There’s nothing easy about interracial relationships to begin with. And not enough people are honest about it.
It’s a new year! Which means it is time, yet again, for another terrible-ass take on interracial relationships.
Too on the nose? Yeah, but you’d be a little annoyed too if literally everywhere you looked, someone else was coming up with yet another half-assed, borderline whiny take on why such relationships are tough… without really saying much of anything at all. Why do I say this? Well, earlier today, BuzzFeed published a piece about getting partners in interracial relationships to (anonymously) confess all their exasperations about dating someone of another race to handy-dandy bots. And because it’s BuzzFeed, someone decided to connect this to “wokeness”.
Upon skimming over the piece, I wrote it off in my own thread as “pitiful”. I know what you’re thinking. “That’s a bit harsh, Clarkisha!” Mayhaps. Truthfully, I’m normally indifferent about interracial relationships. But in a Trumpian America, I’m about 99.9% averse to them for myself… unless, say, Jake Gyllenhaal was to kick down my door and ask me to marry him. I’d likely briefly consider calling the authorities before saying “fuck it” and accepting. But that is a mere fantasy and doesn’t necessarily influence my wariness when it comes to IR relationships. Partly because of the way they are fetishized, but mostly because—and I’m going to keep it 100 with you:
There’s nothing easy about interracial relationships to begin with. And not enough people are honest about it.
That point sounds contradictory because it appears as if people in such relationships are being honest about being in them a la that BuzzFeed “bot” but bear with me. At the center of interracial relationships is the very important fact that this other person that you are choosing to love, date, and [possibly] fuck does not share a key and vital lived experience with you—which is race. And depending on who they are (particularly if they are white since apparently, no other interracial pairings exist), you both literally move through the world differently and are registered by the world differently. Even with the best-case scenario, you are going to be inviting some pretty… dicey politics into your home and bedroom. And there’s nothing inherently bad, per se, about this. But you are deluding yourself if you think it’s not going to be hard.
So of course, we circle back to honesty, in that we admit that honesty (hand-in-hand with communication) is the way to overcome such stark differences and power differentials in a relationship. Except that’s not what pieces like BuzzFeed’s do. Instead of starting a dialogue about what one must be transparent about if such a relationship is to succeed, it becomes an out. A dumping ground for lamenting the not-so-shiny of your star-crossed love affair—without any plan to change things or course correct. So then the general populace gets harassed about your white partner and how they “don’t see color”. Or your non-Black partner of color and how they don’t think “you’re like other Blacks”. Or how, God forbid, you have kids with this person and they comment about wanting your shared spawn to have “their hair” because it would be “easier”. Or worse, your white partner deciding they’re going to call you a racial slur while they’re dick-deep in you.
Recommended: NO, INTERRACIAL LOVE IS NOT “SAVING AMERICA”
Any of this ringing a bell?
Good. It’s supposed to, if only for the fact that if one must share the inter-workings of these relationships with the general populace, they should at least be brave enough cut the shit. But that’s not what happens. Instead, we get more of the same as I mentioned above, or we get a glimpse of behavior we very well know would not be tolerated if it was coming from a member of the same racial/ethnic group. Or in its worst form, we get the “Big Bad” version of this where it results in whole social media pages dedicated to “swirling” or “mixing” or whatever the fuck. Or whole “parents” fetishizing their multiracial kids (a la “we’re gonna make great/pretty babies”). Or the final final form in the iteration of taking all of this batshit shit and throwing it up on a YouTube channel.
Which is to say… I’ve had enough. I think we’ve all had enough. And I really don’t care to hear more.
That said, if you must come on Blue Ivy’s internet and share deeply intimate things about dating someone of a different race, perhaps let’s start with the obvious fact that whiteness isn’t the be all end all of IR relationships and that other people of color… can date each other. And maybe you should add that in a country like America, in particular, conversations about race are unavoidable and you will need to damn near know every nuance to it lest you be the one to exacerbate the oppression that your partner experiences in whatever form they experience it in. And maybe, just maybe, you should top it off with the fact that “wokeness” has got fuck all to do with. That if you truly love, respect, and give a fuck about your partner, you’re willing to get and be deeply uncomfortable to understand them.
If your “thinkpiece” on IR relationships doesn’t even begin to mention any of that? Please keep that shit. I beg you.