Guest post by Lori Lopez

Within the first few hours of the first date with the man I would later marry, we had already delved into the question of race. “What ethnicity are you?” I asked him. Mexican and White, he told me. “What ethnicity are you?” he asked me. Japanese and White, I answered. Somehow we were both pleased with these responses. Not because we were invested in the specific racial configurations, but because it was clear that we shared something important and unusual—we were both mixed race.

I often think back to those conversations we shared in the beginning of our courtship, and the ways that they pulled us together. We were both interested in exploring our racial identities, and were tickled to find commonalities between our experiences. We both could pass for white, but felt a little sad that people might then fail to understand who we really were. People were always curious and surprised to find out our backgrounds, people always guessed wrong. Both of our non-white parents were third-generation Americans, which meant that they were sufficiently distanced from Mexico and Japan, but we both still grew up with a few words spoken in Spanish and Japanese—mostly around food, since an obsession with eating was something else our families shared.

There were other similarities. Our parents had instilled in us a deep respect for difference, such that family always meant acceptance and tolerance. We knew that neither of our parents would judge the kind of partner that we brought home for the holidays, since their own parents had unquestioningly accepted their own interracial unions. Through love, we knew there was no racial divide too deep to cross.

At the same time, it is almost absurd to think that we share something in terms of our racial identities, since what we really shared was simply the same sense of “living in two worlds.” The truth is that this quality could be imagined and appreciated in many different arenas. People who are bisexual or transgendered, people who have grown up on multiple continents or across multiple cultures, anyone who has ever been placed in opposing categories at the same time—all of these different experiences can help one relate to multiraciality.

So I still find it strange when I hear that people seek out a dream partner of a certain race, a certain religious background, a certain culture. If I’ve learned anything from falling in love with someone who is as mixed up as I am, it’s that you can find commonality across all facets of identity. Perhaps my husband and I burn with the same fierce, protective anger when we hear racist slurs that might apply to our family members, but that understanding could just as easily be communicated and shared with any empathetic soul.

Further, I am so much more than just a mixed race woman—I also identify with people from my hometown of Portland, who attended small liberal arts colleges, who share my progressive feminist politics, who are academics, who are foodies, dog-lovers, Colts fans, the list goes on and on. Because my racial identity blends together with these other identities, it wouldn’t make sense for me to think that the only person who could really “get” me would share just one of these characteristics. It happened to be the case that I found my match in a multiracial man, but our commonalities lie far beyond our racial miscategorizations. Rather, it is our shared values, our compassion, and our desire to understand the world around us that keeps us together.

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: Seeing Men Through My Mother’s Eyes

Tagged as: guest posts, interracial dating