Opening The Box On Interracial Love

I remember when, the week before I left for college, my parents sat me down to tell me about the facts of life. The lecture wasn't about sex — my father, a physician, was prone to oversharing the grosser aspects of human anatomy, so I was horrifyingly aware of the mechanical aspects of reproduction as early as elementary school.

No, the wisdom they sought to impart related to the Theory of Dating Relativity. Which is to say: The more similar your partner is to you without actually being a blood relative, the better.

Children of close family friends? Perfect. If that's not possible, try someone whose parents are from the same hometown. Taiwanese is better than mainlander or Hong Konger, Chinese of any type is better than other Asians, but if you must stray outside of Greater China, focus on East Asia before Southeast or South Asia ... and so on and so on, in an ever-expanding series of concentric circles.

My parents weren't being racist (or at least not maliciously so): Their beliefs were shaped by the reality in which they were brought up, and the culture to which they'd immigrated. They'd seen the challenges faced by people in mixed relationships, and they wanted my sister and me to have an easier life.

Things weren't easy for mixed couples in the 1970s, particularly among immigrant groups, where social networks were critical yet fragile, and most community support systems were contingent on "insider" versus "outsider" status.

But have things changed? With last week marking the anniversary of Loving v Virgina, the landmark June 12, 1967 Supreme Court decision that upheld the right for men and women of different races to marry, it seemed like an appropriate time to explore that question.

Statistics support the notion that interracial relationships are on the rise in the Asian American community: Mixed couples represented over a quarter of all marriages among Asian Americans in 1980, and over a third of Asian American marriages in 2006.

And interracial couples with Asian partners are increasingly depicted in movies, TV and other popular entertainment, to the point where their racial differences are often not even germane to their characters' storylines.

What many commentators have pointed out, of course, is that both the numbers and popular culture reflect a reality in which only half the Asian American community — the female half — are players. Call it the doubletake test: Seeing an Asian American woman with a non-Asian man is no longer noteworthy, but an Asian American man with a non-Asian woman still turns heads.

That gender gap is reflected in interracial marriage statistics as well: According to the U.S. Census' 2006 update, 19.5 percent of Asian American women outmarry, compared with 7.2 percent of Asian American men. And that, to some, speaks volumes about the sexual desirability and social status of Asian men in America.

As blogger Dialectic wrote on the popular Asian American online forum The Fighting 44s (where four out of the top five most popular posts relate to interracial relationships): "If heterosexual white male patriarchy and what it did in the world were not so powerful, I think it would be fair to say that Asian American women and men would be 'out-dating' or 'out-marrying' at similar rates, and that we wouldn't elevate whites, denigrate ourselves, or worry about whether we're sexually and personally worthy of others to nearly the same extent that we do now."

Lover of another color

That's what makes it so intriguing that a small but thriving subculture has emerged (where else?) online, of non-Asian women whose expressed romantic preferences are for Asian men. They're represented by communities like Devil Called Love, a free internet dating site dedicated to celebrating "AM/XF" relationships — romances between Asian men and women of any background.

Some who sign up for the site are women already part of AM/XF couples, seeking to become more informed on the cultural and social issues that they're confronting, and to connect with females in a similar situation. Kristina Nicholas of Santa Cruz joined AznLover hoping to better understand her Japanese American fiance: "We'd just become engaged, and I was looking for other women in my situation to gain insight and even support for the challenges that might arise from marrying into a different culture," she says.

Others, like San Francisco resident Elizabeth M., joined the site hoping to make new friends (and more). "I joined the site to find like-minded individuals who understood my love of Asian men," says Elizabeth. "In the process, I feel like I've grown a lot as a person — I've learned from many people's experiences in travel and relationships, I've learned more about different cultures.

And I feel like I've made a difference in helping people cross boundaries that most people don't discuss and aren't even aware of." That includes psychological boundaries, like the ones faced by Melissa Palmer, an AznLover from Detroit, MI who calls herself a "white chick from the whitest-white background imaginable."

