Interracial dating: Never accept to be a secret

Interracial dating is amazing. But we can't run from the fact that as with all other relationships, it has its drawbacks. And as Mamie Mooney puts it on Beyond Black and White, "...when you run into those draw backs it’s important that you know that you need to take care of you and your feelings–no one else’s."

Here is why:

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Mooney, Black, met Tony, a Vietnamese man, some years back. He was perfect. She fell in love and it was great. And the fact that he was Vietnamese made it even more interesting.

Tony loved Mooney's daughter and the feeling was mutual. And most of all, he loved Mooney and always showered her with affection, attention and understanding. "I absolutely adored him, we had a bright future and planned to get married and have tons and tons of babies (ok, not tons but we planned on starting a family shortly after graduating and marriage)... And I was pleasantly surprised at his bedroom game, which is a whole other story. Things were perfect. That is, unless we were talking about his parents," she says.

Much as he was a grown a** 26 year old man, he was super loyal to his parents. "Not only was his loyalty bulletproof, but his acceptance of babying and ideation supplied by his mother and father was equally unbreakable," says Mooney. And even though she admired the loyalty, it was the babying that constantly made her eyes roll. He was the only boy... "much valued and entrusted with carrying on the family name."

Tony had met Mooney's family and they got along very well. And Tony told Mooney she couldn't meet his parents until after graduation. Apparently, having a girlfriend would have distracted him so they had forbidden him from having a girlfriend... which she understood. "I told myself, this was ok, and at that point it was. He was set to graduate soon so we planned to make introductions at graduation," she says.

And graduatuion came... and graduation went. But for some reason, he didn't graduate. However he promised to talk to his parents about their relationship which was then a liitle over a year old. But did he? NO!!

"The issues with his parents became progressively worse. The more I pushed for him to become more independent of them, set boundaries with them–and detach himself from his moms vagina. The more he became frantic about wanting to keep both me and his parents happy. Neither of those options included his happiness. And why would they? He was so indoctrinated with the collective nature of his culture that he didn’t comprehend that you absolutely cannot make everybody happy. And when it comes to you, your relationship with the woman you love, and the marriage and children you plan to have with her, making your parents happy shouldn’t matter.. Should it?"

He hushed her when the parents rang. He lied about where he was when they were together... It was like she was the other woman... It was like he was cheating on his mother.

"I was pushed over the edge when I drove down to his house to spend the weekend with him and his parents showed up to bring him food (because his mom cooked his meals every week and either personally delivered them or had his cousins drop them off). He heard a car drive up looked out the window saw that it was his parents, said be quiet and rush out of the room; but not before turning off the light in the room I was in. I was appalled. I was hurt. I felt like a dog, like a piece of furniture. So there I sat in complete shock, in the damn dark like a punk, while he briefly visited with his parents and shooed them away. He came back to the room I was sitting in and he acted as if nothing happened. I told him that what he did was the single most disrespectful thing I’ve ever experienced and that I was leaving."

After that the relationship became rocky. She sort of met his parents, telling them he was tutoring her "(when he choked trying telling them that we had I fact been dating for 2 and a half years at this point)." Mooney got fed up and decided to leave. But then told his parents that weekend. Here is what happened after...

"I even decided since this was a huge step that he actually made this time that I would send his parents an edible arrangement (because all my Asian friends said food is always a big hit with Asian parents) with a letter introducing myself, and offering to take them to dinner. Well, they got the edible arrangement, let it rot and then threw it away. But not before telling Tony to let “his friend” know not to send them such expensive gifts. That wasn’t even the worst part. His mother told him that she would in fact kill herself if he brought me home; that I was ugly, black, too dark, and only wanting to get pregnant so that I could take all of his money. His parents said that dating a white woman was different and that he could do that but not a black woman."

He never got detatched from his parents after that. And they broke up for good. Mooney says, "I didn’t want someone to have to learn to accept or like me. Most of all I wanted a man who was going to fight for me, a man who decided that his love for me and happiness was worth more than the opinion of his over bearing mother."

Her advice:

"Point blank - If a man cares about or loves you he will not only respect you, your body and your honor, but he will want to show you off to EVERYBODY, and I mean every.damn.body, even the mail man. He will also defend you and stand up for you when or if someone, including family has something to say about you that is unbecoming of who you are. He will do this in order to make you feel safe, protected, and because he believes that despite the fact that you fart in your sleep, or wake up looking like a troll doll and snore like a freight train, that you are the most perfect woman alive and when he is around people BETTER respect you. Anything else, is just you being a placeholder."

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