" I am.

When I was younger, I did have a lot of white friends, but that initially wasn't on purpose. I really did try with blacks because I had gotten indirect messages from my family that my friends were supposed to be black. But I just could never get along with the black girls. I think the women in my family--the blacks--both understood that and didn't understand it, particularly my mother. Whenever I came home crying or a teacher called my mother because a group of black girls and I had drama at school--usually because they'd told a lie about me, were making fun of something about me or were intentionally trying to keep other black girls from being friends with me--my mother would go off about black girls. But my parents would also later want to know why I didn't have many black friends and got upset because they felt I was too influenced by whites. But after years of the same thing over and over again with black girls, I got tired of the drama and started hanging out predominantly with whites. Black guys treated me well, so they were fine also. But I guess I also felt some societal expectation that I hang out with girls--even though I often preferred guys--and white girls were the most accepting girls.

But I could never have a real friendship with white girls back then, and that was something I never understood at the time, either. We were fine at school, but they never invited me anywhere. The one time one of my white friends did, her father was a racist @ss to my mother over the phone. Most of my white "friends" never called me. On Mondays, I would sit in class and listen to them and other white girls talk about what they did together over the weekend, wondering how I could get close enough to them to be included. Every time I did meet their families and/or end up at their houses, I would put my best foot forward but there would always be tension with their parents.

It's really hard to describe the looks whites gave me, but they obviously were not happy. And the more I tried to seem impressive, the more unhappy they were. Despite the popular rhetoric that blacks need to prove themselves to whites, sometimes whites don't like blacks who are intelligent/middle class/well-behaved/etc, especially if those whites aren't those things and/or want to hold onto the belief that blacks are not those things. A lot of whites want blacks to remain in their "place," so your proving yourself makes them even angrier. A lot of whites acted as if I'd told them 2x2 is 5 when I told them I was in all advanced courses or told them what college I was going to attend, including some white kids at my high school. Other white kids really respected me and wanted my respect. It was weird, but it was still better than how I'm completely ignored in law school.

I could keep talking about the past, but the stories are all the same--these are similar to things many other blacks deal with. To me, they aren't about being mixed. The only things I remember specifically relating to being mixed are being asked about my parents and having the racial boxes I checked on forms being changed. Being asked about my parents was nothing. For example, one time we were sitting in class and my father came by. One black boy asked me if he was white, and I said yes. That was the end of that. Another time in high school, a white guy looked at me and asked me which one of my parents is white. In college, I was asked where I'm from a few times, with the askers wondering if I was from another country. Once, it was because of how I look. Another time, this Latino kid told me I looked like this Latina he knew. Another time, it was because I pronounced a French word with perfect French pronunciation. Whenever I've told people my father is French, that has tended to be the end of that, though it was a perk in French class since one of my professors was actually French and another one wanted to be French really badly.

On that note, I'd like to say a bit about how I think of the white French vs white Americans. First thing I want to say is, yes, I have huge problems with white men. But, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere before in my blog, when I refer to white men I mean white American men. I think there’s generally a difference between white Americans and the white French, particularly as it relates to race…and, as a result, I don’t feel the same way towards the white French as I do towards white Americans. I don't have the problems I do with white Americans when interacting with the white French. My experience has always been that once they know I'm partially French, we're cool. That can never happen with white Americans, and that almost never is enough with black Americans (to be part-black or "full" black). Like I said, my French professors loved me.

That said, though, I have noted times when my father demonstrates annoying characteristics my friends and I associate with American white men. Both my mother and I have told him he acts like white American men sometimes, we mean it kind of as an insult and he knows we do. Examples are acting like he knows more than everyone else, being condescending, making fun of people/treating and talking to them like they’re stupid, trying to force his opinion on people by acting like it’s “right”/THE answer/simple “logic,” acting like people are supposed to accommodate him or as if he’s entitled to things and acting crazy (getting loud, non-violent threats, arguing over set rules/methods, etc) in public in order to get his way. These are arguably things all kinds of people do, but white men do it in a way that exudes privilege and domination (not to mention makes people without that privilege want to knock their teeth down their throats).

