This morning I came downstairs to chop and marinate two chickens for a casual dinner party, when I glanced over at Baby’s high chair. Little Sister had tied two helium balloons to her chair, and propped up an oversized greeting card on the seat. How sweet, I thought, Baby’s first valentine! But it was not to be, because later that morning the balloons scared Baby so much that she ran shrieking away from them in terror! Her face contorted into the most anguished pout, she scrambled out of my lap and she darted around the table toward the kitchen. She refused to be in the same room with them. We couldn’t believe it.
We rounded up the balloons and tied them to a plant stand in the living room, near the window. On the way out to church, we passed a neighborhood friend and told her about the incident. She says her son reacted the same way to helium balloons when he was very young, too. The day was not a total waste, however. Baby dug the bouquet that Hubby got for all of us. She never once looked at the lilies and roses suspiciously.
Hubby informs me that while he was holding her and trying to raise the blinds in the living room, Baby still tried to get away from him and the balloons! And later in the day, he was showing her around his bookshelf and she recoiled at the sight of a small ceramic clown. I guess this means skipping an elaborate first birthday party for Baby, with balloons and clowns and things was a good idea after all.
Northern New Jersey escaped the blizzard that whalloped the Mid-Atlantic region two weekends ago, but we couldn’t get lucky twice. We had to suffer right along with the rest of the region, which got 17 inches of snow in some places. Anyway, after a day of juggling take-home work and Baby, whose family daycare center was closed, I’m still unable to wind down and go to bed. So I rummaged through a few old digital files, pulled out my YouTube account and blew the dust off of it. Hey, it’s been so long since I’ve posted to YouTube that there is a blizzard of dust on my account! I made some changes to my membership, so I could link more videos to this site.
For those of you who like animals, I found this home movie from a visit to the Bronx Zoo in Summer 2005. That year, Mother and Little Sister visited Hubby and I shortly after we had bought our house. Little Sister doesn’t appear in this film—otherwise, I wouldn’t have posted it. Don’t tell Hubby I said this, but I think gorillas are amazing and complex creatures, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a few one day—from the safety of a well-armed safari vehicle, of course. (I convincingly project the image of a city girl who thinks nature is terrifying and loathsome, so Hubby would get a kick out of word that I like gorillas.)
Although this winter is not so bad, and I don’t mind the snow, I feel the dryness and the cold acutely because it’s been several years since I’ve traveled outside the United States. Feeling confined, domesticated and parochial, I believe a visit to Africa sounds romantic and adventurous right now. I would do one of those safaris where you stay in a luxury tent in the evenings and see the animals during the day. Or swing into Capetown and do outdoorsy things during the day while spending the evenings at restaurants, boutiques and cultural places.
Again, don’t tell Hubby I said these things, otherwise he’ll sense an opening, and rather than offering a trip to a world-class city, where I can see stunning ancient architecture and relax at spas, he’ll pursue me relentlessly about the quote-unquote joys of camping in a Nevada desert and skipping hot showers for several days.
My clutter bug tendencies have one great benefit—a great collection of old editions of Essence magazine, which published a terrific 25th anniversary issue in February 1995. It led off with a magnificent cover shot of Tyson Beckford embracing a beautiful woman. There was a bangin’ recipe for sweet-potato pie, a luscious photo spread featuring the cast of the old Fox sitcom Living Single in ethnic wedding fashions and a tribute to Bob Marley (whose mother was black and father was white, by the way) written by his widow Rita Marley.
It also ran a feature article about an interracial BW/WM couple. This piece steered clear of discussions about whether black women should open their hearts to the possibility of dating outside their race. There were no statistics detailing the higher rates at which we were dating across color lines. (Blah, blah, blah) In a pair of companion essays, it simply laid out the husband’s and wife’s perspectives of their union. They described their courtship, marriage, parenting a bi-racial child, and the ways in which the social scene in Oakland, Calif., responded to them.
Shimon-Craig—the husband—had a great essay. We don’t often hear from guys on the other side of this issue (probably because they would rather watch old episodes of Lost or 24 than talk about relationships), so his essay provided refreshing insights into the dynamics of their relationship. He talked about why Katrina LaThrop made his heart flutter. I also felt a bit bad for him when he recounted some of the hostile reactions he got from blacks in public whenever the family was out shopping or were trying to enjoy a cultural event. You would think blacks would understand why he and Katrina made a point of educating their son about his mixed heritage. But no. According to his anecdotes, some people went out of their way to be obnoxious and unkind. I expect the social scene in Oakland, Calif., to be much more welcoming for all interracial couples. And I hope he and his wife are still going strong after another 15 years (from publication of that article).
