No Skin Off My Back

It was a distinctive hiss. My ears, after years of cultural breeding, picked up the sound out of the din that was the street side traffic. My mother used to use the same hiss to get our attention from wherever she was in the house. Depending on the pitch and tone, the hiss had different messages. A staccato-like one was “Get over here. Now.” An elongated, elegant one said “I’m trying to get your attention.” The one you never wanted to hear was the low, menacing hiss that meant “You have done something wrong.”

That was the hiss I heard as Lenny and I walked down the street on a Saturday night many moons ago. As the sound hit my eardrum and registered in my brain, I instinctively turned towards the source. My eyes were met by the hard face of a young Asian man. I don’t recall exactly which variety of Asian, because the moment his eyes met mine, I knew exactly why he had hissed at me. I glared right back, tugged on Lenny’s hand, and picked up my pace. The change in demeanor did not go unnoticed by Lenny who was puzzled.

“What’s wrong?” I didn’t answer him. “Hey, what was THAT about?”

Glancing over my shoulder, I gave one more fleeting look at the boy on the corner. “He hissed at me.” Before he could ask again, I gave him the answer, “Because of you. Because you’re white.”

In the ten plus years we’ve been together, that incident was the one and only incident I can ever recall where being a bi-racial couple was ever a problem. I’m sure there were many other glances, stares, and unkind words…but we’ve never heard them. Being a mixed coupled has NEVER been a problem for either of us. Why? We’ve never made it an issue.

The statistics are rising. According to the Census Bureau, 3% of the American population (that’s 7 million people) consider themselves multi-racial. The March 14, 2005 UPI article entitled, “Interracial Marriage Gender Gap Grows,” touts that 18% of Asian wives have white husbands and 6% of African-American husbands are in an interracial marriage. With the numbers growing and the presence of interracial couples increasing in society, I constantly get asked the question, “How do you and Lenny do it?”

My response is usually, “What is there to do? We’re married. We’re together. We’re happy.”

I hate to disappoint people out there who were hoping for some worldly and exotic answer, but The Whites are just your average married couple. Instead of making race an issue, we’ve simply incorporated it into our lives much like we incorporated each other’s stuff into our first apartment. Lenny loves eating Filipino cuisine; I enjoy the Polish food we get every Christmas. My family is constantly teaching new Tagalog words to Lenny and his family told me “dupa” means “ass” in the little Polish they know (I know how to say “The grandmother has no underwear” too!).

The difference in culture isn’t a struggle. In Amanda Moras’ thesis entitled, “When Other Isn’t Enough: Challenging Hegemonic Racial Discourse on Interracial Intimacy and Multiracial Identities,” she adequately sums up one of the bigger problems I have with the attitude some bi-racial couples have about their relationship. While reading, it struck me how many times the couples told stories about how they felt uncomfortable with their partner when in the vicinity of people of their same culture. One guy even mentions that while it was okay to be with his girlfriend around friends his own age, when he was with the elders in his group, his normal affectionate self would disappear.

Now wait a minute. Isn’t a long term relationship, marriage, or life partnership about love? If you are that much in love with a person, the perception of others (regardless of their heritage) is negligible! Bad things happen in this world to everyone. But how you handle these things is key. In my own marriage, I don’t shy away from the fact that Lenny is Caucasian, nor do I show it off. I show off my husband to everyone because he’s a funny and fantastic guy. Never has it crossed my mind to let go of his hand or not kiss him in public.

But this is not to say that I downplay interracial couples who actually do have roadblocks in their relationship. Old habits die really hard. There are people out there who are willing break you down and hurt you because you’re in a bi-racial relationship. Old stereotypes and cultural walls are still strong influences in today’s society.

In the end though, like in other arenas of life, the color of your skin shouldn’t matter. If you make an issue about your own interracial coupledom, you’re feeding the problem that you so desperately rail against. Perhaps because we never even thought that being two different cultures was a problem, Lenny and I have had it easy. If you don’t invite danger into your house…it might never show up. When it does, we can’t pick at it like a skin irritation. If we chose to ignore, it will more than likely go away.