Interracial relationships

Seeking, losing and finding ‘Love, InshAllah’

Photo by David Campbell/Flickr (Creative Commons)

How do American Muslim women navigate love, culture and identity? KPCC’s Yasmin Nouh gives us a glimpse in this Q&A with the co-editor of a new anthology of Muslim women’s personal stories.

“Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women,” is an anthology of 25 love stories told by American Muslim women from different backgrounds – black, white, Arab, converts, lesbians, Sunni, Shia, South Asian. Editors Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi say they compiled them to dispel stereotypes that Muslim women are generally repressed, forced into arranged marriages, or live loveless lives dictated by men.

Each tale is more than a simple love story, with complex underlying themes that these women face as they navigate hybrid identities while searching for a sense of belonging as Muslims – and as the children of immigrants, in many cases – in the United States.

In one of the stories, for example, contributor Tanzila Ahmed follows a Muslim punk-rock band on their cross-country tour. A self-proclaimed Desi (meaning of Pakistani or Indian descent) punk rocker, she ends up having an affair with one of the band’s members. An excerpt:

I had fallen in love in the best way – with a boy, with like-minded people, and, maybe most important, with being honestly and truly myself. I had found a family that was cut from the same contradictory cloth and going through the same blasphemous struggles as I was. I had found myself, and I had let myself go. I had punk-rocked, prayed, loved, moshed, laughed, skated, cuddled, rocked, touched, kissed, and cried.

It wasn’t just a story about my falling in love with a guy, or following a band, or going on an adventure. It was about love, punk, and punk-drunk love. People who got me, really got me, and all that I came with.

Co-editor Nura Maznavi, herself the daughter of immigrants from Sri Lanka, discusses how the book got its start, what she learned along the way, and what the reaction to it has been so far.

M-A: What inspired the idea of “Love InshAllah”?

Maznavi: My co-editor Ayesha and I have been friends for many years. About five years ago, over coffee in San Francisco, we were chatting about how so much has been written about Muslim women, but very little of it has been written by Muslim women. Nowhere in the discourse did we see reflected the funny, independent and hilarious Muslim women we know. We wanted to change that. We decided to ask women to write about the search for love, because love is a universal emotion that resonates with everyone.

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FILED UNDER: "Love InshAllah", Ayesha Mattu, Interracial marriage, Interracial relationships, Islam, Muslims, Nura Maznavi

July 22, 2011 | 10:47 AM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

When parents don’t approve of your interracial relationship

Photo by jude hill/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Not long after actress and writer Diane Farr exchanged her first “I love you” with her now-husband, Seung Yong Chung, he gave her some crushing news: Their relationship would not go over well with his Korean parents. “I’m supposed to marry a Korean girl,” he told her.

Upset as she was, Farr remembered the rules imposed by her own Irish-Italian parents, who had once forbidden her from dating anyone who was black or Puerto Rican. And many of her friends’ parents, she later learned, had also imposed similar rules on their children.

She was determined to fight for her beau, and he for his parents to accept her. The couple’s story, which has a happy ending, is the basis for Farr’s new memoir, titled “Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After,” published by Seal Press. She provided a taste of their story in a recent “Modern Love” column for the New York Times.

Farr, who lives in Los Angeles, talks here about the road to acceptance within her husband’s family, how her parents changed their attitudes about race and love, and the road that lies ahead for their three children.

M-A: When your husband told you that his parents would likely not accept you, how did you make peace with that? There was the possibility that they never might, or that your relationship might cause him to be alienated from them. How did you cope with that?

Farr: From the first conversation I had with my husband about his parents’ wish that he marry a Korean person, I felt badly for him. Specifically because it was such a double edged sword. He had this new, great love in his life – but he had this fear of telling the other people he loved about it. I think the inherent sadness of that made me want to “help him,” find a way to possibly make the two parts work together.

It was a very real possibility that I would never be accepted by his family and even worse, that he might be disowned or at least never spoken to again because he wanted to marry me. As I detail in my book, from our first conversation where Seung “admitted” the long history of conversations about who was welcome for love in his house, and who was not, I told him I would support him if he wanted to persue our relationship because I was a grown woman, with my own job and my own career and my own mommy and daddy.

I wasn’t financially dependent on his parents, he did not live with them and I did not “need” them. My real hope was that he would not lose them because I guessed he did need them. I said I was willing to work with him to attain that, first and foremost.

