Interracial relationships

[PassionForFashion]

My BFF claims that in her her experience, sometimes the person in the more privileged group is in that relationship because they may have a secret conscious or unconscious need to feel slightly better than their partner. Or that the more privileged person assumes there may be more drama due to a bigger family or disadvantage of some kind and may enjoy the supposed excitement or adventure of this.

I’m not sure that’s really true, except maybe in the rarest cases.

What do others who have been close to situations like this or have informed themselves about it think?

Given how human beings work I'd say her hypothesis that it's 'sometimes' the case is correct. Certainly not always. How often is hard to tell.

The same can be said of any other percieved inequality - class, money, attractiveness.

Or that the more privileged person assumes there may be more drama due to a bigger family or disadvantage of some kind

That sounds like an awful lot of assumptions, if by 'more privileged person' you mean 'white' -- the BAME person isn't, solely by virtue of being from an ethnic minority, necessarily going to be from a larger or a poorer family.

How unusual, but maybe so in her experience(s), or she is projecting?? I guess no one will ever admit it.

5/8 of my closest GFs (and myself) are in interracial relationships and I haven’t and don’t think this at all. My GFs are mostly minorities.

It could happen in same-race couples too!

It's completely untrue but you are going to get a lot of people agreeing who are BAME.

I am a black woman and it's not true but a lot of black people kind of... choose to believe it is true because it's a way to address a different point - which is that perceived attractiveness is linked to race and this hurts black people in the dating market.

A lot of black women are sensitive to interracial dating for this reason and progressive spaces spend a lot of time trying to concoct "illegitimate" reasons for interracial dating because they really want to criticise interracial dating completely but know it's not socially allowed.

I hear this a lot about plus size women (I'm plus size). Apparently men like to date plus size women so they can abuse them. But then men also like to date slim women to cut them down and also average women so they won't be outshone and... you see the problem. It just becomes a way to attack plus size people in relationships and insinuate that they aren't loveable and can only be used or strategically valuable.

The point of this is to imply that minority partners are never really loved and it's very nasty. But it comes from a place of desperation and self hatred so I would just forgive it.

Very interesting to say it can happen in same race couples!

What about relationships between two people of different minorities? How are we judging who is the more privileged party?

I think her comments are quite insulting in implying a sort of saviour complex but also that the other person would be party to that. As well as the fact that we are more than our race, people are much more than that.

Most relationships have different balances of power across varying parameters. Yes, I am in an interracial relationship.

Can't people just meet a nice person and start dating without total strangers making all sorts of assumptions about why?
Attraction is totally uncontrollable and unexplainable. I don't like this thing that seems to be happening where certain attractions/relationships are 'allowed' and others are frowned upon. It feels like a backward step.

I believe my friend has been hurt and I didn’t want to negate her experience by contradicting her, I thought I’d ask here instead.

I think the feeling she was trying to express was that she was made to feel as though she should be grateful and subservient in some way.

I felt awful for her. Still, I don’t know quite what to think. There must be people like this, but surely it’s extremely rare?

Not only is it untrue, but it's really very offensive. Having been in relationships with three men of different ethnicities -including my own - I find it deeply offensive and absurd to make such a sweeping statement. What a load of pseudo-Freudian nonsense.

Well, I can't speak for others' relationships, but as someone who is in an interracial relationship myself, I don't relate to this or recognise it in any way. It's also quite offensive.

Also this:
Most relationships have different balances of power across varying parameters.

I'd say your friend is simplifying a very complex thing, and maybe a little projection of her own experience. Not everyone has that same experience and privilege is not a particularly straight forward thing.

I'm mixed race and DH is white, but I come from a smaller very stable family background whereas his family is large and chaotic so in our situation his colour does give him some privilege but his background was definitely a disadvantage for him and he was exposed to situations that shaped him that I will never understand.

Of course there are people who fetishise or exoticise race, but for many couples it is just simple attraction and compatibility.

The dynamic you describe is possible in any relationship where there is a power imbalance. You obviously thing that the white person is the privileged one and that tells me more about you and your friend than anything else in this thread

These power struggles exist in all sorts of relationships!
I think, really, it boils down to two people falling in love. And if one of them comes from a family of racist, homophobic, xenophobic jackasses, well, voila! There's your 'drama'. I don't think for a moment the majority of people seek out drama. We're all just looking for love! But there are a lot of families with overt racists who have no problem letting everyone know their views. And if they become your inlaws, God give you strength!

I think your friend is in a very hurt place and choosing to see the worst in people, given the pain she's processing. It's quite normal. I remember thinking, after a very traumatic break-up with a boyfriend, that his family didn't approve of me because I wasn't from their culture, their background, their 'ilk' and that possibly, he was with me because I was just 'different', a sort of entertaining spanner in the 'familial' works. I felt very 'othered' before it was a term. I look back now, 22 years later and realise that, nah, we were just totally incompatible! And actually, his family was wonderful... totally benign. There was nothing malignant or toxic or xenophobic in their behaviour towards me. But at the time, I was raging with pain. The break-up was an intensely difficult one and I saw all sorts of things that weren't really there.

I don't think for a moment the majority of people seek out drama.

Indeed not! And some of us in interracial relationships happen to lead extremely dull lives with very little drama at all! No big family fallouts here...

@withmycoffee

The dynamic you describe is possible in any relationship where there is a power imbalance. You obviously thing that the white person is the privileged one and that tells me more about you and your friend than anything else in this thread

You haven’t said what that tells you?

I met some poor Russian women married to rich Chinese men; who is the ‘privileged’ one in that setup? Some parts of Russia are really, really rough

@AlexaShutUp

I don't think for a moment the majority of people seek out drama.

Indeed not! And some of us in interracial relationships happen to lead extremely dull lives with very little drama at all! No big family fallouts here...

As @RubyFakeLips put it far better than I, the enjoyment may have a saviour complex aspect, rather than drama for its own sake.

Or that the more privileged person assumes there may be more drama due to a bigger family or disadvantage of some kind and may enjoy the supposed excitement or adventure of this.

^ what the fuck does that even mean? "Bigger family/disadvantage"? Please explain

In any relationship you could find people who are there for power and not for love. It's a ridiculous suggestion that a white person (assume that's what you mean by privileged) is seeking out a minority ethnicity because of a power play. Shock horror but there doesn't need to be a power play for minority ethnicities to be loved and committed

The point of this is to imply that minority partners are never really loved and it's very nasty. But it comes from a place of desperation and self hatred so I would just forgive it.

^ and absolutely this. No one is questioning the power dynamic of same race couples are they? Agree with you 100% (except I wouldn't just forgive it)

the enjoyment may have a saviour complex aspect, rather than drama for its own sake.

I've no doubt that this may be a dynamic in some relationships. I'm just at a slight loss as to why this would be a particular feature of interracial relationships and not others? There are so many different power dynamics at play in any relationship, all interwoven together in a complex way.

This subject can offend all sorts if people, I didn’t mean any offence. I just want to have a better understanding in order to be able to better support my friend.

I think the key point, OP, is that all interracial relationships are different. Just like any other relationships. You can't generalise, so you will be able to support your friend best by listening to her unique experiences and helping her to realise that they are just that.