{"id":14966,"date":"2013-02-15T18:02:12","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T18:02:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-10-15T00:59:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T00:59:18","slug":"stick-to-your-own-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=14966","title":{"rendered":"“Stick to your own kind”"},"content":{"rendered":"

My title is a line from the musical West Side Story<\/em>, which centers on the friction cause by an inter-racial love affair. I am saddened by the friction I see reflected in the comments on asiancemagazine.com<\/em>\u2019s most-discussed piece, \u201cA White Boy Speaks about Dating Asian Women.\u201d Having dated White and Asian women and having married one of each [not simultaneously!] I have some expertise to offer here.<\/p>\n

Two viewpoints predominate<\/strong>: 1. Stick to your own kind; hands off mine. 2. Date whom you choose, with my blessing.<\/p>\n

Tribalism: stick to your own kind <\/strong>
\nMinority group members who want to date\/marry within their group can see inter-racial dating as depleting the supply of eligibles for themselves. There is some truth to that, although those interested in inter-racial dating, but prevented from doing so, may not be as eager and \u201celigible\u201d as the would-be same-race daters hope. A strong preference for, say, blondes, may not easily be converted to an eagerness to date brunettes, once blondes are prohibited. <\/p>\n

Majority group members who want to date\/marry within their group have less concern about a reduced number of eligibles, but\u2013as parents\u2013may oppose their children\u2019s dating inter-racially, as may minority-group parents. My second wife is Tina Su Cooper, and both her Chinese-American parents and my Caucasian parents opposed our marrying, fifty years ago. Twenty-nine years ago, in 1984, they approved. <\/p>\n

Laissez-faire: date and marry whom you choose<\/strong>
\nIf you can choose from any group, your choices are more numerous than if you have to \u201cstick to your own kind\u201d. This provides opportunities for a better match than if you had fewer choices. If you do fall in love, the barriers to marriage are reduced. Frankly, though, it also provides opportunities for a worse match, as well, when the partners do not realize differences related to ethnicity\/culture until after marriage. <\/p>\n

Even if the two can transcend their differences, their relatives may not, causing problems. Their children may be less well accepted by either group than would children of a \u201chomogeneous\u201d pairing. <\/p>\n

Whose business is it?<\/strong>
\nOf course it is the business of the two people who are dating. Their parents and relatives and friends also have an interest in how it affects the various inter-personal relationships involved, as well as\u2013hopefully\u2013having the best interests of the couple at heart. If a mixed-race relationship is going to cause great family discord, that should be taken into account, though it may well not be a determining factor. If one or the other or both will lose many friends, that is a shame, worth considering, not likely enough to veto the pairing. <\/p>\n

Whose business isn\u2019t it?<\/strong>
\nIf you oppose inter-racial dating, you have the right to say so, to avoid it, to shun those involved. You do not have the right to attack them physically or harass them verbally. <\/p>\n

If you favor inter-racial dating, you have the same rights and responsibilities.<\/p>\n

None of us \u201cowns\u201d the members of our \u201cgroup.\u201d Stick to your own business.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The future<\/strong>
\nOver time, greater tolerance and more frequent inter-racial marriage will produce increasing numbers of mixed-race individuals, who will, of necessity, then be involved in mixed-race marriages. We can look to Hawaii as an example. <\/p>\n

People should be free to choose.<\/strong>
\nFortunately, I have seen society become more tolerant of such pairings since 1964 when Tina Su and Doug Cooper were tearfully parted\u2026only to be married joyously twenty years later. <\/p>\n

Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., is a retired scientist, now an author and writing coach. His first book, Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage, and Devotion<\/em>, was published in 2011 by Outskirts Press and is available from Outskirts Press and from amazon.com and bn.com.<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My title is a line from the musical West Side Story, which centers on the friction cause by an inter-racial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2663,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1006,1],"tags":[2115],"class_list":["post-14966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dating-relationship","category-news","tag-dating"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"michaelly","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/957a72dc0c08f14979f0d258f5a5d70644519bea0e589bfbc83999b24053b763?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"My title is a line from the musical West Side Story, which centers on the friction cause by an inter-racial","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["Dating & relationships","News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":135,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":4,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"michaelly","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=2663"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/957a72dc0c08f14979f0d258f5a5d70644519bea0e589bfbc83999b24053b763?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"Dating & relationships<\/a> News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}