r-R-Racism!

I openly admit my blog is more of a e-diary of my journey to be a creative writer.  There will be times entries are personal like the first few I've posted and, there will be others... personal public service announcements that are too important to point a blind eye toward.

Check it.  We live in a racist country.  We eat, breathe, read, and breed racism.  We are also hypocritical racists, pointing the finger at other racists for their racism without looking inward at our own racism.
Any dictionary defines racism as, "the belief that some races of people are better than others."  Slavery, The Civil Rights movement, President Obama's re-election campaign are only a few of the many blatant historical events expressing America's issue with race.  As bothersome as these events have been for America as a nation, there is one event, reoccurring and thought provoking that could change our outlook on race relations and, how those relations feed the vehicle of racism.  That event, my friends is love.
There is a scene is Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever" where a group of black wives sit together talking about the idiosyncratic reality of black men being interested in white women.  Dating white women.  Having sex with white women.  Being seen out in public with white women.  Watching this scene as a teenager I scoffed at what seemed to me to be pedantic and antiquated notions of what is considered normal in what races should love and marry.  Then I met my husband, and was thrown into the conversation.

In 2005 while on a student exchange in Preston, England, I met Michael Courtney, half Brit, half Irish and all white.  Our mutual attraction led to a relationship.  In early December of that year, Michael's all Brit and white friends came to visit for a day and met me, a Connecticut born, almond skin toned Boricua of Potorro and Nuyorican parents.  It wasn't surprising to me his friends naturally assumed I was black as a lot of blacks in the UK looked like me, either children of black, or black and white parents.  It was however refreshing that after correcting their assumption, I was immediately integrated into their fold of friends.
While we lived in the UK, Michael and I were freely void of strange looks and incoherent comments in reaction to our interracial coupling.  Michael's parents took me into the family and finished raising me as one of their own when I had no place to live after a student housing setup went kaput.  There was nothing out of the ordinary in terms of our experience as a couple.
Then, we moved to America.
Being back in my home nation, in my home town, I felt confident Michael and I would galavant the streets of New Haven holding hands, kissing and having fun with each other just as we did in the UK.  But, I was wrong.  Whenever we walked the stretch of Whalley Avenue that is predominantly black, we would hear things like, "git it girl," "what?!," "oh no," and my personal favorite, "assholes."  Clearly, our bubble was popped.

Michael and I aren't the only interracial couple to come under the glaring eye and ignorant voice of people who just don't get love does not discriminate.  On January 4th, a Georgia couple were in the news after complaining to a restaurant whose valet had racially insulted them on a ticket left on their car key with the slur, "jungle fever."  The couple who are black and white were offended and made an example of the black valet when they asked the fellow be fired and won.  But the media portrayal led me and other readers to assume the valet was white, thus prolonging the black versus white issue.

Going back to the scene in "Jungle Fever," a film about a black man who takes on an extramarital relationship with a white woman, I may have scoffed at the notions being discussed as a teen, but now as a woman I understand.  My history classes were littered with lessons on discrimination and racism in our evolution as a people. What wasn't really discussed in depth were the forced interracial relations between slaves and slave masters.  Being a mulatto carried a stigma in the era of slavery.  As the years rolled forward, it was illegal for a black person and a white person to be in a relationship and, those who did were caught and jailed.  Remember Mr. and Mrs. Loving?

Today as we live in America under a democratic administration headed by a black president, can't we begin to take a look at how and who we love without being weighed down by the stigma of ignorance?  I'm not just talking about couplings between men and women either.

As Hollywood films portray, almost all romances begin and end happily even if the somewhere in the middle gets rocky.  Jungle Fever ended with the separation of the black man and white woman.  But, what if it didn't?  What if the black man divorced his black wife and moved in with his white girlfriend?  What if the black man's child learned to live with the strength of her mother and father being happy living and loving how they please?  What if the film itself was enhanced under the microscope so that viewers could see that even in the black culture of the film the darker black men were married or coupled with lighter hued black women?  Isn't it crazy how these questions are making you think?  Or, is it crazier that we haven't already been asking ourselves, and each other these questions?

Of all the stigmas that plague our country, racism is one that can be heavily modified if not eradicated, only if people start thinking and acting differently.  As a Puerto Rican, I don't have the public historical account of the enslavement of my ancestors with forced interracial relations, and further embattled eras of acceptance and equality.  That could be because historians haven't gotten to it, but I think they are already burdened with the black/white relation struggles on the mainland.  Their burden is helped by the media and its continuous ignorant discussion about race relations like the recent discovery that the Romney family have a black addition.  Films and TV shows don't help historians either even if the plots include racial integration.  There is always a character that serves as the voice of the nation, the black maid and white family friends in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," the relationship between Archie Bunker and George Jefferson, even the very present couplings in "The Cosby Show."  Who else saw that the kids raised in the mid 1980s thru to the early 1990s all had boyfriends, girlfriends and, husbands and wives who were all black?

Loaded to the brim with questions and hints as to how the r-r-racist views of our country could be changed it should make you wonder, how long is too long before we are comfortable with the color of our skin?