Notes on interracial marriage.

This week I've come across a couple of instances were the topic of interracial marriage has been brought up. This doesn't usually happen so I am going to take it as a sign, of sorts, that it's time that I address the issue.

As anyone that reads my blog should know by now; I'm married to a Latino woman. I am confused with the use of Latino in this case, it sounds more right to me to say Latina, but in our non-sexist language Latino seems to be the correct word. Anyway, when we were courting I did a lot of fasting and prayer in regard to this subject -well, there was a lot more prayer than fasting-. Most may not know that the LDS faith discourages against interracial marriage. Boyd K. Packer has spoken about it along with many others. This was a big sticking point for me because for the most part I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't like to rock the spiritual boat. Nevertheless I went with my heart and felt that I had received God's approval, and so here we are.

I realized at the time and even more so now the reasons why the church has discouraged interracial marriage. It's not easy; marriage itself isn't easy, but add the race/culture bit into the mix and it makes it a bit harder. Now, because I love the bulleted list, I am going to go over a couple of things that make an interracial marriage a bit more difficult then others. At least in my opinion, I've never had any other kind of marriage so I'm just going to list off things that I think make an interracial marriage different:

• Language: The largest problem that any couple can face is communication and being able to communicate clearly. Now what we have here is at least one person in the marriage that is not as capable of communicating as well as the other. Doesn't matter what language you speak, one or the other is going to be at a disadvantage. We've been married for over seven-years, I've studied Spanish, but there still are words that my wife throws out that I don't know. This little problem also has an upside, when you are in the middle of an argument and your spouse uses a word that you've never heard before it diffuses the situation because the argument has to take a step aside as an explanation is presented. Nevertheless miscommunication abound. I won't even get into the subject of movies. If you thought it was hard agreeing upon what movie to watch, try having the discussion about in which language to watch it.
• Culture: Year after year we often will have the same discussions about traditions. If both of us were from the same culture then I'm sure a compromise could quickly be reached. As we both come from different cultures, well, differences abound. Let's take Christmas for example; In most Hispanic cultures they don't have a Christmas tree, they have a big nativity scene. So every year we discuss how much effort the tree should get as compared to the nativity scene. Luckily, the kids settled this one for us because a complex nativity scene is impossible with small children in the house. As time drags on, soon our home decorations will be moving from tree-oriented to nativity-oriented; that was the compromise. In addition one of the other culture differences is how to celebrate Christmas. Hispanics will often stay up all night, while us gringos just get up early. Gringos tend to have Christmas a very quiet family affair, while Hispanics make it bit more of a celebration. These culture differences range from Valentine's day to Independence day, and they don't seem to ever go away.
• Belonging: As an interracial couple we have found ourselves in an odd situation in society; one I didn't know existed. I don't know why it is this way but people, on the whole, don't seem to know quite how to treat us. At times I can't blame them. As a bilingual couple we find ourselves using a kind of Spanglish to communicate, we pick whichever language works better for us at the time. Most of the time the people we are with don't understand one language or the other and it can be a little disconcerting for them. Since most of the time we are with couples that aren't interracial at least one of us is always going to feel a little left out as one of us just isn't going to have as much in common with others as the other one. If we are with Gringos, I usually take the lead. If we are with Hispanics, my wife takes the lead. It's the way things go, and often times people don't hang around with us simply because they recognize that they will always have more in common with one of us and not so much with the other. Then there is always the element of people that don't agree with interracial couples. On the whole I haven't come across these people, but I have come across a few, and it's saddening when you realize that people will judge you for it. Often we find ourselves drawn to other interracial couples, but as most know these are few and far between; although there are more now then ever before. Nevertheless, it limits your friend options.
• Family: Doesn't matter how you twist it one member of the couple is going to have to be far away from their family. This will always be a point of friction. My wife has been very, Very understanding on this point. Her family has been on the short end of the stick since we got married. Very few of them were able to attend the wedding. Only her mother has been able to get to know both of our kids, let alone see them grow up in any capacity. Our kids don't know any of their cousins on my wife's side let alone their aunts and uncles; I won't even start on the cultures of either. Because of this distance there is always the threat of money that has to be spent in calling cards, long-distance gifts and travel. There is no way of getting around it, it's simply part of the deal.
• Children: This is one of the things that I never considered before and as our kids grow older it slowly becomes more of an issue. As we both come from different cultures we were brought up very differently and therefore have very different ideas about child rearing. I am pretty layed back about the whole thing and my wife is fortunately someone that recognizes better ways of doing things, but I am sure that things would be different had we both been brought up similarly. There are other problems with children in an interracial marriage; one of which is language, I've spoken about this before, another one is identity. As my kids straddle the culture/race line it will make them more aware of both while at the same time never really belonging to either. It would be great to be able to say that it doesn't matter, and it shouldn't, but as I have seen, people, whether they mean to or not, treat you differently depending on how you look. If Hispanics are racist against Gringos, then they will see our kids as Gringos. If Gringos are racist against Hispanics, then they will see our kids as Hispanics. I certainly hope that as my kids grow older this will never be a problem.

I am sure that there are plenty more points, but for now these are all that come to mind. I will probably talk about this again but for now I think this will do.