Back in the 1990s, when Susan Taylor was still editor-in-chief and the magazine had not lost its way, it used to run occasional, sometimes annual, write ups about interracial dating. People were just getting around to talking about the issue, and Essence did it’s share to deliver classy, well-thought out discourse on the topic. At this point, I hope that we can talk less about whether interracial dating is alright for black women, and start talking about how, like other married couples, we make it work.
A few weeks ago the Pew Research Center came out with interesting data about married women and their earnings. Apparently, they’ve outpaced their husbands in terms of education and salary growth. That means we are earning more money at a faster pace than our beloved ones, even if the absolute numbers say we still earn less.
The underlying theme, of women gaining economic status in their marriages and presumably their households, did not surprise me. Among blacks, women have always been major contributors to the family finances. My mother was single while she raised me. Even during a brief five-year marriage, she ‘wore the pants’. She earned more money and had a better education than her husband. The same holds true for several aunts, cousins and friends. I told Hubby about my idea to write about this topic for my blog. As always, he downplayed the racial element, saying it’s not just a black experience. Lower-income white women, he said, have probably always contributed to the family’s finances. In a broader sense, all the new research really means is that we are all earning less money. The latter was his swipe at some of our country’s social and tax policies. Sensing a political skirmish, I shifted subjects: What should we make for dinner, dear?
The Pew Research Center’s findings on women bringing home the bacon is the second big trend in the black community that has gone mainstream, if you ask me. The first is single parenthood. I remember being a bit unique among my friends at church and school because my parents had never been married to each other, and my mother raised me without my father. Single parenthood used to be blamed for a host of social dysfunctions. As time passed, I’ve noticed that derogatory terms like “baby mama” or “baby daddy” have become so common that it’s no longer a big deal for children to be born out of wedlock. It really became acceptable as more middle-class and even upper-middle-class white women began raising kids without the man and the ring. I guess we have Murphy Brown to thank for some of that, huh?
I must admit that although I personally have no hang-ups about women with stable professions and finances choosing single parenthood, there are far too many single mothers in the black community. On any given day, I can look around my hometown and the city where I live now and see dozens of underaged girls pushing their kids around in strollers. They are kids themselves, so how can they possibly have enough wisdom to do a good job of nurturing and guiding the next generation of men and women? I don’t know. All I can do is try to prevent that travesty from happening in my family. So with my little sister, who will be 17 in March, I often tick off the only acceptable order in which her life’s milestones should come: degree, job, money in the bank, her own place and then she can have a baby!
Among the Pew Research Center’s other findings:
• Among adults aged 30 to 44 more women than men have college degrees.
• The median household income rose 60% between 1970 and 2007 for unmarried women, but increased by only 16% for unmarried men.
• In 1970, 20% of wives had more education than their husbands. In 2007, that figure went up to 28%.
While checking the blog stats late last night, I noticed that the Latte Cafe hit an important milestone: The other day I turned in the one hundredth post. That is an important occurrence, but it passed without much fanfare. There was no party, speech or celebratory beverage to mark the occasion. (And the bottle of milk and cereal I prepared for Baby tomorrow morning doesn’t count!) Instead, I went about business as usual, looking for other blogs of interest to black women in interracial relationships, adding another link to the blog roll and scribbling a few ideas for future topics on a nearby notepad.
The unremarkable way in which this event came and went, the ordinariness of it, reminded me of a brief conversation I had with my cousin Melinda a few months ago when I ran into her at Penn Station during the evening commute. I walked over and said:
“Hi Melinda. What’s up?
“I’m going to kill Jeff,” she told me, wagging her head slightly and watching the board for her train. Jeff is her husband of nine or ten years.
“Why?”
“Because he’s a man.”
Poor Jeff had likely incurred Melinda’s wrath by leaving food on the stove overnight uncovered, failing or forgetting to do something helpful and responsible while playing with their 3-year-old son Walt or doing some other typical guy nonsense that no-nonsense women like my cousin find infuriating. I laughed slightly, knowing Jeff would find a way to make amends and live another day.
That is what is so interesting and ordinary about interracial relationships and mixed families—they are just trying to navigate everyday life like anyone else. Hubby and I juggle demanding jobs while splitting the housework, fret about backup baby sitters, do our best to coach my teenage sister to get better grades at school and gossip about our neighbors, many of whom are not interracial couples, but are extraordinarily peculiar! Although relationships like mine are as commonplace as ever, stereotypes about the people involved in them abound and need to be dispelled. So I intend to keep on writing about how I see the world, not casting people and situations in black and white or the rose-colored tint of naivete, but from behind the layered, textured, gray shaded tint of my cross-cultural existence.
