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Rut Setio Nastiti

EN 112

Dr. Geisweidt

4/12/2012

Interracial Relationship

Study Case of Asian women and White men:

Does the good outweigh the bad?

Research has shown a number of couples who are involved in interracial relationships

have increased. This might indicate that society is more open to differences, than it was for the

past three decades. The level of interracial relationship varies; interracial marriage is the

strongest form and other such as, interracial dating which can be more casual. The two kinds of

form however are still considered as minority relationships. It is not only because people are

afraid of public opinion or stigmas, but interracial relationship is not motivated or promoted.

Taking into account, in some Asian countries, interracial relationships are not often encouraged

by most Asian parents, especially for women. They would be happier if their daughters marry

within their race who shares the same norms, cultures, and or traditions. It is not because Asian

parents are not open-minded; some of them are moderate in other aspect such as education,

since statistic shows more of Asian women earned higher degree. Asian parents perceive

people from different racial background who are often considered as “Westerner” or “Western

People” as having a different set of values about families, marriage, even the most fundamental

principle such as faith. These cultural differences could be challenging for the couples since

interracial relationship between Asian women and White men is still partially being

stigmatized; however interracial relationship could potentially bring betterment for couples,

children of interracial couples and the society.

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Asians are well-known for their long-preserved traditions, family values, obedience,

and other cultural sensibilities. Some of the cultures are really unique in Asian families and to

other people from other races. For example the most distinguished one among the Asians is

younger people are obligated to refer to older people as aunty and uncle not by first names and

younger family members are encouraged to serve tea to or cherish the older family members .

According to an article by Rachel L. Swarns in the New York Times, “interracial marriages

rates are at an all-time high in the United States. (1)” Nevertheless, Asian-Americans are

rearing that trend; increasingly they choose to date or marry among their community. Chau Le,

33, a Vietnamese-American Boston lawyer who received her degree at Oxford University said

her parents had “given up a hope” that she would marry a Vietnamese man, She said her dating

statistic never indicated that she would end up marrying an Asian man. However, somewhere

along the way Le thought that she needed someone who is “slightly more attuned to her

cultural sensibilities”(3). Swarns says most of the Asians know instinctively that he or she

should not kiss his or her significant other in front of their parents. This applies to many of the

Asians from different national backgrounds. For example even though Le’s fiancé, Neil

Vaishnav, 31, is Indian-American, he knows that he should not kiss Le in front of her parents.

This norm is also observed in India and some other Asian countries.

Cultural sensibilities are even bigger concerns for the parents than for the children,

since some of the parents have not really been exposed to a diverse environment, they tend to

be around their comfort zone, or they choose to stay true to what they believe as the norm.

Cultural sensibility becomes a concern for them because among some Asian or Asian-

American families, parents might live with their children someday. Asian families have a deep

family tradition, norms, and values that emphasize the importance of older people or parents

which can be found as strange for other cultures such as American or European.

Another reason why interracial marriage is not popular or favored among Asian parents

or families historically has a strong relationship with the period of colonization by European

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countries or United States to South East or East Asian countries; which is the concept of

orientalism. The concept of orientalism was really popular because historically it was common

that the soldiers of colonizer countries used Asian women to fulfill their sexual desire.

Additionally, most people stigmatize Asian woman who married White man as a mean to raise

her socioeconomic status. Therefore, Asian parents see interracial relationship as degradation

for the Asian women’s dignity.

Edward Said author of Orientalism in his book claims that the relationship between the

West and the East is “a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex

hegemony” (57). Said defines orientalism as “the generic term that [he has] been employing to

describe the Western approach to the Orient; Orientalism is the discipline by which the Orient

was (and is) approached systematically, as a topic of learning, discovery, and practice” (73).

This is systematical notion has been perceived by many Asian parents and therefore this is the

way they think about the West.

Dr. Bitna Kim, a professor of criminology in Indiana University of Pennsylvania who

examined Orientalism said, “Orientalism is not from the Orient, but from the Occident. It is

not for Orient, but for Occident to define Occident and to situate the West as a superior culture

to the East.” Said states in his book that “orientalism is not a European fantasy about the

Orient, but a theory created by Europeans for centuries for their own political, economic,

religious, and imperial interests and goods” (43). This explanation is supported by Said’s

theory that “the Orient was transubstantiated from resistant hostility into obliging, and

submissive, partnership” (92). Literally this conception can be interpreted as a failure of the

Western people to see the authentic characteristics of the Eastern (Asians).

