Asian guy, white girl

[Craig Jessop]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/67985/

This reminded me of an elder from Hong Kong I lived with on my mission. He LOVED white girls. I believe his phrasing was, "white girls... they're so... tender." Of course, he's now married to a girl from Hong Kong and seems very happy.

This brings up another point: interracial dating/marriage in general. Before beginning, I feel I should make it perfectly clear that if it works for you then there's nothing wrong with that. If I find an Asian girl, or a Hispanic girl, or a Black girl, that I like and I feel compatible with, then I'd go for it! No questions. I do, however, think that it would depend on her culture. I don't think I would ever be able to marry a Japanese girl thoroughly invested in her culture, and I wouldn't want her to have to marry me. The same thing goes for a girl from Mexico, or inner-city Detroit, or even the UK, France, or Germany. In my entire life -- in the wonderful melting pots of AZ and UT, on my mission in Brooklyn, in travelling around the country -- I've only seen one mixed-culture marriage whose lifestlye I would want for myself, and the wife essentially conformed, publically at least, to the upper-middle class, White American culture I've grown up in and feel comfortable living. Any other mixed-culture relationship I've known has seemed rocky and awkward. A former roommate just finalized a terrible divorce after less than a year of marriage to a girl from Peru; the couple in my ward growing up where the wife was from the Philippines never seemed comfortable together, and their kids were conflicted as to which culture to follow; the Chinese-Mexican combination I met in New York was hilarious beyond words when trying to communicate with each other, but did not live the sort of life I want for myself; the Dutch-American marriage I got to watch growing up was cold and apparently unloving. Certainly there must have been other factors involved, but it seems weird to me that any mixed-culture marriage I am personally acquainted with looks like it has deeper seated issues than the husband not liking his wife's way of preparing meat.

I should be clear that I'm talking about culture only, not race at all. And I hope it's clear I'm not even talking about the outward expressions of culture, like cuisine or whatever. I'm talking about what the writers, Sky Bones in particular, mentioned: different ways of viewing the world. If I met a girl from Draper or Honolulu or Fairfax or Cleveland, whose parents were third generation Americans of Chinese descent, I can't conceive of any reason why not to go out with her. The same thing applies to children of immigrants! One of my roommates is dating a girl from Colombia who is proud of her heritage, but is essentially American in her worldview.

I have no problems being friends with people from different cultures. I have no problems engaging with them socially, spiritually, or intellectually as complete equals, and valuing their worldviews and contributions to America and my life. But when it comes to the life-long, eternal relationship of marriage, I don't want to worry about a HUGE barrier coming between me and my spouse. We're probably going to have enough of those anyway.

Thoughts?

[C is for]

Amen.

[Katya]

So, let's say that your parents immigrated to Japan when you were young, so that you grew up there but were a 1st generation immigrant. Would you say that Japanese people were justified if they didn't want to date you or if they didn't want their daughters dating you? Would you be OK with restricting your dating opportunities to other 1st-generation immigrants from America?

[Craig Jessop]

I understand your point, but I don't think it's that simple. Japanese culture isn't preconditioned to accept assimilating immigrants like American culture is. Americans typically don't emigrate permanently, so if I were raised there by first generation immigrant parents I doubt I would attend Japanese schools, watch Japanese TV, or consider myself Japanese. As far as I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), a big part of being Japanese is ethnicity and I could never fit in that way. In the United States, you can be white, black, red, or yellow and be considered American by the vast majority of people here.

[Sparklebreeze]

So, let's say that your parents immigrated to Japan when you were young, so that you grew up there but were a 1st generation immigrant. Would you say that Japanese people were justified if they didn't want to date you or if they didn't want their daughters dating you?

I think it depends on whether I intend to raise a family with American or Japanese ideology and customs.