Our house is going to be buzzing with activity today, as Hubby and I host the Christmas feast. Our family is multi-cultural, with Jamaican immigrants and second-generation Americans on my side and the two white guys who were brave enough to marry into our raucous clan. There is Hubby, of Scottish and German descent and my cousin Melinda’s husband Jeff, who is French-Canadian. With all of these influences, our Christmas dinner will be a culinary tour of the Commonwealth and Europe, plus whatever else this adventurous lot can conjure up. We are roasting two Long Island ducks, seven pounds of ribs and brewing about a gallon of sorrel. Aunt Mary is bringing escovitched fish, and her daughter Nia is baking a beer-marinated ham. Melinda is bringing roasted veggies and egg nog. Oh! And Aunt Mary is also bringing black cake. (This feast is going to exact a steep short-term price, i.e. serious gym and purging rituals.)
And because I had to be all Type-A about things, we’re skipping the stocking stuffers. Instead, we’ll be putting treats into Victorian-esque paper cones and hanging them from a seven-foot balsa tree. Each cone will be stamped with a guest’s name on it, so they can pick through the boughs, probably while balancing Melinda’s egg nog, to find their cone.
I can count up to five interracial marriages in my family (including extended family), and all involving the women. As far as I know, all the married men in my family chose black women as wives. Strangely, I don’t think that trend makes us special. I’ve never seriously asked myself why that has happened. Perhaps I feel really comfortable about our cultural makeup, because I’m used to being in very diverse social surroundings. I’ve lived in Northern New Jersey almost my whole life, and here you can’t move this way or that without practically tripping over people from far afield. It’s practically Queens over here! Naturally, all of these people living, working and playing right next to each other will occasionally intermarry. It would be more unusual—and suspect to some—if cross-cultural pairings rarely or never happened.
Well, Hubby and Jeff fit right into our family. Melinda and Jeff have such an irreverent zest for life that I call them Mad-and-Cap. And Hubby’s first-child seriousness foils my spacey only-child tendencies (a long story for another blog). And our family loves both of these guys, so Melinda and I had better take good care of them! Today we’ll underscore our domestic felicity with a relaxing Christmas dinner over fine china laden with goodies of every kind. And then we’ll dissolve into generally silly and uproarious behavior. Merry Christmas everyone. I’ll try to post another couple of entertaining updates to get you through the rest of this holiday season.
It’s holiday party time. Black cocktail dress? Check. Strappy heels? Got ’em. Stylishly warm coat? You bet! Engaging conversation topics? Well …
That’s not always so easy. I think these festivities can get trite and tiresome pretty quickly, unless you think on your feet, or you are a very quirky person and are prone to say things that turn people’s heads. Before you head out for this year’s holiday party circuit, let’s take a look back at some of the major stories that caught my attention while tending the Latte Cafe. Not all of these stories highlight intermarriage and cross-cultural dating involving black women. But they are worth noting, because they touch on race and black culture, and ought to be discussed among black women. While holding an egg nog or a mock-tail, depending on your taste.
1. November 2008—Change Has Come! The election of Illinois Senator Barack Obama, a black (and biracial) man as U.S. president was a moment that an entire generation of black Americans never thought would come. Their viewpoint is legitimate, considering all of the racial prejudice and attendant injustices that their generation had to endure. Jim Crow laws, segregation, cronyism, fraternalism in trade unions and a host of other factors conspired against blacks to render them unable to reach their potential either individually or collectively. Thankfully this man teamed up with his advisors and close friends to be a game changer of political campaigns. He played the rules differently and figured out a way to get around all the wily little tricks that would otherwise have ended his candidacy.
2. October 2009—Keith Bardwell, a former justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, made headlines when he refused to grant an interracial couple a marriage license. The couple was made up of a black man and a white woman, but it could have easily been the other way around. That a siting judge in these modern times was willing to go on the record with his views about why interracial marriages should not happen was incredible enough, but he topped that by saying he opposed those unions for the sake of the offspring. Yep. He eventually resigned from the bench.
3. October 2009 — “Good Hair,” the documentary film by Chris Rock opened in theaters nationwide. Everyone knows what this was about. Just walk into a party attended by sisters from a range of backgrounds, walk up to one of them and say something like: ‘Wow, you have really good hair!’ That should get things going. We discussed the movie briefly in a related post.
4. July 2009 — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested outside his own home in Cambridge, Mass. For all his trouble, he got a beer at the White House with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. If I get pulled over and harassed outside my house, can I go shoe shopping with First Lady Michelle Obama?
