Going Colorblind

Grandparents say the darnedest things.

Scene: Miami, Florida. My family and I are sitting around the dining table for Christmas dinner. My grandparents don’t get to see me that often, so when they do, they tend to assume the role of life-coaches: famous one-liners include “go straight to law school,” “don’t do drugs,” “go to church” and “here’s some money for your coffee.”

But I was surprised by one bit of advice I received from my grandfather this past Christmas. He told me that he would advise against being in a long term relationship with someone “outside of our culture” (read: so choose someone who is black, and preferably Jamaican). This came as a big surprise from a family that rarely discusses race. Most Jamaicans identify less with being black than do black Americans, because there’s not much white to compare yourself to in Jamaica. Although all of the members of my family would say that they are black, I have many relatives—including my grandfather—whose looks leave people guessing. And with so much diversity of appearance within my family, it surprises me that my grandfather would make similarity a criterion.

In some ways, I can understand where my grandfather is coming from. He’s thinking long-term: marriage, the creation of a family, and the preservation of a culture. Even though I’m from Boca Raton, when I think of home it’s not Louis Vuitton bags and sprawling, crowded shopping malls that come to mind. It’s the curried chicken and stew peas dinners and the fact when my mom gets angry her patois—the Jamaican accent—emerges in full force.

Yet the fact is that—unlike my parents and my grandparents—I did not grow up in Jamaica but in Boca Raton. There, we were the only black family in our gated community, and I was one of only a few black students in most of my high school classes. My life has been a compromise of cultures that didn’t always mesh well. Jamaican culture, sometimes to my parents’ dismay, has not always won the fight. I don’t know how to cook the meals that remind me of home. I like to shop more than I like to do most things. And when I go to Jamaica my younger cousins mock my American “twang,” telling me that I sound just like the people on MTV. Wouldn’t it be appropriate, then, for me to be in a relationship that involved the meeting and sometimes the conflict of two cultures?

But when I returned to Cambridge after winter break, I found myself questioning for the first time my color-blind dating style. I was sliding smoothly back into the pattern my grandfather had warned me about. Why, I wondered, was it so easy? I’ve never even had a serious conversation about race with any of my boyfriends. Shouldn’t race be more of an issue? It’s an especially difficult question for me because, until coming to Harvard, I didn’t know a single interracial couple. At Harvard, on the other hand, the phenomenon seems to be so prevalent that, at least for me, it’s a non-issue. Since coming to Harvard I’ve been on dates with Asian, Arab, Hispanic, white and black students.

In part, I have my new peers to thank for the change. I’ve never had to defend or even explain myself to any of them. Except for one scary incident when, after going to a movie together, my one-time date told me that he would never “ever” consider marrying someone who did not share his nationality, the issue has never come up. It’s not a taboo subject, but I just don’t find myself thinking about my blackness or, for example, the other person’s whiteness, while we’re spending time together.

The same is true for all of my friendships. Connections with other people, platonic or otherwise, can and do cross the cultural, racial, and social fissures that concerned my grandfather. Relationships are worthwhile because people are so different, lending countless opportunities to learn about and from each other. Cultural or racial similarity does not guarantee a smooth ride when it comes to friendships or romantic relationships. Perhaps so many people have trouble finding that elusive spark or electricity with another person because they’re only looking in one place; take it from me, electricity crosses the color line. Besides, like my dad once told me, you can’t choose who to fall in love with.

You might be thinking that I’m being overly optimistic or naïve, and you might be right. I have no idea whether or not the interracial dating experiment will produce the same results once I leave the incubator of Harvard’s campus. But if an interracial relationship means a challenging relationship, I say, show me a relationship that isn’t challenging. Show me a relationship that doesn’t require an immense amount of compromise. Show me a relationship, interracial or otherwise, that does not require serious time spent trying to decipher what on Earth is going on in the other person’s head. After you tell me about it, I’ll probably ask for your phone number, regardless of your race.