The West characterized for granted and indoctrinated to the Eastern that they are

superior. This also implies a false self-valued that the Eastern is inferior than the Western and

vice versa. This false conception is the attitude that most of the Asian parents (who might have

experienced the beginning of post-World War II) take to prevent their children’s as being

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dishonored, especially if the family comes from a respectable educational or socioeconomic

background. However, both Said and Kim agree that orientalism is a collective false

assumption based on the colonial mentality of the West. Said said “these false and

romanticized images of the East had served as an implicit justification for the West’s colonial

and imperial ambitions. Therefore, orientalism is distorted knowledge.”(80). However, in

nowadays life, orientalism is not a common concept that is usually used to describe a

relationship between an Asian women and a western man.

The concept of orientalism has somewhat transformed or become more popular as

fetishism in the 20th century. According to Martin P. Kafka’s DSM III-R (Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) fetishism is “typically operationally

described as persistent preferential sexual arousal in association with non-living objects, an

over-inclusive focus on (typically non-sexual) body parts (e.g., feet, hands) and body

secretions” (1). In an article written by Rachel L. Swarns for the New York Times who

featured a Taiwanese-American woman, Ann Liu, 33, who lives in San Francisco and who

always dated white guys, but now is married to a Filipino-American engineer said she had

developed increasingly uncomfortable with dating white men who dated only Asian-American

women. Liu said , “It’s like they have an Asian fetish. I felt I was more like this ‘concept’.

They could not really understand me as a person completely. (4)”

According to research done by Dr. Bitna Kim who conducted five email and five face-

to-face interviews with Caucasian men who dated, are dating, are seeking to date, or married to

Asian women gave answers that hinted that based on their experiences, Asian women are

acquiescent. Apart from the negative stereotypes, some of them mentioned that many Asian

women held positive stereotypes; “intelligent, educated, successful, family-oriented, and

beautiful” (7). Kim argues that the answers that were given are examples of generalization that

comes from not only limited experiences, but also limited level of education. One of the

correspondents said that “people who use the term Asian fetish are trying to dissuade Asian

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women from dating non-Asian men; there are a lot of Asian men who are controlling, jealous,

and insecure from which this Asian fetish notion can be attributed to” (6).

This assumption is relevant with a research done by a group of graduate students from

Columbia University, University of Chicago, and Stanford University which discovered that

“for male partners [the] finding is that Asians [males] generally receive lower ratings than men

of other races. When the regressions [was run] separately for each race, [it was found] that

even Asian women find white, black, and Hispanic men to be more attractive than Asian men.

Given that Asian men were the group that other races expressed strongest preference against,

and that Asian women expressed the least preference against other races” (8). However,

critiques is found toward the research since, it does not reflect the whole trend in the USA,

since more than half of the participants (63%) are White, and the rest were divided between

Asian, Hispanic and Black. Nevertheless, it can be interpreted that Asian men have less

chances to date women outside their race.

The misconception and generalization are two of many reasons why interracial

relationships are still a minority. Another reason is the challenges that might arise from

interracial relationship are rather more complicated than people who date within their race.

Lee S. Shulman and W. Andrew Collins who are notable educational psychologists from

Stanford University claim that “families and friends appear as the most salient groups that

influence individuals when choosing a romantic partner. (125)” This might be even true for

most Asian women since the relationship between them and their family members is so strong

and intimate. Datzman and Garderner report similar findings from 19 in-depth qualitative

interviews which show “families may mirror the rejection received by the larger society and

impose restrictions if their members disagree with the relationship” (16). This is the first

challenge for Asian women when they start a new relationship out of their race; to get

acceptance from the family members. However, this acceptance varies between families and

their environment.

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As the status of the interracial relationship gets more robust, the challenge that has to

be overcome gets more complicated. The difficulty that might arise from the outcome of

interracial marriage, which is the strongest form of a relationship, is the identification of

interracial couple‘s children’s race. This sometimes can lead to confusion. In many cases, races

were considered to be mutually exclusive; therefore children of intermarried couples had to

choose one race over the other. Mary C. Waters says “whites of various European ethnic

backgrounds usually have weak ethnic attachment and have options to identify their ethnic

identity” (318). However, Saenz argues that “racial identification of children with one Asian

parent is not random and depends on parents’ socioeconomic status and [the] demographic

characteristics” (179). Therefore, when white of various European ethnic an Asian, there are

many factors that can determine the children’s ethnic identity.

