The Fighting 44s

I hate to return and jump directly into the middle of the neverending fire fight on interracial relationships, but it looks like D, as usual, has continued to think and develop more depth to his argument, so I would like to process and respond to some of his new points.

Before we get started, it would be helpful to add a couple of ground rules.
1. Let’s abandon the strawmen. Sure, there are still plenty of people saying the “It’s my right to make my own bad choices, so you can’t stop me” arguments, but that’s just low hanging fruit. On the flipside, while there are still idiots here arguing that there is no patriarchal hierarchy in most East Asian societies, I’m pretty sure the vast majority of us can acknowledge that X factor in this discussion. We should be able to reach consensus however that, while different in their manifestations, contemporary East Asian societies are on the whole neither significantly more or less patriarchal than the Caucasian dominated societies, and if there is any significant difference, it has more to do with the Caucasian dominated societies being more self-delusional on the issue.

2. Some will undoubtedly do this to me, but let’s try abandon the identity disqualifying in the discussion: “You just think that way because you are half” and/or “You just think that because you are married and happy in an IR” leave no room for personal agency, and will simply polarize. After all, we have all been on the other end, “You just don’t like my intensely clever small penis joke because you are Asian and have a small penis” (*dickslaps racist idiot* “now you can see the refutation whenever you want by looking at the bruise pattern”) and it doesn’t lead to much. Certainly there are plenty of people who want to determine others’ dating choices because they lack the expertise to control their own. But this simply does not describe the thoughtful participants in this discussion.

3. So where does that leave us? I see competing, worthwhile schools of thought:

1) All personal actions have implications and responsibility associated with them, and while one of the most personal of choices, dating and marriage choices also have some of the deepest public impact.

2) Personal actions are indeed personal, and while they can be studied in order to make generalized recommendations for behavior (which as I understand is what D is doing here–not making a forceful demand), and editorial can certainly be made on the general trend, each situation must be judged on an individual basis.

In etching these two schools explicitly, I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, nor even, necessarily competing.

Let’s examine the realities of our societies in assessing how these fit together…

Absolutely, we have a massive UNDERREPRESENTATION of IRs in our societies. Mathematically, the out marriage rate for any minority group should be about 80%+. For whites, it should be 100-W, where “W” is the percentage of non-hispanic whites in the society.

This assumes a color-blind society, which is of course, a stupid assumption.

We live in societies where color is completely pervasive in decision-making–perhaps no more so than when concerning dating patterns. However, that doesn’t stop us from analyzing additional effects. In other words, if there is a massive trend toward same-ethnicity relationships, then we can use Seraph’s research to substantiate additional effects rooting from racist-genderist stereotyping directed toward Asian Americans–which we have, and as a community, for the most part agree: We have a massive problem.

In order to do any of the following:
1) Be a responsible member of an American society
2) Be a responsible member of a minority ethnic community in an American society
3) Have a functional relationship in an American society
4) Same as 3 but “have a functional IR relationship”
5) Same as 3, but adding “as a member of a minority ethnic community”
6) Be a friend and advisee in relationship situations in these societies.
7) Be a responsible consumer of media in these society
8 ) and so on…
…we must have a strong understanding of that reality.

However, that still leaves us with a question: “What can we do to most constructively address these problems?”

I believe that this is where we come to the generalized vs. the specific.
I do believe that it is intensely unhealthy on all of the levels above to regularly and especially chronically date members of the ethnic majority community. This is the conclusion I reached when I decided to no longer pursue love relationships, nor intentionally pursue friend relationships with that group. It is a decision I made in the past that I still articulate, and suffer the consequences among whites because of my belief (not surprisingly, regardless of the self-identified political background of those in question–”liberal white” still indicates next to nothing in terms of inter-racial empathetic ability) even following the acceptance of a lifelong commitment to second-gen immigrant of Polish background.

Interestingly enough, I would argue that this manifests itself most on the self level, rather than on the societal level–if, as a person of color, you invest emotional energy, time, and effort into an IR relationship–whether platonic or non-platonic–without addressing these issues directly, you run an extremely high risk (90%+) of later finding out that your partner is INCAPABLE of providing empathetic understanding on issues of identity.

On the societal level, the individual image is FAR more important. The window in which my wife and I’s relationship and our respective ethnicities make an uncontrollable impact is extremely narrow.

Let me put it simply: If you see a guy wearing a rubber ducky on his head walking down the street, he is the “Rubber Ducky Guy”. If he pulls out a hundred dollar bill and gives it to you, now he is the “guy who gave me $100″.

In our minority communities, we do need to be 10 times better to equal our white counterparts and still have enough left over to change some of these injustices. So I understand the desire to generalize the effectiveness of certain choices and make a hard paradigm.

However, in the end, we would have no problems filling a room full of healthy, sexually and professional successful AM/AF couples, and that would do little to change the institutions of racism we face in our societies.

We need more than simply cookie cutter leaders who have successfully checked off a binary checklist of “has nice hair”, “lifts weights”, “dates within the race”, “reads comic books” (sorry D :P)…

In fact, if we were to apply the same standards across the board, we could easily recommend that we utterly avoid violins, or doing math problems, or reading comic books, or learning martial arts.

But the best way to destroy a stereotype is not to simply avoid the behavior. It is to be the most asskickingly awesome individual you can so that there is no possible way for any significant number of people to capture you in those stereotypes.

We need more Asian Martial Artists who can tell people in public to shut up about their whitified image of Bruce Lee and Hong Kong Cinema, and drop some knowledge.

We need more Asian American boys who are by far the most charismatic and attractive person in the room, so that the sizable group of folks who still exclude them from their “to do list” look like idiots to everyone else. Hell, we definitely need more Asian American girls who do this, and tell all the racist, fetishizing cracker boys to fuck off.

We need more Asian American actors who make the tough decisions about roles, go to those horrible auditions and write and speak about it to educate the public.

And yes, we need more enlightened folks in relationships–no matter the relationship demographic–to articulate the realities of Asian America and its relationships.

Believe it or not, I could give a shit if you think so or not–I’ll still be ducking bullets at school regardless–but you need me. Because a fetish-based IR couple is a lot more likely to look at my wife and I’s relationship and feel inadequate than they are to listen to your preaching–no matter how accurate it is–and change.

And if they forget to feel inadequate, don’t worry, we’re more than happy to remind them.
So the point is that if you want to address the interracial issue, the best use of your energy is not to attack members of our own community, but to strategically attack the root problem with thoughtful questioning. If your suspicions about a certain AF/WM couple are correct, then you will have more of an impact than simply chastising them ever would. You will have a greater impact even on those who observe you, without a direct interaction. Most of all, you will stand the greatest chance of being content with your own life reality–both in general and in the sexual arena.

On a community scale, we still have a massive leadership issue, and while I see the points being made about symbols and the like, the partner of the potential leader’s racial/gender identity is hardly an end-all be-all, and in some cases, the community would stand to gain from a powerful, empathetic non-Asian American spouse who marries into the community. After all, I’m not really interested who is leading, as long as we win.

If some messiatic 100% Asian American person arrives on the scene joined-at-the-hip with an amazing, actualized Asian American spouse, I would be the first to get in line with them. But in the meantime, I’ll fight alongside anyone with a halfway decent plan.

We need to win.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 12:34 am and is filed under Opinion, Sex & Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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