M-A: What was it like meeting them for the first time?

Farr: There was so much vetting done before my first meeting with them that it was incredibly smooth compared to the ardous path I had just climbed to get into their company. My biggest travails were with Seung’s aunts and uncles who were, sort of, auditioning me or interviewing me and at times just staring at me without one word, to decide if I should have an audience with his mom and dad. By the time I got to his parents, they were a walk in the park.

M-A: In your essay, you mention being surprised that many of your friends whose parents imposed similar rules were willing to abide by them. Did any of them rationalize their parents’ rules, and how?

Farr: Everyone rationalized their parents’ rules – including me. My parents were not that different than Seung’s. They had their own list of who I could and couldn’t date. What surprised me most about so many of my peers and about Seung was that they hadn’t fought for their right to pick their own partner with their parents.

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FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Diane Farr, Interracial dating, Interracial relationships, Kissing Outside the Lines

June 28, 2011 | 5:43 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Readers on interracial dating and parents’ rules

Photo by jude hill/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A post yesterday highlighted author Diane Farr’s new memoir about interracial romance titled “Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After,” and her accompanying recent essay for the New York Times about the early days of her relationship with her Korean American husband.

After he warned her that his parents would likely not accept her, the Irish-Italian Farr recalled her own mother’s admonition: She could marry a man who was German, Irish, French or Jewish, but “No blacks and no Puerto Ricans, though, or you are out of my house.” Friends of various ethnic backgrounds told her they had all been handed similar rules about who they couldn’t date.

In the post, I asked readers to recall conversations that took place in their households regarding interracial relationships – if their parents imposed rules, and how these rules played out in real life. There have been a couple of interesting responses, including this unusual one:

Rory wrote:

My mother is a tall woman from Northern Ireland. I was told I could not marry anyone who was shorter than 5’6″ and/or Catholic. The height issue was because, as a teen, she saw all of the tall boys (I’m 6’7″) date short girls, and she felt left out at 5’11.” The Catholic issue came from her upbringing as a Methodist in Northern Ireland.

I ended up marrying a 5’6″ Episcopalian, so I guess I followed her rules.

And Barcacule1889 wrote:

American is not a race. German is a race. Indian is a race. But even Indians are so ethnically diverse. But even the notion of race is biologically suspect since biology does not recognize race only evolutionary adaptations by people groups. As for me, I cannot see myself marrying someone from India and bringing her back to the USA.

I prefer to marry any American since I have grown used to the American culture where I moved to 17 years ago from India. The issue is what kind of American? To be honest, I prefer sunkissed blondes.

Go ahead, rake me over the coals now!

Oh, Barcacule. At least you’re honest.

FILED UNDER: Diane Farr, Interracial dating, Interracial relationships

June 27, 2011 | 1:12 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

A girlfriend from the ‘wrong’ race: New memoir takes on interracial romance

Photo by WolfS♡ul/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Over the past few months we’ve presented a few different takes on interracial relationships, social territory that even in an increasingly multiethnic country remains full of unexpected land mines.

We’ve learned about how Internet daters prefer to stick with their own race, and have read the reflections of a biracial father – ridiculed for his own name as a child – as he searched for the right name to give his multiracial baby. In one popular post, KPCC’s OnCentral blog editor Kim Bui let us in on the uncomfortable questions directed at Asian women with white partners.

But what about white women who date outside their race? Writer and actress Diane Farr was on the other side of that coin when she began her relationship with her now-husband Seung Yong Chung, a Korean American who told her early on in their romance that their relationship would not go over well with his family. Their story, which had a happy ending, is the basis for Farr’s new memoir, titled “Kissing Outside the Lines: A True Story of Love and Race and Happily Ever After,” published last month by Seal Press.

Farr provided a taste of the book earlier this month in a “Modern Love” column for the New York Times. Among the most interesting things in the piece was what she learned in conversations with friends after her then-boyfriend told her, “I’m supposed to marry a Korean girl.”

What I soon found out was that my friends of all colors, faiths and traditions had had a similar talking-to from their parents. Despite having been in this country for generations longer than mine, their parents, too, had been told there was a right and an “over my dead body” choice for love.

I continued asking questions: “And how much did your parents’ initial disapproval impact your decision to marry? And does it persist or affect your relationship now?”

By phone, over dinner and through e-mail, people’s honest responses started flooding in.