Isn't that essentially the culture vs. race idea? I would only seriously date someone from Japan if his world view/goals/priorities/etc. were similar to mine, but not otherwise. But if I chose not to date him, it wouldn't be because he was Japanese, it would be because I saw irreconcilable differences in our thinking. The same goes for seriously dating American men. I would basically expect others to give me the same consideration.

On the other hand, if someone specifically didn't want to date me because I was white, I wouldn't really have much of a problem with that, assuming they refrained from burning things on my lawn or spitting on me. I would probably feel hurt at first, and then realize that I don't want to date guys who don't want to date white girls. I might not want to date guys who have blonde hair, or eat lasagna, or play the trumpet. I don't think I should have to date them if I don't want to.

[Katya]

I understand your point, but I don't think it's that simple. Japanese culture isn't preconditioned to accept assimilating immigrants like American culture is.

OK. Pick a different culture, then. One that is more used to assimilating immigrants (but whose culture is still significantly different from your native culture).

[Craig Jessop]

It all depends on if I considered myself Japanese or American. If I considered myself Japanese in all important ways and a girl were only avoiding me because of my race, I would find it irritating and close minded and I probably wouldn't give her the time of day anyway -- realizing that hatred of racism is a particularly American thing, and so even now my "what if" scenario is clouded. If I were American in my outlook and worldview, I wouldn't be seeking to marry a native anyway and would instead seek a nice expat like myself.

Then again, this is a moot point because A) I have no plans to emigrate, B) I'm already set in my fat American ways, and C) If I did emigrate I would raise my kids to be Americans, enroll them in American expat schools, and send them home to BYU for college.

[Katya]

Then again, this is a moot point because A) I have no plans to emigrate, B) I'm already set in my fat American ways, and C) If I did emigrate I would raise my kids to be Americans, enroll them in American expat schools, and send them home to BYU for college.

The main problem I see with your (initial) argument is that you're completely failing to take into account how this attitude, if widespread, would affect members of minority cultures. Under the circumstances, then, imagining yourself in in an equivalent position is not a moot point, it is the whole point.

[Craig Jessop]

I think you're failing to see that I'm only talking about culture, not race. In the United States, children and grandchildren of immigrants assimilate themselves pretty predictably, and have since 1607. I don't imagine myself having any issue marrying a second or third generation American -- or even an immigrant -- who sees the world as an American does. An American girl with parents who immigrated from Korea, for instance. But if she expected me to act Korean, I'd back out of the relationship because I'm not Korean and have no desire to be. And if she thought that I expected her to change to be more "American," I'd back out too; people who deeply change themselves just to make their partner happy don't really seem to have the type of relationship I'd want anyway.

Let's even eliminate race from the argument all together. I would not probably date or marry a girl from some trailer park outside Mobile, Alabama, either. With our different cultures we just wouldn't be compatible. I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't marry one of the guys from Duck Dynasty yourself. Now if you or I were to meet somebody who grew up that way but went to college and was successfully trying to fit into our culture, I know I wouldn't think twice about marrying a girl like that. Likewise, I probably wouldn't marry into the Kennedy or Rockefeller or some other sort of Brahmin family. We would be entirely incompatible.

[C is for]

If I were the only one of my culture in an area, I would either assimilate or not look to date people in the local culture. I wouldn't feel discriminated against if the parents didn't want me dating their sons. I'd be Minority Culture and still feel like the cultural gap would be a big hurdle.

I imagine that's why there's still a lot of community within different cultures even here in the USA.

[Portia]

Asian men are rarely tall, almost always slender, and often shy/reserved. I've met outgoing Asian guys but never douchey frat boy ones. There is a perceived sociosexual capital gap. Now I find this ridiculous, since skinny and smart is my ideal, but the prejudice is out there. There's a certain kind of white guy who gets obsessed with Asian girls (which can be a kind of "benevolent racism" if it's because of their perceived docility), and let's face it, Asian girls have figures that are in vogue right now. I don't want to be someone's token blue-eyed Manic Pixie Dream Girl anymore than an Asian wants to be a token Miss Saigon.

