April 5th, 2012
10:49 AM ET
.. Posted by Chuck Hadad report.
Tune in to "Anderson Cooper 360°" all week for the surprising results of a groundbreaking new study on children and race at 8 and 10 p.m. ET.
(CNN) -- Luke, a white seventh grader, believes his parents would not be supportive if he dated an African-American girl. "Honestly I don't think my parents would be too happy because ... if you marry a black girl, you're connected to their family now," he said, adding, "and who knows what her family is really like?"
Jimmy, a black seventh grader, recounted that after he had several white girlfriends, his parents seemed to interpret it as an affront to his own race. "They said, 'Why not your own kind?' because all my girls have been white," he said, adding, "it's not like they were like, 'You need to choose a black girl,' it's just they were asking me why I like white girls and I was just like, 'there's no ... specific reason.' "
Their stories highlight a divide not between the races, but between the generations. Both teens participated in an Anderson Cooper 360° study on children and race. Many students reported discouragement of interracial dating from their parents, or those of their friends, with reactions ranging from wariness to outright forbiddance.
The architect of the AC360° study, renowned child psychologist Dr. Melanie Killen, says parents of both white and black kids have a lot of anxiety about the prospect of interracial dating. Killen, who was hired as a consultant for the study, contends the trepidation from parents can have a profound negative effect on their children's friendships and racial attitudes as a whole.
"Parents of young children do often send messages about, 'We can all be friends ... with everybody,' ... but by adolescence, they start getting more nervous about this and they start thinking, 'Well you should be friends with people like you or like us,' " said Killen. She added that parents' ultimate fear is often that their children will marry another race. While interracial couples are a source of conflict for some families, interracial marriage is on the rise in America. According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center using the most recent Census data, 8.4% of marriages are interracial compared to just 3.2% in 1980 and in 2010, a full 15.1% of all new marriages were interracial.
Anderson Cooper and Soledad O'Brien interviewed a panel of parents whose children participated in the AC360° study and were vocal about the issue of interracial dating. The father of Luke, the white middle-schooler, said his son might have gotten the wrong impression from a conversation he and his wife had with Luke's older sister.
"She informed me she had started going out with an African-American ... young man at her school. A young man that we knew, and that we liked a lot and it wasn't that we didn't so much want them dating because of race per se. We didn't know if she had really thought about some of the cultural differences that there may be and so we talked about it in that respect ... not that it's right or wrong, good or bad, just different," said Luke's father Gary.
He also admitted that the issues facing friends in interracial marriages were at the forefront of his mind. "They have great marriages. They also have shared challenges at times. Challenges in the way the families may relate, challenges that they themselves may have either between themselves or the perception of other people ... we've talked about those kind of things because they're real," said Gary.
The father of Jimmy, the black teen, said he's supportive of his son dating girls of any race but his son's slew of white girlfriends did get him concerned. "When you see your kid always steering towards a different race, you want to make sure that he doesn't have a problem with his own race ... because we'd never seen him with a black girlfriend," said Jimmy's father, also named Jimmy.
Another black seventh grader who participated in the study, 13-year-old Chantay, admitted she, and others in her extended family, had a double standard regarding interracial dating.
"If I were to date a white guy, a lot of people wouldn't really have a problem with that. But if my brother were to bring home a white girl, there's definitely going to be some you know controversy," she said, adding, "I think its more of a problem for people when a black man brings home a white woman because it's been like that for years."
Chantay's mother Christal says she'd support her children dating any race but thinks her daughter's issue reveals concerns about whether black men view black women as inferior. "I think when she speaks about if her brother were to bring home a white girl, what it says I think to our kids, our black kids, is, 'Are we not good enough for our black brothers? What's wrong with us? What, do you like the silky straight hair? I can press my hair,' " said Christal.
As for the parents who spoke to Cooper and O'Brien, they said hearing their children's thoughts on interracial dating was revelatory and would spark more conversations at home. For Killen, raising these issues in parents' minds is essential because they can have unintended long-term consequences. She says perceived discouragement of interracial dating can, "contribute to more negative messages about being friends with people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds," adding, "then that sets in a whole set of expectations that could be lifelong."
Watch Anderson Cooper 360° weeknights 10pm ET.
April 5th, 2012
10:47 AM ET
.. Posted by Elizabeth Mayo.
Editor's note: Elizabeth Mayo is a digital producer for CNN's "Early Start" and "Starting Point." All this week, "AC360°" airs its special series "Kids on Race: The Hidden Picture" at 8 and 10 p.m. ET on CNN. Thursday's installment will focus on interracial dating.
(CNN) -- It all started on my second date with Alex. It was 1997 and on a whim we went into Manhattan to see the ball drop on New Year's Eve in Times Square. The closest we could get was 55th Street and Seventh Avenue. That's pretty far away, but we could still see the glittering ball touching the sky. He was 19, I was 17.
For him, I was his childhood dream girl: I'm tall, have curly brown hair and I play cello, so I was the real-life version of Sigourney Weaver's character in "Ghostbusters" (his favorite movie). To me, he was smart, doting and hilarious.
On what had to be the coldest night in the history of the ball drop, we shivered next to each other waiting patiently, with a few thousand spectators, to get one year closer to the millennium. At midnight, the ball dropped and the crowd erupted.
We looked at each other in anticipation and we kissed. Fireworks went off. Literally, behind us in Central Park fireworks set the sky ablaze to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the five boroughs constituting New York City. And when the heck did that saxophone player show up playing "Auld Lang Syne"? We took this only-in-the-movies moment as a sign from the universe that we were meant to be together.