"My vast knowledge of the Asian male was based on John Hughes movies and influenced by the regional racism toward Japanese at the time, so I'd already made my decision regarding Asian men; I just wasn't attracted to them," she says. "But fast forward to the near present: What started as a friendship with a Chinese male grew into love.

One day, it all came flooding out — we admitted to each other that the pull was there. God, I love that day!" For Asian American men, Devil Called Love feels like a kind of parallel dimension, where their status is inverted: Rather than being exiled to the margins, Asian males are at the center of this particular universe; not just "accepted," but revered.

"I love the fact that people on the site acknowledge the beauty in Asian men," says Harry Li, a Malaysian American member living in Texas. "Society still makes women feel self-conscious about saying they like Asian features, or particularly, Asian guys, so even if they do, they won't let their attraction out in public. At Devil Called Love, we all know why we're there — we share a common bond, in that one group has the qualities, physical and otherwise, that the other appreciates."

The politics of desire. Appreciation can be a double-edged sword, of course. Being rejected is problematic, but so is being objectified. "There's a type of privilege in being sexually desirable, but that can come at a cost," says Carmen Van Kerkhove and host of the podcast "Addicted to Race." "Asian women have been dehumanized by being put on a pedestal, and I'm wary of the same thing happening to Asian men. Some guys may roll their eyes and say, it'll take a long time to get to that point, but there's a fine line you have to tread in not trading one set of racist assumptions for another."

(That's something that's long been an issue in the LGBT community, where activists have long protested the exotic imagery that pervades the depiction of Asian men — imagery all too similar to how Asian women have historically been stereotyped in mainstream media.

And objectification, meanwhile, is a two-way street: There's also the question of whether some Asian men who seek to level the romantic playing field are less motivated by racial justice than male entitlement: the desire to jump to the top of the social totem pole by bagging sexual big game.

"I do find it disturbing that some of the more extreme views I've seen are focused less on social equality than on Asian men attaining the same set of privileges as white males, whom they see as having the pick of women," says Van Kerkhove. The "pick of women" generally has its own racial dimension. As Alicia Powell, a 24-year-old, black female Devil Called Love member says, "I think Asian men are brainwashed to want white women. And it's too bad, because I'm attracted to Asian men, and I think black female/Asian male couples are beautiful.

"It's messed up that many Asian American men dismiss women of other races. But they see stereotypes of black women in the media, and they see white women depicted as glamorous, so that's what they think is right for them."

If the central concern of Asian American men were truly equality and universality rather than social status, Asian male/black female couplings would seem to be natural, given that the black community has its own gender disparity in outmarriage rates — in the other direction: Black men are twice as likely as black women to have a nonblack spouse.

Yet statistics show that "Asian man/black woman" is the least common of all interracial combinations, representing less than 0.01 percent of all marriages in the United States — a total of just 6,000 couples across the entire country.

That's led some people to call for an active love connection between these two underrepresented romantic populations. In April, New York sex, dating and relationships columnist Twanna Hines decreed in a hilarious (and much quoted) post on her blog FunkyBrownChick that it was "time for the Asian American male community to get down with the brown.

"My inspiration for the post was a friend back in Chicago, who was always completely against dating anyone who wasn't black, period," says Hines. "I'd invite her to parties, and because my friends are such a diverse bunch of people, she'd always ask me first, 'Well, are any men whom I'd want to date going to be there?' Which was a code word for black men. Anyway, she called me up, and began the conversation, 'Guess what? I have a new boyfriend ... and he's Chinese.' And it really got me thinking, hey, if even Karen's doing it, maybe she's on to something.

Maybe we're seeing the beginnings of a trend." Maybe Hines is right: Small but vibrant informal social networks are springing up, like the 100% free internet dating site Devil Called Love which suggests in its introduction that "As the number of (available) Asian women and black men declines, the Asian man is left without a pool of wife material. The black woman is in the same category. It is only natural that the two should seek each other out to form a loving relationships."

