Mothering Forum banner

interracial havens

3K views 32 replies 21 participants last post by  VanessaS 
#1 ·
Okay, I had a weird/strange experience about 2 weeks ago. The weather was warm and sunny so we all decided to go to the zoo in downtown Washington D.C. We were walking around, admiring the animals, checking out the plants (I'm planning my new garden and obsessed with trees right now), etc. Then this white American couple walked past me and I turned and STARED. I was completely rude about it
and I asked myself: why am I staring at them? Then I realized: I'd been walking around for hours and almost every couple I had seen had been interracial. D.C. is... unusual sometimes.

I've seen posts on this forum about people having difficulty because they are in an interracial or otherwise multicultural relationship and I have a different question:

Anybody live somewhere where they DON'T have that problem? My DH's work is like the United Nations.
My DH set up a double-date with a colleague and his wife and I tentatively asked him if he'd told his colleague that I was black and he just gave me a blank stare "Huh?" (my DH is truly color-blind and tends to forget that not everybody else is). Well, we met up with them. My white DH, his white coworker, myself, and his coworker's Persian wife.

When we first moved into our house I thought: uh-oh. I hope we don't have problems with the neighbors. The second day we were there our next-door neighbors came over. Our white neighbor and his black wife.
I couldn't believe it! There's only 3% minorities in this city. How did we end up next door to each other?

I heard San Francisco is like that. I lived in Central Texas before and felt welcome there. And I was well-accepted in Europe, as well, except for the whole "trophy-factor".

I can honestly say that being an interracial couple has never had an impact on our lives. Which I find rather strange since I've been on the lookout for racism my whole life. I keep expecting someone to do or say something negative about us but... nothing. No comments, actions, looks, behaviour,... nothing.
 
See less See more
4
#27 ·
Alaska has TONS of multiethnic families.. and we have some that you probably wouldn't find elsewhere like Alaskan Native/Filipino, Alaskan Native/AA, Alaskan Native/Hispanic, Samoan/Alaskan Native, etc..

My kids are Alaskan Native/Filipino/white (well, depending on the kid specifically)..
Mixed families are VERY common here..

In my own block of town there are 12 homes.. 1 Filipino, 2 white, 1 AA, 1 Samoan, 1 Russian, and the other 6 are Hispanic families- Mexican, Dominican, Guatemalan, specifically.

There are only a few families in AK from Darfur and Sudan as of yet, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rredhead View Post
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. We're the only white couple on the block. We have neighbors who are Arab, Peruvian, Phillipino, Indian, Black... you get the idea.
I have NEVER seen Filipino spelled this way before.
 
#28 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Pinoikoi View Post

I have NEVER seen Filipino spelled this way before.
From what I understand there is a cultural movement to spell it that way because there is no "F" in Tagalog (thus the name of the people is reflective of colonialism). At least this is what my students told me last year (also in the Bay Area btw).

Carry on...
 
#29 ·
Although I am single, I did have an Asian girlfriend back in college. We lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and there were a few stares because we were an unusal mixed race couple (I'm AA) but other than that we have recieve no hostile remarks.

Now I live in Atlanta and mixed-race couples are normal here. No one even bats an eye in most areas. Most of them are black men with white women but other types of mixed race couples certainly do exist.
 
#30 ·
Chalk another up for Bay Area (East bay specifically), I can't honestly recall the last time I saw a "standard" white couple, around here most of the couples either seem to be interracial (including my wife and I), or homosexual.

With regard to the spelling of Filipino, I'd always assumed it was Ph not F, but that's probably because it's the Phillipines, not the Fillipines.
 
#31 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by FatherTryingToHelp View Post
With regard to the spelling of Filipino, I'd always assumed it was Ph not F, but that's probably because it's the Phillipines, not the Fillipines.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chamomile Girl View Post
From what I understand there is a cultural movement to spell it that way because there is no "F" in Tagalog (thus the name of the people is reflective of colonialism). At least this is what my students told me last year (also in the Bay Area btw).

Carry on...
yes, but in Tagalog, the F sound and the P sound are very similar linguistically. It appears and can be confusing when listening to people that speak Tagalog as a first language speaking English. For example, my dp often says "fencil" for pencil... just as in with Japanese speakers the R sound is sometimes switched with the L sound.. I don't think I am explaining this very well but the actual "sound" in Tagalog is sort of BETWEEN an English P and F, so in English the speaker will sometimes go back and forth between the two English letters.. so I guess if someone were to reject the "colonialist" spelling, the better choice would be something like Pilipino, wouldn't it?

When dp told me he was going to build the kids a port in the backyard, I nearly fell down in a giggling fit.. it wasn't so much the word switch but the seriousness he used when he described what his port was going to look like.. and no, we do not live with a waterway in our backyard.


BTW: it isn't "Phillipines".. it's Philippines.
 
#32 ·
We are a multiracial family living in NW FL. It is not very diverse here. I am noticing a few more multi-racial, AA and Latin kids, but our multi-racial kids do stand out as being just a few of the local kids who aren't blonde-haired and blue eyed. We haven't run into any problems, except some tense feelings after the elections in Nov.

DH has had some problems recently with racist remarks from people within his career field here. He's a singer-songwriter and has run into some jams.
 
#33 ·
Quote:
When dp told me he was going to build the kids a port in the backyard, I nearly fell down in a giggling fit.. it wasn't so much the word switch but the seriousness he used when he described what his port was going to look like.. and no, we do not live with a waterway in our backyard.
Okay. I had to giggle at this. In German there's less problems with enunciation than with word choice. The vocabulary is so similar but... not quite. A few weeks ago my DH told me that they had an enunciation (announcement) about the new planning (schedule) that they'd been working on since (for) 6 months now.
Soooo close!
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top