There was one problem: Alex is half-black. I am white, half-Spanish in fact.
In the back of my mind, I knew Alex's race would pose a problem for my family. Not to get explicit, but racial epithets were common in my house. My dad emigrated from Spain in the early 1970s and worked in construction.
The culture on the job, coupled with his solid self-righteousness and Old World thinking, led to an intense hatred of anything "different." The N-word, the C-word, the other C-word, the G-word, the S-word -- they all echoed in my house regularly. My mom, who moved to New York from Iowa, was indifferent on race but wasn't about to challenge my dad's way of thinking.
How did I come out of this house without being a racist? That I can't answer. Race wasn't an issue for me. I grew up in Queens and was exposed to all races when I was young. When I met Alex, it sounds corny, but I never saw a color -- I just saw Alex.
Fast-forward to senior prom: I decided this would be the time for my parents to meet the guy I'd been dating. I looked stunning in my red-sequined Jessica McClintock ball gown, and Alex was dapper in a tux and top hat. We had already, by that point, said we loved each other and knew this was something special. I thought that introducing him to my parents in a public place where my dad couldn't freak out was the way to go.
The conversation in the parking lot at the prom literally went like this:
"Dad, this is Alex."
Handshake.
"Nice to meet you, Alex."
"Nice to meet you, sir."
"OK, have a good time." Then my dad walked away.
Alex and I danced through the night and left the next day for the customary fun weekend to the Jersey Shore with my classmates. I returned home a day later.
Saying a nuclear bomb went off in my family would not begin to describe what happened. My dad lost it. He had stewed while I was away, waiting to unleash his fury. I was led to the basement to receive the lecture of my life. No way was his daughter going to date a black man.
"Do you want to be a big mama ... barefoot and pregnant for the rest of your life? Do you want a bunch of black babies?" he screamed. "You're going to throw your life away on that n-----?"
Those are just some of the lines I remember. It went on for hours, and he said a lot more, but I had shut my brain off after the first few minutes. In my mind, I was just dating Alex. In my dad's mind, my life was over.
The fallout continued for months. My dad refused to talk to me or co-sign my school loan papers for college. I was kicked out of the house on more than one occasion. Alex felt helpless, livid at being judged by a handshake and his skin color, but he knew it didn't have anything to do with him. It was all in my dad's head.
From what I'd heard about Alex's parents, it sounded like we were on track to repeat history. Alex's mom, a white woman from Long Island, had a troubled relationship with her own father as a result of her dating Alex's dad, a black man from Georgia. I was grateful that she let me hide out in her apartment and served as my refuge, and she stayed out of the drama. We had to figure this out on our own.
All the fighting never changed my feelings for Alex, and I never considered breaking up with him to appease my family. I knew Alex was "the one," and I wasn't about to let my racist father get in the way of my happiness.
For the next eight years, I dated Alex in secret. My dad didn't know a thing. It didn't matter since we barely talked. My mom had an inkling, but I didn't tell her much. Alex and I had milestones, we went to friends' weddings, became honorary aunts and uncles. We even moved in together, and for years my parents were none the wiser.
By 2006, I was well into my job at CNN. My colleagues knew what was going on and encouraged me to talk to my dad again, this time as a strong adult woman who was succeeding in a career and no longer financially dependent on my parents. They were right. It was eating me up inside that I had to pretend that a huge part of my life didn't exist.
I took my parents to lunch, hoping again that there would be safety in a public space. Sometime before the entrée, I explained that I was still dating the same man who was rejected so ferociously nearly 10 years earlier. I told my dad I understood he was trying to protect his daughter, but he should have trusted me to make the right decision for myself. I said I couldn't pretend I wasn't with Alex, we wanted to get married, and to be a part of my life, they had to accept it.
"Do you love him? And does he love you?" my dad asked cautiously.
"Yes. He's my soul mate," I answered.
After eight years of tears and anxiety, my dad conceded.
I sometimes wonder why my dad had a change of heart, because all discussion on the matter ended that day. I don't think he had one "aha" moment, but maybe it just took years of rolling it over in his head and realizing that his preconceived notions of what would happen to me if I dated Alex were wrong. I was neither a "big mama" (what does that even mean?) or barefoot, pregnant or destitute. I was solidly in my adult life and happy in love.
Alex and I were married on August 4, 2007. My dad walked me down the aisle
It's been 14 years since the roller coaster started. It almost seems like the lying, the hurt and the drama happened to someone else. Alex is my family, my other half, the love of my life. He's just as much a member of the family as anyone else. Alex visits my parents often, and my dad sometimes calls him just to chat. Sometimes my dad will jokingly refer to him as "chocolate milk" or "Barack Obama," maybe as way of relieving some tension around the intense hatred he had once possessed.
We even took a family trip to my dad's childhood home in Spain. I think my dad was secretly thrilled to have Alex to share his stories of walking for miles as a 5-year-old to see my grandmother in the hospital, or throwing a cat on a horse's back just to watch both animals squeal. Slowly, my dad shared the family myths and stories with my husband and we grew closer.
As we get ready to start our own family, I think about how I will explain this all to my future child (or children -- that's still up for discussion) about what we went through to be together. Cheesy as it sounds, I think I'll tell them that love really conquers all, and time, with a dash of patience, heals many wounds. I'll teach them that change is always possible, even when you think it's not. And I'd emphasize that forgiveness for someone else's misperception doesn't have to come from an apology, but can be a way of allowing yourself to deal with a situation that is out of your control.
And I'll make sure not to censor anything, because they deserve to know how we found a way to break through hatred to find acceptance.
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