The Blurring Lines of Race in America

A recent article on CNN.com revealed that interracial marriage is at an all-time high. This isn’t at all surprising given that one of the things that make me proud to be an American is that there really isn’t an “ethnicity” to America, or put another way, America, by design, is a nation of many ethnicities – not just one. We are a mosaic of races of which the colors will mix and match, this leaving more and more permutations of racial backgrounds. “White” people in America are mostly a combination of European ethnicities, and in time, most “Americans” will be a combination of European, Hispanic, Asian, and African ethnicities.

Some people may find this alarming, and not because they're bigoted, per se. They're concerned that the “mongrelization” (joking, I’m using the KKK term to be provacative) of races will lead to the eradication of ethnic cultural identity in the United States. My answer to this is that culture continuously evolves over time anyway, regardless of whether it remains uni-ethnic or not. Plus, it’s one thing to respect heritage, but another thing to feel an obligation to perpetuate it. For example, what exactly is Taiwanese-American culture? Is it defined as the culture that second-generation Taiwanese kids grow up in? By that definition, it has a limited shelf-life because the third-generation will surely have different cultural norms with American-born parents. Even amongst second-generation Taiwanese, the culture I was raised in is very different than my distant niece (who’s twelve), if for no other reason than the fact that her immigrant parents live in a far more integrated community than my parents did. New “cultures” will be built upon common experiences of being 2nd and 3rd generation Americans will emerge, and I think that’s okay. My children will have a shared culture with others who had a 2nd generation Taiwanese dad and a 2nd generation Korean mom. As I wrote in a previous post, they’ll have a lot of company, but even if they didn’t, I think they’d be okay.

I remember that that while I was at Penn, we had an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship large group session about dating and one anonymous question came out as “Is interracial marriages okay?” I was a little shocked at the question given how obvious I thought the answer was, unsure if someone had misinterpreted the passage about being “unequally yoked” (commonly used to as the biblical rationale on why having a common faith in Jesus Christ in a marriage is important) or whether they had grown up in a household where, for non-religious reasons, it was deemed wrong in improper to marry outside of one’s race.

The answer almost surprised me even more than the question. Instead of answering along the lines, “It’s completely fine, God’s kingdom will represent every tribe and every nation and your common ground in faith in Christ is ultimately defines you,” the lady who answered (a visiting IV staff worker, not the staff worker from Penn) answered by acknowledging that Bible stated no such prohibitions, but such relationships could be “challenging” due to cultural differences. The response surely wasn’t intended to be non-progressive or offensive (and in fairness, the observation is accurate – Sarah can’t stand how cheap I am as a Taiwanese male), but it did strike me as strangely less-than-completely enthusiastic. As the CNN article stated, I think as people continue to witness healthy and happy relationships that cross races, people will recognize that the dark and thick lines of culture aren’t quite as dark or thick anymore.

Perhaps the who question of identity is evolving, and more people, while still proud of their ethnic background, no longer hold it as the predominant defining factor of identity – and it is this predominant defining factor which holds the most sway in terms of who you choose to marry and spend the rest of your life with. For me, that’s my Christian faith; for others, as mentioned in the article, it might be education level, social class, or economic standing. People are falling in love and finding their soulmates recognizing that “someone being the same race” isn’t all that important.

I used to tease my Caucasian friends who had “yellow fever”, as they seemed almost exclusively interested in Asian women, but as I look back, their attraction isn’t misplaced at all. Asian women rock. I married one, too.