I think having that kind of parent, though, particularly as a white male, has been beneficial for me. This is especially so as a female who identifies more with men, because I feel I learned a sense of entitlement, fearlessness and confidence that borders on arrogance in some areas. I think this is very uncommon in black women but, I think, those traits help people—particularly white men—succeed. In other words, I learned how to think and act like a white man. Had I identified more with my mother in terms of personality, I would have less confidence and would tolerate more things I don’t like. I believe that when you feel entitled to things and when you rarely think anything is an obstacle to you, you achieve more because you never really envision having to settle for less. In general, when I want something or want something to happen, I get what I want and really can’t tolerate otherwise. While I don’t do some of the things I said my father does, we are very similar people.

In addition, even though people tend to view black women as too overbearing and emasculating, I view them as taking way too much crap, particularly when it comes to black men. Oftentimes, the kind of black women who just go off do so about relatively silly things but let important stuff that they should rip people's heads off for slide. I do think black women are picky and have high standards romantically. But black women, to me, tend to be a weird combination of feminists and traditionalists--the ways in which they are feminists turn men off (i.e. always ahead of non-black women in terms of independence, strength, place in the home, etc) while the ways in which they are traditionalists causes them to willingly be subservient to men (even if the men don't realize it), let [black] men walk all over them but keep coming back/letting them stay/insisting only on dating black men, and spout/support chauvinistic ideals. I, on the other hand, am a little too "spoiled" to put up with the nonsense other black women allow.

There are also a lot of black women who, I feel, are too afraid of whites (i.e. concerned with not being seen as the b!tch, so they won't stand up to whites or try too hard to seem like a "good black" for whites) or buy into the "prove yourself"/"work twice as hard" crap...whereas I don't care who you are. I'm not going to act like anybody is better than I am, just like white men never do. I feel that I'm better than most people and they need to prove themselves to me, not the other way around.

One misconception I think people have about people in interracial relationships is they aren’t racist or they won’t disapprove if their kids get into interracial relationships. Please. I’ve read several stories from mixed kids—all kinds of mixes, not just black/white—and transracial adoptees who grew up with parents making racist comments, telling them to date this race and not that one (sometimes one of the races was one of their own), don’t talk about race at all/deny racial problems/can’t or won’t help their kids with racial issues…just all kinds of sh!t that illustrates that a lot of people have no business with multiracial or minority kids.

You know I like to say everyone’s racist, but my mother is definitely more racist than my father or I am. Neither of my parents are fond of white Americans. My only real problem with Asians and Latinos is too many of them are into whiteness. While that’s one of my mother’s problems with them, that is most certainly not her only problem with them. And I know that my parents have a hierarchy for me—they would prefer a black [male]. My mother thinks I essentially have no choice but to date a white [American male] because I’m going into a profession that is whited-out and most black guys will not be “on my level”—that is really the only reason she’s okay with that.

A Jewish person would not be celebrated nor expected. You might be able to flip a coin on whether an Asian or a Latino would cause more of an upset, but I really think an Asian would take the cake. My mother also really hates black men dating non-black women and other races dating whites. Yes, really. She has also said she does not like dark black men and that mixed blacks are the prettiest. Hmmm…thinking about this, she reminds me of some of these people with fetishes for mixed people or internalized racism. And she is pretty sensitive about being a somewhat darker black person.

My mother and father…I don’t know what they have in common, but that might be why I like people who aren’t like me. My father is generally open to people. He is very sociable. He makes offensive jokes about Asians and Latinos occasionally, but I think he’s one of those people who has no idea what’s wrong with those jokes. I don't think he really dislikes Asians or Latinos. But I know my mother does. My mother tolerates people, in the negative sense of “tolerate.” My father is nice to and friendly with everyone regardless of race. He can’t stand to hear my mother going off about black men not liking black women. I think ultimately he would be the parent who would be laid-back if I became serious about an Asian or Latino. As far as coming out, I don’t know but I suspect the same thing is true.

