Do you expect your child to become President?
Although I will grant that, for whatever reason, “Ask the white guy who is married to a black woman” seems more in keeping with my expectations for how such a thread would be titled. Not sure why. But, anyway, a very piddling syntactic issue.
Sure, but if Mrs. tonyfop registers here, and wants to start her own thread, I think it should be “Ask the black woman to whom the white guy who is married to the black woman is married.”
So, here’s my question: tonyfop, have you ever limited yourself to not go somewhere or live somewhere because of concerns for your wife’s safety (either as a black woman or as part of an interracial couple)?
I think that you hit the nail on the head. She doesn’t understand why I would marry into a radically different culture, as if I am rejecting my own. Which I am not. My son gets an equal dose of each culture.
And I get the opposite at school. My son is only about a shade darker than me, so I have no problem. My wife has to initially show my son’s birth certificate to prove that she is the mom, but now she volunteers at the school, and everyone knows her. People have even asked if Matthew was my son from a previous marraige.
sorry, I initiated the thread late last night. change the articles to “a” if you want. No disrespect intended towards any other white or black folks out there.
Nope, he’s going to be a zoologist.
There is another thing I just remembered. The whole “genetic variation” thing. It didn’t work in this case. My son had 3 operations before he was 3. 2 were for fluid in the ears that he did not get from an infection. His ears just filled up with fluid and his vocal development stopped.
He is also borderline Asperger’s.
Yes. A big boost to my career would have been to go teach my Navy Specialty to new recruits. Our school is in Meridian, Mississippi.
Do you feel like you’ve been discriminated against because of your asssociation with your wife? Have you ever been privy to racist watercooler “banter” that you didn’t just let slide? Are you now more sensitive to things that would not have previously registered on your radar?
Do you ever worry about the discrimination your son might face in life?
Does she have any friends or relatives who follow the hiphop, or rap, or whatever they call it? Bling, falling-down pants, that kind of thing? (I’m curious because the black neighbors across the street are just like any other middle class family, complete with snowblower, flowerbeds, yippy little dog, drive a Subaru, work in an insurance office. But until he went away, their son drove around blasting rap music from his gangsta ride, owned a big ugly dog, wore blingy sunglasses and clothes. So maybe it’s a generational thing, the young 'uns want to be hip and current, not suburbanites like ma and pa.)
Good luck with his ears! My son had PE tubes 4 times before he was 5, and had the last set when he was 8. After that, the holes never healed shut and now when he gets sick, they just drain. BLECCH! And he’s almost 30…
I can answer that… that which you witnessed is called "keepin it real’ LOL… what happens is that middle class black parents raise junior in a good neighborhood send him to tight schools… and pre sat kaplan classes… so he has to go XXL magazine and let his friends know that he’s hard… (ie tough) so Junior over-compensates by frontin the BET lifestyle. To me its alternatingly hillarious and sad… depends on the day…
I don’t think that I have been discriminated against, but I have had instaces where someone says some dumb offhand racist remark, and someone else or me tells them my wife is black, and I get profuse apologies. Well, its not your actions around someone that tells me your personality, its what you do when you think no-one is looking.
Yes, things that I never noticed before, I do notice now.
No I don’t worry. In the environment he is in now, being multi-racial is not uncommon. He doesn’t even notice that he is different, and neither do other kids.
He will have sufficient self-esteem to know that anyone who gives him problems in the future have a problem, not him.
How do you know I’m not like that? (Which I am not). Her family members are all on the continuum between Mainstream American, and Urban lifestyles. Her younger cousins tend to be more towards the bling type, but there is no-one who is extreme. Her mom works for A government contractor in DC, and so does her brother.
Hey, I was BREASTFEEDING my kid and someone told me they thought it was a great thing I’d done “adopting that little brown baby” 
Ah yes, “Keepin’ it real” is something young black people (regardless of income, social status, etc) feel is their calling. I didn’t grow up in a well-to-do neighborhood, it was quite poor, actually, but it wasn’t run down. Everyone kept their lawns up, my mother drove a Volvo, it was almost always quiet, and if there was noise, there was something in the area of a 98% chance it was being produced by some idiot 18 year old boy. Despite it being a fairly ordinary lower income suburban neighborhood, every male age 13-21 was on a mission to prove how hood he was. Like he was such a serious gangsta, even though he’d never even seen a gun, had to be home by 9:00 pm and his mama still did his laundry. These people triggered my insuppressible urge to say, “Negro, please.” I will also point out that this desperate need to “keep it real” is largely restricted to males. They grow out of it.
There was a guy in my freshman dorm who made me laugh because unlike me, he did grow up in a well-to-do neighborhood. His mother was a doctor, and he was attending some upper crust private university, yet he was such a bad ass. The guy’s probably never pumped his own gas, yet he was so “real.” Negro, please.
LOL. Or your wife, for that matter?
My questions for you:
How often do you get asked questions like salinqmind’s. “Does your wife do <stereotypical black thing> and if so, what’s up with that?”
Also, does it bother you when people ask you how “black” your wife is? Someone asked this question earlier in this thread, and I found the phrasing weird (as I always do). There are multiple ways to interpret the question as written, but the meaning that poster intended seemed to refer to physical appearance. Does it bother you that people are curious about those details, or do you shrug when people ask you to describe how black your wife is?
Do your parents dislike her because she is black, or for some other reason, or a bit of both?
At what point in your relationship did you tell them you were dating a black woman? How did they react then, and how did they react when you got engaged?
Do you feel a need to point out your connection to the black community when your wife is not around? Does it crack you up when people who don’t know try to ‘explain black culture’ to you?
This happens to me now and then - people assume I’m too white to know - having no understanding of my background. I find it to alternate between amusing and annoying.
What the hell is black culture, then?
Can someone explain that to me, because I’ve had plenty of black friends, and their culture seemed pretty American to me.
You know. Keepin’ it real, smackin’ hos, bangin’, the usual.