Saenz argues that “Asian-American and white couples are more likely to identify their

children as ethnic Asian if the father is an Asian-American than if the mother is an Asian-

American” (186). It can be derived that fathers play an important role in deciding the race of

their children. However, it has been suggested by Dr. Hart Nelson Professor of Sociology in

Pennsylvania State University that mothers are the most important in transferring or handing

down culture since they generally spend a more significant amount of time with the children

compared to the fathers (126). However, both parents play the most crucial role in the

transmission of culture and the development of the ethnic identification of children (Waters,

318). Therefore the identification of children’s ethnicity can be determined depending on the

parenting styles of the family.

Even though parents play an important role to determine the racial identification of

their children; the children also have the option to determine their ethnicity. According to

Salgado de Synder et al “one of the factors that is most closely associated with ethnic identity

is the degree to which the child is exposed to the culture of the minority parent”(280). He also

claims that language maintenance is crucial in the development of ethnic identity. To support

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Salgado’s view on this, Saenz finds that “children who speak a language other than English at

home tend to be significantly less likely to have an Anglo ethnic identity compared to those

who speak English at home”(186). Additionally Saenz claims “children of [interracial

couples] who live with ethnic members with many fellow ethnics tend to find supportive

mechanism, such as ethnic networks and institution [that] allow them to readily maintain their

ethnicity” (180). The environment also plays an important role for children of interracial

couples to preserve their ethnic identity.

A good maintenance in language of mixed-race children would bring benefits to the

children. “Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on

your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against

dementia in old age” (1) said Yudhit Bhattacharjee in his article for the New York Times. This

is not just a practical skill that is needed in a globalized world. Bhattacharjee said “Many

researchers, educators, and policy makers long considered a second language to be an

interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual

development” (1).

Bhattacharjee who has written stories on different topics related to research and policy

in neuroscience, claims being bilingual improve the brain’s executive function. The purpose of

executive function is to direct the attention processes for planning, solving problems, and

performing mentally demanding tasks (Bhattacharjee, 2). Especially in the case of Asian

women and White men, since each country in Asia and Europe has its own distinguished

language (taking into account English is native to people in the United Kingdom and United

States). If the children of interracial couple would be raised in bilingual environment, they will

have these advantages over monolingual children. These advantages include “ignoring

distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another, and

holding information in mind” (Bhattacharjee, 2).

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Even though environmentally there are a number of challenges that arise from being

interracial children, biologically interracial children could potentially have the “hybrid vigor”

genes. According to an article in Channel 4 Race and Science, “animals and plants born to

genetically dissimilar parents often exhibit ‘hybrid vigor’. [therefore they will be] having

higher growth rates and greater resistance to disease” (2). Hence, some scientists think it is

possible that mixed race children gain a noticeable genetic advantage and show a degree of

hybrid vigor.

The article compares inbreeding and outbreeding in animals and plants. Inbreeding,

where the parents are closely related, tends to produce very unfit offspring. In contrast,

outbreeding, or being unrelated, can lead to hybrid vigor. In addition, “marrying an extremely

unrelated partner should be good for the same reason; the number of genes in [interracial

couple’s] children that are identical by descent is reduced, and with it the chance that a gene

has two broken copies” (Channel 4 Race and Science,3). This means it is possible that the

outcome of offspring creates a unique feature, for example black hair with blue eyes or

brunette hair with darker skin. The article has somehow suggests a hidden message to deliver

the false assumption that it is biologically hazardous or harmful to out marry different race,

since race is not something genetic but social.

Regardless of the social boundaries or challenges for the interracial couples, interracial

marriage can be seen from its socioeconomic perspectives. A combination of an Asian and

White spouse has the highest combined median income. The common trend elicits that

newlyweds who are interracial have better income than single-race newlyweds, when it is

combined (with Asian-Asian as exception in the third highest). Asian groom and White bride

make the most income, while White groom and Asian bride are in the second place with only $

848 difference (Pew Research, 6). The false assumption or prejudice that has been put towards

Asian women who married White men for the sake of raising their economic status is not

adequate and is an example of stereotypes in the society. The result can also be interpreted that

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interracial marriage could potentially bring a better financial situation for their family, which in

the long term will be beneficial for their children.

Pew Research Center also finds out that “when it comes to education, white newlyweds

who married Asians are more educated than whites, blacks, or Hispanic (…) Also, about six-

in-ten Asian newlyweds who married white are college educated” (6). Therefore, when an

Asian woman chooses to marry a White man, it should not be seen as a degradation of Asian

women’s values; since most of them are educated and financially proficient. Along with it,

White man who chooses to marry Asian women should not be considered as having fetish,

especially in a country with a high diversity such as United States. From the research, a pattern

is also seen that newlyweds who out-marry from other races, such as Hispanics and Blacks, are

also more likely to be more college-educated than those who married within their group.