Although my mother is also part-Native American, I would never claim to be that in any way other than saying it's in my blood. My understanding of Native Americans is they are almost the exact opposite of blacks. Blacks call anyone who has black blood "black," sometimes even if they don't look black, and want them to claim their blackness, identify with black stereotypes, etc. Native Americans will challenge you if you say you're Native American. You have to prove it. You have to know the culture, live the culture. I don't, and I shouldn't. After all, we're Native American via rape. How would I know about being Native American? And to Native Americans, running around talking about your grandmother was Cherokee is a joke to them. There are also other white ethnic backgrounds in my family, since my mother is also part-white and there is one Italian surname in my father's family tree. (Shrugs) I'm black and French. I don't know anything else about being anything else, culturally.

I started identifying as black and French more when my father's mother died when I was a teenager. It wasn't really until then that I'd heard anything about his family's background. My father is not close to his family, not because of race but because that's how he is. We'd been to see his family before, but I was too young to really remember. I've actually been told that his mother wanted to raise me, but my mother didn't want that. My sister (the one who had the white best friend) and I had asked my mother when we were kids if our father was white, but that was it. We weren't interested in his family. When his mother died, that's when we started hearing more about his background. I'd always thought French stuff was cool--after all, my idol was a French-Canadian singer--so it wasn't hard for me to want to learn the language and learn more about the culture. I wanted to go to high school in France, study abroad in France, attend McGill University in Montreal, etc. I think my other sisters were too old to care the same way I did by that time.

Even though I feel I'm mature enough not to be concerned about racial acceptance and, with few exceptions, don't think I ever was all that concerned/messed up about racial acceptance relative to other blacks...as I said, I still do feel intimidated by black women--and, honestly, blacks in general. I am still thinking somewhat in terms of the past, i.e. I'm used to dealing with negative blacks by simply not dealing with blacks. And I still expect negativity and expectations from blacks, although that is not just based on the past. I just don't have the energy to pretend or defend, and I think I am still defensively waiting for the day when some blacks will try to make me defend who I am. I try to avoid it.

There are very few blacks whom I don't feel I'd have to do that with in my environment, and those are the blacks I have as friends. Being in an environment as white and alienating as law school is makes me wish just being black was enough to bond, but it's not. But, ultimately, weighing that conflict of sometimes wishing I could relate more to blacks with liking who I am and not wanting to be something I'm not for others...I am happier with things like this. I'm aware of how this makes me look to other blacks who expect us all to gravitate towards each other just based on skin color. Like I said, I'm too old to worry about fitting in. And I have really good, supportive white friends with a few good Asians and blacks thrown in.

I don't automatically connect with people based on race. Unlike other mixed kids, though, I attribute this more to my naturally having always been different from others, growing up in diverse environments and not having the luxury to be picky about who I hang out with like whites and more "typical" blacks do since they have more people who are like them to choose from and reject. Ninety-Nine percent of the time when I meet someone who is like me or with whom I click, they aren't black. I can't discount them because they aren't black, or keep looking for blacks who fit the mode.

I do think it's sad that it's sometimes easier to find a helping hand or a community among whites than among blacks, but I think this is an issue all blacks need to address in terms of the way they sometimes treat other blacks, regardless of being mixed or not. I read a comment from a guy in one of the books about Asians that he admires blacks because they have more of a sense of community than Asians do. I would say that the black sense of community is actually either similar to or less than that of Asians. All this "community" stuff blacks talk is bs; blacks do way too much alienating for way too many reasons. I suppose sometimes it can be about being mixed, particularly if you don't identify yourself "correctly," i.e. Tiger Woods. But it has never really been about that in my case.