Having only dated upper-middle class men, I find the casual snobbery espoused by Craig to be both familiar and exhausting. I'll out myself: I grew up poor. Working-class - always had a roof over our heads - but my family never took trips to Lake Powell, we had old, crappy cars, and neither of my parents graduated college. I am sick and tired of feeling like I have to Eliza Doolittle it up for the whitebread subdivision-dwelling iPad-owners. Sorry that you might get some of the poor on you. If I have to hear one more spoiled Walker Lane queen bee call my skinny kid sister "fat" or brag about the Tahitian time share that oh wait, you're 11, YOU didn't take the LSAT, did you? I swear I will lose it. Yes, I didn't wear the "right" clothes or listen to the "right" music or live in a subprimed mortgage stucco split-level McMansion, but I was smart, and had good taste, and taught myself Italian, and worked my rear off to go to that most bourgeois of colleges, BYU.

It's pretty much my worst nightmare to end up with an élitist nouveau riche boy in a giant air-conditioned house taking our kid to playgroup, feeling smugly superior about possessions I didn't earn and going from one indistinguishable suburban party to another. That's the nice thing about the lower AND the true upper classes: they feel no need to bs, to pretend to like you if they don't.

[Craig Jessop]

If you don't want to marry somebody like me, a "casual snob," who is apparently afraid to "get some poor" on my uncalloused, never-worked hands -- if marrying some cartoon character like me really is your "worst nightmare" -- then don't! Marry somebody like yourself: a poor kid who made good. That's all I'm trying to say.

But don't insult me. I did nothing to deserve it.

[Portia]

Well, is it NOT snobbish to be so dead-set against anyone outside your religion, class, and nationality? I mean not marrying a German?! Cmon

[Marduk]

I think you're hitting a little on the point that seems to be enflaming a little, Craig, and that is a tendency to over-homogenize cultures and under-heterogenize "American culture." Point being, just because someone grew up inculcated in say, Asian culture, doesn't mean they espouse the same world view as someone else who grew up in that same culture. As the world becomes increasingly global, one will find connections in terms of world view (as well as in terms of the underemphasized "shallow tastes" ala media and cuisine consumption, leisure time activities, etc.) to be increasingly compatible with folks growing up in increasingly diverse locations.

I think it not only possible but plausible that given say, 100 girls randomly sampled from a world population who you would consent as having a similar enough worldview to yours to merit further relationship expansion, perhaps less than half will share similar cultural roots. As you've hinted at, socio-economic background probably has much more to do with it, but even that can expand as time goes on. Education is another one that is likely a better predictor, but there are subsitutes there when it comes to shaping perspective.

To personalize this, I think it almost impossible, if you fully expand your potential partner pool, to not find things in other cultures that you actually prefer to the one you grew up in. After all, the supposedly "American values" that I think you most likely would espouse are not always taught best by that self-same culture. Things like hard work and perspicacity can often be taught better in a Hispanic home, for example. If one cannot find anything redeeming or relevant to one's own perspectives in other cultures, even to the point of allowing for mating possibilities, well, quite frankly, you just haven't looked hard enough.

And lastly, as a moderator, please be nice guys. Make your arguments and make them cogently, but please try to resist the urge to resort to ad-hominem attacks or uncalled for vitriol.

[UffishThought]

Nationality-wise, I know I'm prejudiced against others because of laziness and fear. I'm already intimidated and a little terrified about the prospect of marrying someone who wants to live outside of the 3 or 4 states I grew up in and around. To marry someone who might want to live outside of the states terrifies me a little--there would be papers to sign and maybe languages to learn and all kinds of things to do I've never even thought of, not to mention an identity to rethink. For me, I think it's wisest to marry someone who wants live in the US, because it would be so stressful for me to try to live elsewhere.