“I have to marry Jewish or I’m cut off,” my Jewish friend said.

“Cut off from what exactly?” I wondered aloud, knowing he had plenty of money of his own.

“Their love and support,” he answered.

“For my father, black was out of the question,” said my olive-skinned Persian friend with a wave of her hand, as if she were trying to push away the very idea of it.

Another friend of mixed Indian and German descent said, “I’m a half-breed, so my parents were fine with any race, but they preferred — really told me — not to marry an American.”

“While you were being raised in America?” I said, aghast.

She giggled at the ridiculousness of the statement, but nodded her head yes nonetheless.

Farr writes that her own Irish-Italian parents once forbade her from dating anyone black or Puerto Rican, though they eventually changed their position. She writes that she was less shocked by her friends’ admissions of their parents’ dating rules than by “their willingness to abide by them.”

Yet what Farr describes is next-door common, even in a polyglot place like Southern California. I’m looking forward to reading the book – and I’d like to hear from readers.

What sorts of conversations took place in your household regarding interracial relationships? If there were rules and restrictions imposed, how did they play out in real life?

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Diane Farr, Interracial dating, Interracial relationships, Modern Love, Seal Press

April 27, 2011 | 12:11 PM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

Mixed name, mixed child: A biracial father reflects upon naming his newborn

Photo by Chiceaux Lynch/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A few posts in the past weeks have discussed interracial relationships, drawing several comments from readers who shared their thoughts and personal stories.

One reader, Guybe Slangen, went a step further, writing an essay about his own upbringing as the son of Belgian and Filipino immigrants and his unique name, which reflects his mixed heritage. Slangen and his wife, who is Korean American, recently had to decide on a name for their newborn daughter, who he describes as a “Kore-Belgi-Pino.” The process prompted Slangen to reflect on his name and identity, and wonder what his child’s experience will be. Here’s his story.

I used to despise the first day of school.

Teachers would go down the class list calling out names, and I could tell when they got to mine by their confused looks and their long, silent pause. I would instantly raise my hand, but what would follow would be the inevitable name slaughtering, making me the instant target of relentless teasing from my peers.

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FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Interracial dating, Interracial relationships

March 21, 2011 | 11:58 AM | By Leslie Berestein Rojas

On the Internet, there’s still no such thing as a post-racial America

Most of the data out there on interracial relationships doesn’t come from online dating sites, but it’s high time more of it did, because the results are fascinating.

The online dating website OkCupid’s dating-trends research component, OkTrends, posted a dizzying set of graphics with analysis the other day illustrating how, in spite of new census data telling us that the United States is becoming more diverse, there is still no such thing as a post-racial America in the selective world of online dating.

According to the post, the dating service analyzed 82 million messages sent in recent months, running the numbers in different ways. On its face, the result showed white dating-service users receiving more messages per capita than non-whites, even from non-white users. But OkCupid, the majority of whose users are white, did an interesting experiment, redoing the math on the hypothetical assumption that white users weren’t the dominant majority.

What if, for example, there were just as many Asian users on the site? What OkCupid found:

Our experiment tells us that, given equal numbers, Asians would actually overwhelming prefer to message other Asians.

And so forth, for every ethnic group. OkCupid’s Christian Rudder wrote in the post:

…I think there’s an assumption that at some point all the races will just kind of come together as one, like during Michael Jackson’s “Black Or White” video or like during a lawsuit against the estate of Michael Jackson.

The data we’re seeing, however, just doesn’t support a post-racial future, because even as the races mingle more, people still like to date someone who looks like they do. Asians strongly prefer Asians; Latinos, Latinos, and so on.

The OkCupid data has points in common with the results of a recent study done by UC Berkeley in collaboration with a different dating service, which analyzed data from a million singles looking for matches online.

That data showed that whites overwhelmingly prefer to date whites. However, black online dating-service users, especially men, were more open to dating people of other racial backgrounds. From that report:

The reluctance of whites to contact blacks was true even for those who claimed they were indifferent to race. More than 80 percent of the whites contacted whites and fewer than 5 percent of them contacted blacks, a disparity that held for young as well as for older participants.

At the same time, data from the Pew Research Center shows that one in seven new marriages is between people of different ethnicities, as reported in a recent package in the New York Times on the evolution of a more multiracial population.

The story had a nifty graphic on who is marrying whom. Chances are, though, they aren’t all meeting online.