An increase in multiculturalism is a wonderful thing and adds much needed diversity to society, but a certain level of attention must be paid when you deal with culturally sensitive situations, such as interracial dating. Assumptions, generalizations and stereotypes must be discarded and replaced with politically correct and culturally respectful thoughts. Because dating wasn’t hard enough before, now you have to figure out how to communicate properly so as to not culturally offend your potential date. But communication isn’t the only thing making multicultural dating somewhat difficult, stereotypes held by both the public and the families cause discomfort for even the strongest interracial couples.
While difficult interracial communication may seem far-fetched in our modern society, most of you can think back to episodes where you’ve inaccurately assumed someone’s cultural background. For example, you’ve wished a Jewish person Merry Christmas, or ordered pepperoni on a pizza that you are to share with a Muslim. These assumptions were based on good intentions, but no doubt made you look insensitive and ignorant. Everyone makes mistakes right? Well at some point in time, whether it is a personal or business relationship, these blunders could cost you. It is of utmost importance that we all learn to communicate properly in a multicultural society.
Some mixed race couples never experience cultural communication problems. Either they themselves are unaware (or don’t care) about cultural ignorance or the couple shares such similar religious and cultural traditions that there are barely any discernable differences. Unfortunately for others, mixed race dating can be a major issue, especially for their parents.
There have been countless incidents of teenagers and young adults alike, being told by their parents whom they can and cannot date based solely on ethnicity and religion. You may be experiencing this yourself. For some cultures, dating is absolutely out of the question and instead the parents will arrange a mate. For others, the parents provide strict cultural dating guidelines. For example, the daughter may date only young men of the same ethnic and religious background as herself. True, this example seems a little old fashioned, but not unheard of in this day and age.
The most common form of multicultural dating is the secret relationship. Due to parental disapproval of conflicting religions and backgrounds, many couples choose to keep their inter-cultural relationship a secret, rather than face public upset.
Overcoming the parental control issue is not easy and there is no quick fix, but one thing is for sure, secrecy will help no one. If strict parents are not exposed to society’s increasing acceptance of multicultural dating, there will be little hope for change. Secrecy makes any relationship appear as if it is wrong and should not be happening, giving the family a reason to believe multicultural dating is socially taboo.
Multicultural dating has done and will continue to do nothing but improve society’s acceptance of mixed race relationships. Multicultural dating helps to open our eyes and our hearts to finding new love and soul mates within other cultural and ethnic groups. Who says that you and your soul mate must be culturally identical? |
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