Again, thanks to Marvin, for making me think about interracial relationships.
I'm in an interracial marriage.
As I have mentioned before, Sexyhusband's parents immigrated to the US from India. Sexyhusband was born here and grew up (mostly) in the US. He isn't invested in Indian culture at all-he eats meat, eschews all religion, dislikes Bollywood, loathes the music and isn't all that fond of the food. His parents have often joked that I'm more Indian than he is-I like the food, the movies, the music, the clothes and have learned some words and simple phrases in his parent's ethnic language. So it often slips my mind that we're in an interracial relationship at all.
Sexyhusband isn't my first interracial relationship. I've dated White guys, Latino guys and Asian guys. I was always open to dating African American guys and flirted with plenty, but never ended up dating one. At the end of the day, I've always been more attracted to intelligent, snarky, sexy guys. And while there are physical traits that I look for and find more attractive, I've never closed myself off to a race.
I have, however, closed myself off to Conservatives, the very religious, and cat haters because they would never fit into my life. If you hate my friends, believe they can't marry, or that my mom is going to hell because she had me out of wedlock, game over.
My experiences with interracial friendships and relationships haven't been all roses and rainbows though. I am sad to admit that I have a great aunt who doesn't believe that I should be friends with people of color, much less date outside my race. When introducing Sexyhusband to my extended family, I genuinely was worried if anyone would be rude to his face. We were also unsure about introducing me to Sexyhusband's extended family-I'm the first non-Indian member of the family and we weren't sure what my reception would be. Sexyhusband makes sure that I am the person who hands our passports to the customs agents because he doesn't get searched on suspicion of being a terrorist when I do (he's brown, has longish hair-it happened a lot post 9/11).
I guess the thing that bothers me most when talking about interracial relationships is that most people jump to black/white couples. When I read interracial erotica, it is almost always black/white. It annoys me that there isn't a broader interpretation of what interracial relationships mean. I've tried to counter it some with my own work, although it's only the fairly recent stuff, including a main couple whose racial makeup mirrors my marriage.
The white ideal reigns supreme in our pop culture, including porn. As Marvin pointed out, many porn actresses don't do interracial scenes because it's common belief that it would lower their value. For that matter, find me an American porn actress of Indian descent. I doubt it's because there aren't any girls willing to do it.
However, the worst incarnation of the white on white standard is the myth of the oversexed black male. Dating back to the 18th and 19th century, there is a myth that has persisted saying that black men are oversexed and all want to do white women at any cost. It persists today. In the MA governor's race of '06, the Republican challenger issued a commercial insinuating that (now Governor) Democrat Deval Patrick would free all the rapists and black men to come and get the women of Massachusetts. I was pleased to see the outpouring of rage from women's groups and the general public, refusing to buy into the propaganda. I would hope that it is a trend that continues, with the public rejecting those racially biased sexual stereotypes.
I am proud that my generation and the one that is following mine have polled as seeing interracial relationships as normal (along with gay sex and marriage). I can hope that it is a trend that continues, and over time we can finally see the propaganda as just that.
I'm not sure about the porn. Difficult to compare the revenue from Japanese and Western porn. But compare the words naked Japanese and naked blonde in Google trends.
Posted by: LA Player | January 26, 2007 at 08:57 PM
You make a good point LA Player. I should probably have brought up that the one group of people successfully doing interracial porn are Asian (although not Indian-something that makes my husband and I sad) women. Even Jenna has done scenes with Asia Carrera.
And you do make the point that I"m discussing American porn.
What I'd say is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of interracial porn when you stack it up against other genres like girl/girl or BDSM.
Posted by: Deliciously Naughty | January 27, 2007 at 07:49 AM