Mixed Couples Face Unique Challenges

By Tananarive Due 
Knight-Ridder Newspapers 

My friend, a beautiful and dynamic black woman, was perplexed. She and a
longtime white male friend had ended up spending a couple of nights together.
Afterward, she was open to a full-fledged romance, but he still wanted to
play buddy-buddy. 

I don't get it, she told me, mystified. 

"Uh-oh," I told her. "Sounds like it could be WBS." 

WBS, or White Boy Syndrome, became a recurring joke for me and my black
girlfriends who'd been burned after practicing "We Are the World" Equal
Opportunity dating. 

The syndrome: You meet a non-black man who is happy to hang out as a buddy or
a bedmate, but when it comes to commitment, no chance. You're not his idea of
what he plans to bring home to Mom. 

Sure enough, when my friend confronted her consort, I was right. 

As tough as dating is to begin with, mixing races or cultures brings
complications much tougher than introducing your date to flan or sweet potato
pie. 

Fair or not, mixed couples face a challenge that can strip bare their
strengths and weaknesses. 

By "mixed couples," I'm not talking about people who so hate their own that
they refuse to date those like themselves. Nor do I mean novelty, sport,
status-seeking or a "Jungle Fever" complex. 

Yes, there are black men who will ignore every sister in the club but make a
beeline for the first white woman -- "any" white woman -- to walk in the
door. Likewise, I have known disgruntled sisters who've told me they've had
it with black men, period. 

What I'm talking about is mixed couples who date for love. 

One in 50 U.S. marriages is interracial, according to the Census Bureau.
There were 246,000 black-white marriages in 1992, four times the number in
1970. There were 1.2 million marriages between Hispanics and non-Hispanics. 

That's a lot of pioneers. By 1995, you'd think this would be a moot issue. 

Unfortunately, because of the fallout of historical racial and sexual
politics, interracial couples bear the brunt of a Pandora's box: We judge
each other and second-guess ourselves, in addition to facing the inherent
difficulties of bridging cultural, racial or religious differences. 

So mixed relationships call for a lot of hard work and self-affirmation. And
wide-open eyes. Not everyone is willing to bother. And even the willing may
not be able to. 

Thirty-year-old "Decosta," a black television producer in Miami, once had
nothing kind to say about mixed couples because she was fed up with seeing
white women in black men's arms. She glared at them. 

But recently, when she wrote a wish list of her future soulmate's qualities,
she forgot to mention that, er ... he should be black. 

Someone appeared, all right. Unexpectedly, she has fallen for a white guy
from Argentina. 

"I haven't ever met anyone I've had so much in common with, black or white,"
she says. "I wasn't looking for this, and look what happened. Maybe God was
trying to teach me a lesson." 

Decosta says she and her boyfriend discuss racial issues, and he understands
because he has dated women from all ethnic groups. But she still isn't
entirely comfortable. 

"When we go into a neighborhood that's black, that's when I get all tense,"
Decosta says. "I guess I'll just have to deal with it." 

As tempting as it may be to avoid public appearances, don't, advises Bill
DeKlavon, who has been the lighter half of a mixed marriage for 10 years. He
and wife Donna, who live in Pembroke Pines, Fla., dated for 3 1/2 years
before getting married. 

"I think it's even more important in an interracial relationship to spend
time together in all different types of settings -- social settings, business
settings -- and just make sure you're comfortable with that," says DeKlavon,
30, a middle-school teacher. 

"I felt uncomfortable in a situation where I was the minority when we first
started dating," he says. "If I would go to a party and it was predominantly
black, I would feel very uncomfortable because I felt myself sticking out.
But over time, having done that several times now, I don't feel that way." 

Once when she and her husband were at the beach, Donna DeKlavon says, "two
white guys walked by and one said, 'Look at that white guy with that
dirtball.' I didn't think people thought that way. It was horrible." 

But they got one boost: Both sets of parents accepted their relationship.
"The pressure of society already being against us would have been too great
with our parents also against us," says Donna, 33, full-time mother of their
two daughters. 

Pilar, a Miami resident born in Colombia, agrees. In August she married
Warren, who is black. They'd been dating for six years after meeting on the
job. 

"We knew that in order to make it work, we'd have to have both families'
support. It couldn't be a problem with anyone. Our families are very
important to us," says Pilar, who is 29 and an administrator with the city of
Miami. Neither family objected. 

And as for the double-takes she sometimes gets from Hispanic men? 

"You can't pay attention to that. You just have to focus on yourselves. If
anyone says anything rude, you don't stoop to their level to respond or react
negatively. Those are narrow-minded people you don't need to deal with," she
says. 

But what if those narrow-minded people are your parents? Or an important peer
group? Withdrawal from either, consciously or unconsciously, could spell a
sense of loss. "You and me against the world" is a romantic notion, but what
happens when the romance wears thin? 

"Do you end up resenting the person because you're feeling bad and your needs
aren't being met?" asks Pamela Hall, a Fort Lauderdale clinical psychologist.


Some people, ultimately, will only be truly at ease with a partner who shares
a basic similarity -- whether it's race, ethnicity or religion. 

Be honest with yourself and your partner about your biases. One person's
novelty may be another's heartbreak. Your partner may think it's love, and
you may be operating under the "I would 'bed' one but I wouldn't 'marry' one"
premise. 

I call it WBS, but it applies to anyone with a bias. Dating someone you know
you have a bias against makes your partner feel illegitimate. It's unfair.
And it only feeds the stereotypes that already make life difficult for
sincere mixed couples. 

If you're in a mixed relationship, don't be afraid to discuss racial issues
or issues central to your cultural identification. In fact, you must. You and
your partner may discover attitudes offensive to each other. 

You must have the patience to talk it through, or there's a good chance
you'll crumble. 

Unfortunately, love doesn't always conquer all. Determination helps, too. 

If it feels right, hold hands and hang on tight. 

X X X 

(Tananarive Due is a feature writer and columnist for The Miami Herald. Write
to her at The Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132.) 



Transmitted: 95-09-05 16:33:30 EDT (tm00f401)