5. February 2009 — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the U.S. remains a nation of cowards when it comes to openly discussing issues of race. I heartily agree with him on this point. Even within my interracial marriage, Hubby and I rarely delve into the topic of race. There are several reasons for that, not the least of which is that Hubby has often taken political and social discussions way too seriously and has gone off the deep end with the things that have come out of his mouth. (At some point in our courtship, I put an end to political discussions full stop. Now he inflicts his curmudgeonly populist, anti-corporate America rants on his conservative Republican brothers and parents.) And I’ve noticed that even so-called enlightened, progressive left-leaning white Americans will sometimes bury their heads in the sand on this issue. They’ll shrug and say things like ‘race doesn’t matter any more’, or ‘we’ve come a long way.’ Ha! Not far enough. (And you can ask Mr. Gates about how ‘far’ we’ve come on that issue.) No matter how sophisticated and superficially integrated our society becomes, we cannot outrun our basic human nature, which compels us to group ourselves into tribes and ascribe superiority or inferiority to others, depending on how much like us they are. Holder was right: we need to discuss race in open and healthy ways. If we don’t acknowledge the subject of race head on and maintain well-adjusted attitudes about our differences, then little slights and minor situations will compound and escalate until they explode. We try to man up on the subject of race round here, and I thank Mr. Holder for challenging all other Americans to do the same.
At my station in life, I would have to conjure up a reason to go see “The Princess and the Frog.” There are no girls in our house who are at the age to appreciate the movie, because my little sister is 16, and Baby is only 13 months. But I am curious about how Disney will treat this retelling of the classic fairy tale. Judging my the trailers and the clips, it looks like a fun and entertaining film.
There are many ways to look at this, starting with the interracial romance in the story. I hadn’t checked out all of the marketing for the movie before my friend from work told me that the prince turns out to be Creole (or something else, but definitely not black). I know that black love diehards will take that one personally, thinking that Hollywood just can’t give black couples a chance to shine. Dang! They will be heartily offended that black men were slighted and rejected in favor of some off-black dude who spent a huge chunk of his life as a slimy, swamp-running frog. No doubt they will ask whether the makers of this movie subconsciously are telling little black girls that they shouldn’t hope for a black prince of their very own.
I would hope that wouldn’t happen, but in this age of short news cycles, this movie has been on the marketing circuit long enough for every imaginable subtext to be sliced, diced and analyzed to death.
Although it’s hard for me to get seriously worked up about that sort of thing, I do think the movie reflects a vast change in American attitudes about our diverse ethnic heritage. New Orleans, with its music, food, and history, counts as our most culturally exotic city. Mixed marriages are more commonplace there and it figures that the makers of “The Princess and the Frog” would tap into that heritage to create a home-grown couple. That they did it for a major feature film with broad distribution all over the U.S. says that Americans are more willing to openly acknowledge and embrace our cultural past than they ever have been. Little white girls and little black girls who are friends can go and see this movie together and root for Tiana and the prince to beat all the odds and get together. And then they can proceed to argue over which one of them has the bigger crush in Prince Naveen and should be his girlfriend, or something sweetly juvenile like that.
Grown black women (especially here, at Latte Cafe) might see the mixed match as symbolic: it is possible to have everything in life, except the IBM, the ideal black man. You can be educated, accomplished, well-connected and even be a princess. But it’s a fact of life that you might not get to share all of this with a black man. Thousands upon thousands of black women everywhere from all walks of life are single. What if your match is from a different church, state, social class, culture, nation or race? If you cross paths with this man, are you going to turn away, looking past him like he’s a lower creature or will you slow down, give him the time of day and have a nice dinner or coffee or what have you? One thing that always amuses me, even these days, is how oblivious many black women are to the admirations of a guy who is not black. Not leering, admiring. Some of these guys will go so far as to try to draw you into a conversation, only to be overlooked. They’re white, not translucent! Pay attention. You might not end up with the carriage and royal title per se, but you could very well end up with more down-to-earth trappings of happiness, like a house, a baby and year after year of happy memories.
Well, maybe all this discussion is unnecessary. It is just a movie right? Well, no. Movies are products of our culture, reflections of our societies, and this one means something to a lot of people. These things should be discussed in open and healthy ways. But first see the movie for what it is, laugh-out-loud entertainment. I say take your daughter, niece, goddaughter or whomever, buy her a nice dinner with a milkshake, laugh at that ‘gator, tap your toes to the music and have a great night.