Pop equals hot equals sexy. Ultimately, however, it's hard to see these disparities as being anything but temporary — and local. Any sexual imbalances that exist due to the unique alchemy of sex, race and class in the United States fade in the face of a globalized world; one in which the playing field is different, and so are the players and rules.

In the Caribbean, for instance, intermarriages between black women and Asian men are relatively common. In fact, asserts Devil Called Love member David Nghiem, a globetrotter who recently completed an epic bicycle trip across the entire length of Latin America, "Outside of the 'anglosphere' — North America, England, Australia and New Zealand — things are completely different.

Asian men are in general seen as dateable, sexy and interesting. Most of the world has their own media, in their own languages and subtleties, and Hollywood's attempts to spread stereotypes about Asian men and their sexuality literally stops at the anglosphere's edge, simply because the rest of the world doesn't understand it and doesn't care.

There are, after all, billions of Asian men in Asia, and in the pop culture coming out of Japan, Korea, China and India — the pop culture that increasingly rules the universe — their sexual desirability is hardly in question. As the balance of economic and social power shifts outward beyond America's borders, the political aspects of race and romance inevitably become secondary to the personal.

Which points the way to a new Grand Unified Field Theory of Dating, if you will, which I'll have ready for my sons when I send them off to college: Date whoever the hell you want, and stop worrying so much about what it means. Susan Del Vecchio, a 31-year-old Devil Called Love member in a long-term committed relationship with a San Jose-based Vietnamese American she met on the site, agrees. "I think people overthink and overanalyze the nature of romance," she laughs. "I grew up in a little 200-person town in Missouri, where there wasn't an Asian person for hundreds of miles. But even as I was growing up I found myself preferring guys with dark hair, who had certain kinds of features.

"Once I got out and started to see the world, I narrowed my tastes down, and by the time I hit my 20s, I found myself only going out with Asian guys. It was a purely aesthetic choice: I just think Asian men are beautiful. And if you don't, too bad. As I used to say back in my dating days, 'That just means more men for me!'"

For interracial couples of all backgrounds and combinations, June 12, the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision, marks the day that made the consummation of their love possible. It's no wonder, then, that there are those who think it should be a day for rejoicing.

Ken Tanabe, a graphic designer and biracial issues advocate living in Brooklyn, has been working for the past four years to do just that. "My father is Japanese and my mother is Belgian," says Tanabe. "I first encountered the Loving case purely by accident. I was Googling something unrelated and it came up; I couldn't believe I had never heard of it. I was a good student, yet I never learned about it in school. And to me, the case was up there with Brown v. Board of Ed.

The laws that Loving v. Virginia struck down could have easily prevented my own existence. Inspired by the grassroots efforts that led to the creation of Juneteenth — June 19, Emancipation Day, now a holiday in 29 states, including California — Tanabe decided to build a campaign to establish June 12 as a holiday — Loving Day — remembering that landmark case, and celebrating freedom of the heart. Loving Day events have sprung up across the country.

(Tanabe has created a free celebration kit with materials to help people plan their own,but the largest is still in New York: Last week, over 1,000 people attended the festivities, presided over by renowned DJs Spooky and Rekha and sponsored by Asahi beer, Zipcar and Puma. But Loving Day isn't just about having a party.

"Things are getting better for interracial couples and multiracial individuals," says Tanabe. "However, social acceptance might not matter that much to you if your best friend or your mother is threatening to cut you out of their lives. We hear a lot of those stories: Racism against couples often occurs behind closed doors.

The Loving Day Project is about counteracting the prejudice you might not immediately see." That prejudice extends far beyond interracial couples, as those fighting for the full legalization of same-sex marriage know. Those advocates will also readily affirm that Loving v. Virginia is a critical precedent in the road map guiding that fight as well. Love knows no color, no shape or size, no age or gender — in fact, love knows nothing but love.

Which maybe makes Loving Day something all of us should celebrate.