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I am a white American ex-pat from the urban Midwest, my wife is a black (mixed) American from rural Hawaii. For most of my life I have preferred dating women from other cultures and ethnicities; I don't get along with the passive aggressive culture that typifies most white folks in the Midwest. Also, I was raised overseas and so I became more used to women of color than the women of my own race. My wife and I have one child who somehow turned out whiter than both of us. She jokes that if she hasn't been conscious for the delivery she'd think our kid was misplaced at the hospital. One area where we disagree is how to treat our daughter's race on applications etc. I'm uncomfortable having my daughter benefit from affirmative action. My wife like to say that "black people didn't invent the One Drop rule and she isn't going to let white people change the rules now". I've decided not to fight it. There are very few cultural issues that separate us other than religion. My wife's parents are agnostics who rejected their parent's religions. Her father in particular has a lot of bad blood with the Baptists. I was raised in an extremely religious Methodist household before rejecting my parent's religion as a teenager. Even though we both believe basically the same things, we arrived at our beliefs from completely different places. I'm as strongly atheistic as my family is religious whereas my wife basically doesn't care. The only other major difference is that I'm a city boy and she's a country girl. Lots of values and assumptions get tied up in that.
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May 17, 2014 05:46
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 00:58 |
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Coolguye posted:I'm from Kansas City, and this struck me. Where, exactly, in the Midwest were you? I've got tons of family in Minnesota and have lived in both Nebraska (Lincoln/Omaha area) and Kansas City (Kansas side, but I work on the Missouri side). And one thing that I have very much learned about Midwestern people and complaints is that there is absolutely nothing passive about their aggressiveness. If someone's pissed at you around here and you don't know why, it's because your rear end was simply not paying attention, because they will tell you when they see you. Repeatedly. Often without prompting. Minnesota. It is gross generalization I am making, you are right, and generally applies mostly to Lutheran and Catholic families. But I still very much experience it. The larger point I was trying to make (and did a poor job of explaining) is that while I am an English speaking white guy, I am not "from around here". There are lots of little cues and cultural signifiers that white people take for granted that I didn't know. I grew up in ex pat communities made up of Brits and Aussies and American military brats surrounded by Muslims and Buddhists. When I moved back to the American Midwest as a teenager I wasn't returning home, I was joining a new foreign culture. I didn't dress right, and while i spoke English with the same Midwestern absent as my parents, I didn't know the lingo. End result is people think you are weird or rude because you Don't have the same socialization. Dating outside my race and ethnicity was liberating for me because my partners were on the same playing field; we had to actually communicate rather than rely on cultural assumptions.
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May 19, 2014 03:11
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