Stepping Over the Line

Right now I am in a Race and Ethnicity class and one day we were talking about interracial relationships. The same way you do not see too many homosexual, transsexual, anything but heterosexual relationships on television, you don't see too many interracial couples. But the media s not really the the reason why I bring up this point.

Something that we talked about is when is it acceptable for someone to go outside of their race and be in a relationship with someone outside of their race. Throughout then entire discussion it was men that were able to cross between these boundaries. They were able to seek out women of different races easily while it was the women who were the ones that seemed to be pieces of the game that they could just trade off.

Many women would seek men inside of their own racial categories and it wasn't until a man of another race "noticed" them that they were actually able to be in a relationship with someone outside of their racial group. Men are the ones that are in charge of determining who can date who; not only in the world of races, but also in the world of sexuality (mainly because you can't have one without the other).

Think about it. When most people see and interracial couple, they see the man dating the woman. For instance, take a black man and a white woman dating, or even a white man and a black woman dating. What people will see is the black man dating the white woman, or the white man dating the black woman, not so much vice versa. I just thought it was interesting that even when it comes to going outside of one's racial groups to date it is still determined by the man.