Therefore it can be understood that people who out-marry are likely to be more open-minded,

unprejudiced or more tolerant, since the interracial marriage will cause a lot of barriers for the

couples to overcome in society. Interracial couples show willingness to learn new cultures, to

understand differences, and to overcome the challenges.

Saenz et al state “assimilation does not necessarily indicate the loss of their minority

identities. In contrast, their racial awareness may heighten because of their direct contact and

competition with mainstream society,” (176). A heighten in racial awareness could also create

a unique race for example Amerasian or Eurasian which makes children of interracial couple

feel less excluded. Interracial marriage can potentially change the historical characteristic of

the mutual-exclusiveness of race. Therefore children of interracial couples can normally

identify themselves as multi-racial with more acceptances and less stigma from the society.

Saenz et al argues when minorities marry [W]hites, they become assimilated into the majority

of American economic, political, and family life (191).

Saenz claims “intermarriage has traditionally represented one of the most accurate

indicators of assimilation” (176). He also argues that “for the minority-group individuals, the

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choice of a spouse from the majority group suggest that structural and interpersonal barrier

inhibiting interaction between minority and majority groups have been reduced significantly.”

These two perspectives are supported by the Pew Research Center’s survey that shows

intermarriage has become more common. Only 11% Americans say interracial marriages

worsen the society, however 43% Americans say that more people of different races marrying

each other has been a change for a better in society (7). Forty-four percent Americans think

there is no difference in any kind of marriage. The three different perspectives show that public

attitude has become more tolerant towards interracial relationships.

Interracial relationships should not be defamed by the society. Biologically, it has been

demonstrated that assimilation of two different races brings no harm for the society. However,

the way how society sees assimilation is usually the reason for the problems that arise for the

couples and their children. Stereotypes should also be put aside about interracial

relationships, especially in this case between Asian women and White men. When interracial

relationships are seen thoroughly, there are many potential enhancements that could potentially

yield a better quality of life.

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Work Cited

Bhattacharjee, Yudhit. “Why Bilinguals are Smarter?” The New York Times. March 17,

2012. Web. Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-

benefits-of-bilingualism.html>. Print

Channel Four Television Corporation. “Is it Better to be Mixed Race?”. Science's Last

Taboo. Channel Four Television Corporation. 2009.

Collins, W. A. Relationships and development: Family adaptation to individual

change. In S. Shulman (Ed.), Close relationships and socioemotional development

(pp. 128–154). New York: Ablex. 1995

Datzman, Jeanine, and Carol Brooks Gardner. 2000. ‘‘‘In My Mind, We Are All Humans’:

Notes on the Public Management of Black-White Interracial Romantic

Relationships.’’Marriage and Family Review 30(1–2):5–24. 2000.

Fisman, Raymond, Sheena S. Iyengar, Emir Kamenica, and Itamar Simonson. "Racial

Preferences in Dating." Review of Economic Studies 75.1 (2008): 117-32. Print.

Kafka, Martin P. The DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Fetishism: Original Paper. American

Psychiatric Association. 2009

Kim, Bitna. "Asian Female And Caucasian Male Couples: Exploring The Attraction."

Pastoral Psychology 60.2 (2011): 233-244. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Apr.

2012

Nelsen, Hart M. “The Religious Identification of Children of Interfaith Marriages”. Review of

Religious Research 32 (2): 122-134. 1995.

Qian, Zhenchao. "Options: Racial/Ethnic Identification Of Children Of Intermarried

Couples." Social Science Quarterly (Blackwell Publishing Limited) 85.3 (2004):

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746-766. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Mar. 2012.

Saenz, Rogelio, Sean-Shong Hwang, Benigno E. Aguirre, and Robert N. Anderson.

‘‘Persistence and Change in Asian Identity Among Children of Intermarried Couples.’’

Sociological Perspectives 38:175–94 (1995). Web. 20 March 2011.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print.

Shulman, Shmuel, and W. Andrew Collins, eds. ‘‘Romantic Relationships in

Adolescence: Developmental Perspectives.’’ New Directions for Child Development

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Swarns, Rachel L. "For Asian-American Couples, a Tie That Binds." New York Times. 30

Mar. 2012. Web. 4 Apr. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/fashion/more-

asian-americans-marrying-within-their-race.html>. Print

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