Life is definitely more savory when you live in a relatively progressive state like New Jersey. Having lived in north New Jersey my whole life almost, I’ve met people from many different ethnic and social backgrounds. You’ll find many different combinations of interracial marriages here. It’s so common that Hubby and I barely turn heads anymore. Or maybe I’ve stopped noticing. Either way, I like having access to places with a rich cultural mix. That brings me to the Ironbound, a thriving neighborhood in the east section of Newark. Traditionally, the Ironbound is known as a Portuguese and Brazilian neighborhood. It’s one of my favorite places to hang out, with its blend of cosmopolitan bistros and old-fashioned European-style dessert shops. In this video clip, you’ll see a shot of Mompou (1:29), where my friends and I gathered for my 35th birthday dinner. The main artery of the neighborhood, Ferry Street, is loaded with beautiful stores, including a chic European baby’s clothing boutique where I spent a lot of money on Baby’s christening gown. Hubby loves the place. There is a great fish store, Mexican restaurant and wine shop. He says the vibe in the Ironbound reminds him of some of the little European towns he remembers from the part of his childhood that his family spent in Italy. His family lived in Milan, I think, for seven years, so they saw a lot of Spain and other parts of Europe.
And while it seems like the handful of Portuguese families that dominate the business landscape there are still pillars of the community, the central American is steadily increasing. It suggests the neighborhood is about to undergo a substantial cultural change. I do hope the Portuguese maintain their stronghold, to be honest. Much of the Ironbound is well-kept, the bigger families and business owners bring in a lot of money, maintain a cohesive business community and they do a lot to promote the Ironbound brand, making the neighborhood a great place to kick back and enjoy a night out. During the sultry days of summer the merchants put on a week long cultural celebration called Portugal Day. One Christmas season, the local business association piped Christmas carols through outdoor sound systems, creating a fantastic atmosphere for strolling and shopping.
Another great thing about the Ironbound: the people there are used to being in diverse surroundings, especially the Brazilians, whose native country really is a cultural melting pot. Hubby and I never got lingering stares or glares while having dinner or shopping in that district, and nowadays we barely register a glance from passersby.
Have you ever had a secret crush on an older man, including someone outside your race? Perhaps it was a teacher, neighbor or co-worker who caught your fancy and sent your young heart aflutter? I have. Several of my friends have had them, too, including Jocelyn, a friend from work. Jocelyn clued me in on her infatuation the other day. We were talking in one of the common areas of the office, when she came down with a mild case of the giggles. Eyes a’ twinkling, she said: “There he is. My office crush.” I looked around, but failing to see a brother in his thirties, I said: “Nobody’s there. Who are you talking about?” She pointed him out again and when I took a second look, I realized that she was talking about an older white guy! He looked like an everyday Bruce Willis, with a medium athletic build and a neatly trimmed goatee. He was fashionably bald. I had never spoken to him at length about anything, but he always seemed nice enough in passing. On that score, I understood why Jocelyn was, and probably still is, mildly twitterpated by this guy.
Since no one can explain the laws of attraction (if we could, then many literary masterpieces would never have come about), I won’t try to sum up why Jocelyn liked this guy. She added that she would never act on it. Maybe her feelings are just a benign pastime, which switch on when she comes into the office and probably switch off whenever she logs out at the end of the workday. Her crush is neatly contained within the context of our office. Maybe it is a welcome relief from everything that punctuates our existence there—the demoralizing memos, dirty air vents, stale carpeting and bathrooms in dire need of renovation.
I was most surprised by my own reaction to this little piece of gossip. I married a white man. This should have endowed me with better countercultural sensibilities. Instead, there reared a traditional, perhaps conformist instinct that made me expect to see a black guy strutting across the room. And for the briefest of moments after I realized whom she was talking about, I thought: ‘Great. I’m not the only one.’ For shame! All kinds of crazy questions raced through my mind: Why can’t he be 20 years younger? That way he could ask her out, they could get married and they could buy a house and move to my state. I would have a friend—outside my family—involved in an interracial relationship and we could talk all about it. Drat!
As for my older, cross-cultural crush, it was on a reporter at a daily newspaper, where I worked early in my career. Who knows what happened to him? He probably published a book and moved to some exotic place overseas, all without ever realizing that for a good six months, while we overlapped at that daily, my ratty old newspaper office was actually one of the most cheerful places to be.
This morning I came downstairs to chop and marinate two chickens for a casual dinner party, when I glanced over at Baby’s high chair. Little Sister had tied two helium balloons to her chair, and propped up an oversized greeting card on the seat. How sweet, I thought, Baby’s first valentine! But it was not to be, because later that morning the balloons scared Baby so much that she ran shrieking away from them in terror! Her face contorted into the most anguished pout, she scrambled out of my lap and she darted around the table toward the kitchen. She refused to be in the same room with them. We couldn’t believe it.
Pop of Color 