And for me, that's what this whole thing boils down to. Compromise in a marriage is good--it means that both people are trying to make each other comfortable and happy. But to try to do too much at once could really mess you up, too. For me, it's less about snobbery (I hope) than an awareness of how much I'm willing to change about myself and my lifestyle for the sake of someone else's happiness.

So it's possible I may fall deeply in love with and marry a Mexican guy and move back to Mexico with him, it's also unlikely. (Or a German! At least I took 3 years of Spanish in high school.) Switching countries is a sacrifice I'd rather not make, given the option. Class change would also be uncomfortable, though probably less so, since I'd still have the opportunity to at least spend time with my original class, wherever I go. And religion would be a big thing in my book, too, since affects so much of my life (and because I believe it affects my afterlife, too).

To add to the list I also probably won't end up with someone who doesn't have a sense of humor, because that's so much of who I am. I've got a serious bias in favor of guys with a good relationship with his parents, because I've found my relationship with my parents to be so beneficial, and I'd like to keep it up. I had an oddly persistent crush on one guy, based mainly on the fact that his dad's a herpetologist and mine was a zookeeper, and so the two of us have similar quirky views on animals and we both grew up catching crickets and teasing bats and so on. Those three things aren't as central to who I am and how I live, so they're more negotiable for me than the other three.

In the end, it's all a balancing act: how comfortable am I with this guy? Do I love him enough to sacrifice some of my own happiness? How much is appropriate to sacrifice, and in what arenas? While it sounds shallow to say that things like religion and nationality and treatment of animals come into the picture, they do.

[mic0]

Honestly, I love different cultures. I think I've expressed that before in Board answers or on here, but it's true. When I dated different people in high school, one was Jewish from New Jersey, one was Catholic and extremely southern (very polite, said "honey" to everyone, that kind of thing), and one was an almost stereotypical LDS guy. Now, obviously, I'm married to someone from another country with a very different background from my own.

The conversation here makes me realize, though, that all the people I've dated, including my husband, were from a similar socio-economic background as me. I think that plays a bigger role because how you were raised brings a lot of baggage (e.g., what standard of living you expect, how much you want to travel, etc.). It's not all black and white, but as a general rule this seems accurate. I love that Mr. Mico has so many cultural differences and his heritage is fascinating to me, and even though there are a lot of differences, I find them all interesting. This is all to say, I think cultural differences is something that is largely dependent on the people involved. Um, yup, that's all I got to say.

[yayfulness]

From what I've observed, it seems like this is something that needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. The variation between two people from a single culture (and even similar socio-economic backgrounds) can be as great as, if not greater than, the difference between two people from totally different cultures. I'm definitely open to dating girls from other cultures (particularly Hispanic girls), but for practical reasons, unless a girl speaks fairly fluent English or Spanish, there is no way I will ever date her because there is no way I will ever be able to communicate with her (in the short term, I figure retaining my Spanish is enough of a challenge that a third language is completely out).

Honestly, though, most of the things that I'm looking for in a girl are things that I could probably find in any culture. I'm far more likely to lose interest in a girl because of something I see in her character than because of something in her cultural background. If there's anything that serving a foreign mission taught me, it's that human nature is the same everywhere. That is, there are a lot of variants within human nature, but no matter where you go, you'll see most or all of those variants. Culture skews but does not eliminate them.

Only slightly relevant trivia: I did some calculations this morning, and determined that there are probably only about 100 single active LDS girls within four years of my age in my entire state. And a friend of mine says that that's probably an overly high number. So the chances of me marrying a girl who grew up even in the same region of the United States as me are pretty slim. I have not the slightest idea what, if anything, that means.

[mic0]

Yayfulness, I like the way you said that and I agree.

[Digit]

My wife from the Philippines and her two sisters all married Americans and moved to America. Her three brothers all married Filipinas and still live there. But my mom got married to a Filipino who came here by dint of their marriage (my step-dad; mom and I are whiteys).

[Portia]

Why is this forum so active on Friday nights? Shouldn't we all be out there with our eminently compatible dates?