Popular Culture Says: Black men and Asian ladies love each other.
I've always hated the way we're all conditioned by the media and pop culture to stick to our own race in relationships, no doubt because I'm a mongrel. Age three: blonde Barbie was encouraged to date blond Ken, and [insert ethnicity] Barbie ended up with [insert ethnicity] Ken. It made sense to everyone after the lesson about fitting round and square pegs in their respective holes. On TV through the 80's: mainstream families were one race (Family Ties) or another (The Cosby Show), but rarely both or anything else, unless a big deal was made of the racial issue. Even today, I always get a good chuckle about the predictability of movie couples pairing up because they look like one another*. I scored free tickets to the egregious Dungeons and Dragons movie a few years ago, and of course, the white hero ended up with blonde heroine, while his black sidekick didn't give her much of a second look after spying a hot black female elf. Oh, she was an entirely different species, and hundreds of years older than said black sidekick, but she was black, so naturally they hooked up.
*What's up with that? Hello? Inbreeding?
Speaking of Marlon Wayans, see also Requiem for a Dream, in which he played a black sidekick of a very different nature, who also had a black girlfriend, unlike his skinny white friend, who had Jennifer Connolly -- who proved by the end of the movie that mixing races and sex is every nightmare come true at once.
In the last decade-and-a-half, though, ethnicity cocktails have become suddenly cool, at least on TV. It seems Hispanic people look the most like white people (before moving to the US, I never thought of them as separate), so having J.Lo and George Clooney fall in love onscreen was easy. But what about those other pesky races? Black people and Asians look very different from whites, and Mr. and Mrs. Middle-America may not be quite comfortable yet with the thought of them bumping up against white genitals (except in Mr. Middle-America's porn collection). So why not pair them with each other?
Wait, silly me, I forgot that Asian men are invisible. OK, black men and Asian ladies, then? Perfect! Like Ming-Na and Mekhi Phifer on ER. And Sandra Oh and Isaiah Washington on Grey's Anatomy. And Tamlyn Tomita and Joe Morton on Eureka. And others I've spotted which you can probably name.
Apparently it's called Blasian love or something. There's a Facebook group for it.
Why not? After all, Thurgood Marshall married a Filipina. And now all those Blaxploitation films make sense. Maybe we'll get a few more Tiger Woods out of it, too, and eventually a Hiro from Snow Crash. And if they practice hard and do a good job, maybe one day minority men will earn a chance with some of those magic untouchable white wimmin. Yes, we can!
EXTRA: I <3 you, Yahoo Answers. Q and first A are pure gold.
*What's up with that? Hello? Inbreeding?
Speaking of Marlon Wayans, see also Requiem for a Dream, in which he played a black sidekick of a very different nature, who also had a black girlfriend, unlike his skinny white friend, who had Jennifer Connolly -- who proved by the end of the movie that mixing races and sex is every nightmare come true at once.
In the last decade-and-a-half, though, ethnicity cocktails have become suddenly cool, at least on TV. It seems Hispanic people look the most like white people (before moving to the US, I never thought of them as separate), so having J.Lo and George Clooney fall in love onscreen was easy. But what about those other pesky races? Black people and Asians look very different from whites, and Mr. and Mrs. Middle-America may not be quite comfortable yet with the thought of them bumping up against white genitals (except in Mr. Middle-America's porn collection). So why not pair them with each other?
Wait, silly me, I forgot that Asian men are invisible. OK, black men and Asian ladies, then? Perfect! Like Ming-Na and Mekhi Phifer on ER. And Sandra Oh and Isaiah Washington on Grey's Anatomy. And Tamlyn Tomita and Joe Morton on Eureka. And others I've spotted which you can probably name.
Apparently it's called Blasian love or something. There's a Facebook group for it.
Why not? After all, Thurgood Marshall married a Filipina. And now all those Blaxploitation films make sense. Maybe we'll get a few more Tiger Woods out of it, too, and eventually a Hiro from Snow Crash. And if they practice hard and do a good job, maybe one day minority men will earn a chance with some of those magic untouchable white wimmin. Yes, we can!
EXTRA: I <3 you, Yahoo Answers. Q and first A are pure gold.
Labels: culturobabble
posted by Melissa Dunphyat
21:55
2 Comments:
YES I DID.
I never kept my Barbie/Ken dolls in pristine condition. I would whip out the black Sharpie pen and color out Barbie's and Ken's hair to give them that "Eurasian" touch, so they could be a multiracial mutt like me.
Touché about your comment regarding Asian men. Where's the love for that ethnic/gender group in Hollywood cinema or American television? Oh right. I have to watch them on satellite television and international channels. Maybe my statistics are off, but since Asians represent only 3-5 percent of the general population in the Great U.S.A., then we do not deserve to have "our" people represented on the Big Screen. We are the missing racial link---e.g., consider the attention that Asians had in the media and the election process. But that's a whole story in itself.
That's right. American directors wouldn't be able to cast Angelina Jolie and Jackie Chan in an action movie, because that wouldn't make any money unless one of the main characters had to die off (and you can guess who that would be). Or Jet Li and Julia Roberts in a romantic flick? Five words: Don't even think about it. Rob Schneider is probably booked for the rest of the year. Lou Diamond Philips only plays American-Indian and Hispanic roles. Hmmm. Disheartening, indeed.
From my own personal experience, some of the African-American males that I've briefly encountered in the Southeastern/Midwestern parts of the U.S. can't figure out the different categories of Asians: They lump me into the popular adjective of Oriental. Color me selective. I guess I'll stay with within my Eurasian comfort zone and keep it simple.
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