Sardonic Sistah Says

When I told my friend Reesie that I was dating a Korean man she was a bit leery about it.

“Has he introduced you to his family?” she asked.  “Do they accept you?”

Yeah, we’re cool, I told her.  It helped that his family was white, I’m sure.  She was happy for me, but sad at the same time.  My story would be different from hers for which she was glad for me but sad for herself.

Reesie is a small five foot three inches chocolate brown black woman, about a size 2.  She has curly dark reddish brown hair and small features.  Most people find her attractive.  She met Kwan while she was out one night at a bar with some friends.  He flirted; she flirted back.  They exchanged numbers and began to date.  He was an engineer at a local company and she was still trying to figure out what an English degree was good for.  They both wanted to go to grad school, they both wanted kids, they both had the same values and morals.

“I’m going to marry him,” she told me after a month of seeing him. 

“Isn’t that rather soon?” I asked.  “It’s only been a few weeks–”

No, she didn’t believe it was too soon.  When you know, you know.  She dropped a few hints but he was slow on the pick-up until finally she spelled it out for him that if he wanted her to stick around he needed to make it permanent. 

“He never even told his family about her,” my friend Lynn told me years later.  Lynn told me Reesie would come into work lamenting how Kwan was hesitant to introduce her to his parents who lived in another city. 

“She told me he wanted her to meet his parents,” I said.  I had asked her during month five, when Kwan still hadn’t proposed anything to her except a trip to the Virgin Islands, his treat.  She was still thinking of marriage and when I asked if she had met his folks she said she wasn’t worried about it and Kwan would introduce her to them if she really wanted to meet them.  She wasn’t worried about that now, she said. 

Being introduced to the parents is the litmus test for many interracial couples, but it can be hairier when the couple is an Asian/Black couple.  In the interracial world such unions are a rare occurance and for black women and Asian men it’s smaller than that. In a SFGate article, writer Jeff Wang cites recent statistics that show the AM/BF combination to be  0.01 percent of all interracial marriages across the country.

There are many reasons for the low rate in coupling between the two groups.  Lack of attraction between AfAms and AsAms is the biggest reason, although the interest may be slightly higher for black females if any of the online groups are an indication.

Black member of Azn Lover Alicia Powell told Jeff Yang: “I think Asian men are brainwashed to want white women. And it’s too bad, because I’m attracted to Asian men, and I think black female / Asian male couples are beautiful. It’s messed up that many Asian American men dismiss women of other races. But they see stereotypes of black women in the media, and they see white women depicted as glamorous, so that’s what they think is right for them.”

For the few Asians who have decided to go black many cite problems with family acceptance.      According to a lighthearted on Asian-Nation if given a choice of mates for their children (an Asian gangter, a Caucasian, a black person, a gay person or a sloppy dresser) the black person would always be the worst choice.  “To them, dark skin=BAD while light skin=GOOD,” reasoned H. Tse, the quiz’s creator. “Therefore, according to this absurd reasoning, a Black person is the worst possible date. “

In many Asian/Black online communities both Asian men and women complain about becoming pariahs in their families because of their choice of mates, saying that the families have threatened to disown them if they didn’t drop their significant others.  In the Asian Men Who Love Black Women group two Asian males confessed that they stopped seeing the black women they were dating because their of their family, with one guy who ended up marrying a white female.  Some black/Asian couples have not only worried about being ostracized but have encountered threats of violence from Asian families when the families find out about black partners.

No story better illustrates that than the current news headline of Sparkle Reid Rai.  Sparkle met her husband Rajeev (Ricky) Rai when he hired her to work at the family hotel that he managed.  They fell in love, had a child and then married against his parents wishes.  Before the marriage he told his young bride and her family that his parents had died.  A family member of Sparkle’s found out that his parents were still living and called his parents told them about the wedding.  Sparkle’s parents confronted them with the news.

“We said, ‘Rick, isn’t there something you want to tell us about your parents being alive,’ ” said Donna Lowry, Sparkle’s stepmother and a reporter with WXIA-TV. “‘ Someone talked to your mom earlier today.’  He continued to deny it. We continued to press him and he finally admitted that his parents were still alive.”

On 26 April 2000, Ricky came home from work to find his wife stabbed to death.  After years of being filed as a cold case new evidence turned up that Ricky’s father, Chiman Rai, allegedly paid 10,000 for hitmen to kill his unapproved daughter-in-law.  It was said that the elder Rai, former math teacher at an HBCU located in Mississippi, disapproved because his daughter wasn’t Indian. 

A witness to the murder said that everything happened so fast that Sparkle didn’t have a chance to process it.  “She was gagging and blood started coming out of her mouth,” the witness said, noting that Sparkle reached out for her daughter as she was being murdered.

After Sparkle’s death, Ricky gave up custody of his daughter Analla to his in-laws.  He completed his degree in business at Northwestern University and is re-married to an Indian woman.

But back to my friend, Reesie.

After nearly a year and a half of dating, Kwan announced his intention to attend school in another state but he didn’t want to take her with him.  He loved her, he said, but he just couldn’t see how it could work out.  In trying to extricate himself as smoothly as he could from the relationship he offered her a couple of thousand dollars but no hint of his new phone number or address.

Reesie was furious.

“I should call the university and tell them he has a drug problem,” she fumed.  “I should call his parents and tell them about what he’s been up to.”

“Does he have a drug problem?” I asked.

“Yes, he does,” she said, although I highly doubted it.  If he had a serious drug problem she never would have stayed with him.   “Don’t make any phone call,” I said.  “You’re better than that.  If he’s not strong enough to defy his parents, then it’s not meant to be.  Just let him go.”

Slowly, she agreed I was right.  Then we wondered what she should do with the money.  Perhaps take a trip to Europe, Italy maybe, where it is rumored the Italian men love black women and no disapproving parents stand in the way.