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Writer: Satinder Chohan
I Won't Marry White deals with young Asians who are looking for Asian spouses after years of dating white people. But some Asians like this Satinder Chohan let's us know that interracial relationships are the way to go.
I first cast wide-eyed infant eyes on a ravishing blonde, blue-eyed WASP Robert Redford in the classic love story The Way We Were in the late 1970s. In retrospect it was when I began to develop an unhealthy attraction to 'the White man’. Almost three decades on, my family heaves with cousins brandishing a lifetime subscription to the 'I Won't Marry White' brigade. Except that I'm one of those sad Asian bachelorettes, well past her marriage sell-by date, kicking my time-worn chappals to the sounds of my parents' clucking - and still braving it out in the minority 'I Won't Marry Asian' posse.
I remember the excitement of witnessing my first inter-racial family wedding during the late 1980s: Sikh style. Good turbaned Sikh boy (with PHD), married White Christian lady dressed in Indian red (also with PHD). The congregation was delighted that an 'outsider' had chosen to join our exclusive ranks. However, the radical alternative of Asian female/White male couplings in the extended family has not been so enthusiastically received. In a begrudging traditional Sikh ceremony, the first of these recent marital unions between Asian girl and White boy seemed more like a wake than a wedding. In the second, a sole family member attended the ostracized bride's wedding.
I've often wondered how much easier it would be to submit to a glorious Punjabi Sikh wedding with a man who shares my identity credentials. I would get to wear an exquisite hand-embroidered lengha, drip with gold, my aunts would finally stop nagging and the parents would be ecstatic. I'd also have a partner with whom I could share a unique cultural shorthand, without the circular dialogue of always having to explain why I think this way, behave that way and why I don't see the world in a strictly Western way.
But. I. Just. Can't. Do. It.
The problem is that I'm just not attracted to Asian men. Marrying an Asian would be like…..marrying my brother. There is something faintly familial about it – something tunnel-vision, claustrophobic, incestuous even. I have nothing, however, against same-race relationships for others and would be the first to be strutting my bhangra stuff with the best of them at a same-race Asian wedding. For me, being in an inter-racial relationship entails an instinctive love of difference and the challenge of trying to make the quantum leap through a loving relationship into someone else's culture, as they make a reciprocal leap into my own.
Same-race relationships exist in a comfort zone, formed as they are on a bedrock of mutual identity and experience and usually, the support of family and friends. (Of course, these relationships will encounter the same fundamental problems that will plague any partnership). Tougher to negotiate, inter-racial relationships represent a greater challenge in the realm of relationships.
To marry and commit to someone of a different racial and cultural background is to confront the grand complexity of what it means to love and to be human – in all its social, cultural, political, emotional, sexual and spiritual extremes. Partners must confront sharply different values, attitudes and perspectives, deeply held prejudices, beliefs and opinions, by unravelling their own. But in forming an inter-racial union, they transcend the parameters of same-race relationships. They will cross colour lines to walk into an outward looking space, where the greatest joy is to experience love and life intimately through someone else's cultural lens.
Yes, there are glaring cultural misunderstandings and painful miscommunications between inter-racial partners. Additional problems involve prejudiced family and friends who are unable to cross the colour, cultural or empathetic divide. For example, how often do we hear about the need to 'marry one's own'? But the rewards of battling through these seemingly insurmountable obstacles resonate far beyond just the relationship - a committed inter-racial relationship also represents a triumph for a progressive society that has raised the colour and culture bar.
21st century British society is still coming to multicultural terms with rainbow-coloured combinations. Concerns about loss of racial purity and cultural preservation by marrying outsiders exist as strongly in Asian society as they do in White society. Most Asian parents dread their sons - and especially daughters - rocking up to ask mumiji or dadiji if they can marry a White or Black partner. The parents worry about the loss of tradition and culture, flimsy Western values, the weaker commitment they perceive in non-Asians, the constant threat of divorce, the emphasis on 'coupledom' at the expense of family and community….the list goes on. But I've met several non-Asian men who take more of a respectful interest in Asian culture than some Asian boys, who disrespectfully take their culture for granted and don't end up preserving very much at all.
Rather than forcing partners to compromise or negate who they are and where they come from, inter-racial relationships can serve to reinforce own strong sense of identity through exposure to a partner's different race and culture. Mainstream Britain has clearly benefited from a multicultural makeover at the hands of Black and Asian immigrants. Perhaps some elements of Asian culture need to be exposed to the 'outside' before some of its clearly outdated aspects such as the package of same-religion, same-caste, same-culture marital arrangements, can be revamped on the 'inside'.
It takes two extraordinarily brave souls to take a quantum leap where others fear, will not dare or care not to tread. Princess Di and Dodi Fayed were one of the most high profile inter-racial couples of recent time. With her penchant for Muslim men, drawn by her fascination with Islam and Pakistani culture, Diana stood poised to drag the stuffy House of Windsor from its tribal exclusiveness into the culture-clashing modern age. How exciting and provocative Dodi and Di seemed when compared to the utter same-race blandness of other couples in the public eye today.
Many inter-racial relationships crack under the unrelenting pressures of cultural incompatibility, miscommunication, guilt, family and community pressures. Sometimes, maybe love is not enough. The trying however may take some time or a lifetime. Committed inter-racial relationships express a desire for a symbiotic union that shows just how far people and society can progress beyond ignorance, prejudice and racism.
Like their inter-racial parents, the next mixed race generation holds out new hope. They are breaking out of the mono-cultural strait jacket to unify different races and cultures. Ultimately though, their journey may not be an easy one. But like their parents, they are the ones to bridge the searing racial and cultural divides that may otherwise scar this potentially great, model nation.