a collection of thoughts in honor of IBARW

[snugglekitty]

indigoskynet made this icon JUST FOR ME!

I am a fourth-generation US immigrant on both sides of my family.

"Okay with interracial relationships" was one of the stated requirements for our current batch of roommates.

Why, on TV shows, do the characters almost always have relationships with characters of the same racial background? It always bugs me.

About 50 years ago, my uncle married a Catholic girl. His parents, my grandparents, refused to go to the wedding. They were divorced less than a year later. He then married a blond from a "nice family." They are still together.

I grew up in a small town in New England, which used to pride itself on the epithet "Lily-White."

When I was ten, I heard my grandmother speculate over whether some people she had seen were Jewish, and was confused by it. She explained that they were "dark, and seemed well-off."

I have helped deliver the baby of an interracial couple.

Have you all seen the Gender Pyramid in Kate Bornstein's _My Gender Workbook_? The Gender Pyramid changed the way I think about gender, and race, forever.

Neither interracial nor same-sex marriage has yet been proven to destroy the institution of marriage.

I have one family recipe, handed down from before my grandmother's time. It's for meatball soup.

Race is one of the only ways I'm not a minority.

Comments

[notpiecebypiece.livejournal.com]

Why, on TV shows, do the characters almost always have relationships with characters of the same racial background? It always bugs me.

you should watch grey's anatomy. at least half the relationships are interracial.

[whistles]

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I'm not sure about the trope of "knowing no color." It reminds me of the irk at fellow bisexuals who say that their attractions know no gender. I like a wide range of genders and am attracted to a wide range sexually, but I do notice gender and egads, it's one of the things I like. "Not knowing" race is often another way to recenter whiteness in the name of "universal" values, and is one of the things that I believe that the left has gotten wrong for a long time.

It is, I believe, one of the ways that I was raised wrong. I love Sesame Street to this day, but, not knowing race is the Sesame Street of race, in which we can all just get along and "forget" our differences.

That is not the answer.

[heresiarch.livejournal.com]

well said, and i agree. i'm not quite sure where the line falls between acknowledging difference and discriminating because of it, but i think a lot of people of color find the concept of "colorblindness" to be offensive, as a way white people often gloss over complex and varied histories that tend to revolve around race and power.

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Yes, but

1) I don't need to watch any more TV and
2) I don't like watching hospital shows. Partly because I hate hospitals and partly because my job most of the time involves working at hospitals.

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

That's fair. It's interesting, I thought that some people would be likely to find this post objectionable for other reasons.

I'm not saying that "knowing no color" is the way that people ought to be. Hmm, so what am I saying? I guess I'm saying that I feel that the things that make us the most human, like love, like wanting a better world for our children, are not parcelled out via ethnicity lines, no matter how unjust the world may be, and I find that comforting.

I wouldn't say that "I just don't notice race," I don't think that's true at all. And I share your irkness with bi folks who say they don't notice gender.