Despite that pockets of America are certainly uncomfortable with a black (mixed-race) president occupying the White House, we are a society enthralled with the idea of hybrid vigor. Dreams of a post-racial world in which iterative intermixing renders us all a pleasantly common shade are very much a part of our national consciousness. See, for example, the cover of a previous issue of Time Magazine. As the dream goes, a multiracial America with a 'mixed' future of interracial marriage will lead the world into a new era of post-racial harmony. Today, even, interracial marriages are on the rise.
What's more, from popular fiction accounts of the intermixing of vampires and werewolves to commonplace comments about how 'mixed babies are so cute' (and the like) to overdeterminations and misunderstandings of heterosis in a society that is shallowly obsessed with generalized science and technofuturism, we get the distinct sense that hybrid vigor is real: that mixed-race people are more beautiful, maybe even genetically superior.
Obviously this idea is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that it risks stigmatizing, ethnicizing, and objectifying mixed-race people. But it also reflects a creepy and contorted understanding of human relationships. Though we've come so far in not just 'accepting' or 'tolerating' mixed-race relationships, but in removing much of the stigma historically attached to racial mixing, these seemingly positive associations with mixed-race people (and, by implication, interracial couples) nevertheless do the negative work of placing the racial difference of the couple at the center of the conversation.
As someone who is presently in a relationship with someone of a different race than my own (and has been in multiple interracial relationships in the past), I can tell an all-too-familiar story to illustrate this point.
I know well enough that when a white male is dating or even perceived as dating an Asian woman, many default to the assumption that he is some kind of Asian fetishist. Such assumptions are made possible almost entirely by a long history of racist portrayals of Asian women and Asian men in Western literature, film, popular culture, and political discourse. That Asian men are feminized and cast as sexually inept nerds in these media means white guys are always viable predators. Asian women, as you've heard, are supposed to be docile, coquettish, etc.; so the white men who pursue them must then be the types who 'can't handle a strong (read: white) woman,' are controlling, are looking for someone to clean up after them and gratify their sexual inclinations, etc. Men of this sort have an 'Asian fetish,' and, so the racist tautology goes, a white man dating an Asian woman has an Asian fetish, because an Asian woman (as portrayed in racist stereotype) gratifies such desires.
If you're a white man who's dated more than one Asian woman..well, then, you're really at risk for being labeled a fetishist. Curiously, however, a white man who dates more than one white woman in a lifetime rarely (if ever) risks being labeled a 'white fetishist.'
If you think about it, there are only two reasons why the 'fetishist' label comes into play in the former example, but not the latter. One, because the people in the relationship in the former example are not of the same race; two, because one of the two races represented has a history of being portrayed in lewd and racist ways. We can fairly surmise that, though indeed the world has its share of creepy guys who fetishize Asian, black, Indian, hispanic, etc. women, the suspicion that one is a fetishist typically comes not from any actual demonstration or hint of fetishistic behavior or attitudes, but from the simple facts that 1) the couple is interracial and 2) this interracial 'combination' is stigmatized as a consequence of racist portrayals and attitudes.
This suggests to me that, multiracial America be damned, even the enlightened, intelligent, and liberal-minded among us are still inclined to stigmatize certain kinds of relationships along racial lines.
Accordingly, I urge you to ask yourself, next time you find yourself inclined to question whether an interracial couple is together because one of them has a 'black thing' or an 'Asian thing,' if you'd ask the same question of someone in a relationship with someone of the same race as their own. Do you ever wonder, white people, who have dated exclusively white people, whether you have a white people fetish? Do you ever think the Asian guy and his Asian wife have mutual Asian fetishes, or if one of the black couple eating across from you at the restaurant is totally just into black men? I suspect you don't; which is why I wonder at you wondering at me. How many white women should I date before I'm allowed to date nonwhite women without being suspected of fetishism?
What would your answers be like if I applied the same racial scrutiny to your relationships as you do to mine? What if I asked you why you only date within your race? Don't you like the way people of other races look? Is there something particular to your race that you're 'into'? Do you like 'white' features? If you'd think it odd or inappropriate for me to ask you these questions, consider revisiting some of your own.
