Open Letter to the Editors and Readership
By Lucy Brewer
When I read the “One for the Ladies” pod cast/article posted Friday, I was disappointed, to say the least. No admonition or reminder to the youth of both genders of the importance of preserving European heritage, but a clear admonition, however “gently” phrased, geared specifically toward women. I thought EAU was dedicated to exorcising the failings of prior approaches, including a stereotypical, hackneyed, sexist world view.
Let me make a few points:
1. Miscegenation has historically been initiated by males, whether it be the Spanish conquistadors, French colonists, American slaveholders, pioneers mixing with American Indians, or American GI’s fathering children while in Asia or the Middle East. It is not at all clear that has changed today, when you expand the analysis to include interracial relationships beyond European American and African American.
2. There are few companies making profits advertising foreign mail order non-white husbands to European American women. There is, however, a proliferation of companies making money providing beautiful Asian, Latina, and African American women to European American men.
3. Since it’s a clandestine industry and statistics are hard to find, I’m left wondering how much of the audience that makes pornography sites featuring Asian, Latina, and African American women is actually comprised of European American men. When you find porn sites depicting Asian, African American and Latino men, with rare exception, they are geared toward a homosexual audience. At least when it comes to porn as the measure, the absence of the sexual appeal engaging a heterosexual female audience is apparent.
4. We see Jennifer Lopez, Eva Longoria, Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, Lucy Liu, Beyonce Knowles, and others flaunted onscreen daily to appeal to young men, but only Vin Diesel and maybe one or two others as any kind of sex symbol geared to appeal to a young European American female audience. The fact that the first admonition against mixing didn’t include an admonition against these sirens is, to say the least, puzzling, especially given the hormonal tendencies of young men in the 13 to 25 age range.
5. It’s not predominantly women dating the increasing pool of legal and illegal immigrants flooding into this country via our unsecured southern border.
6. Men are just as integral as women to the process of creating babies. That’s a scenario likely to happen with foreign women from less developed countries desiring to hasten marriage toward establishing U.S. citizenship, or women from Catholic countries or other regions of the world where birth control is discouraged, if not actually made impossible by societal mores and practices.
I understand what motivated Mr. Roman to make the statement that he did, and there is some truth in the issue he observes. But I only wish, however chivalrous, however old-fashioned, however well-intentioned the approach of such gentlemen might be, they could focus on the bigger picture and not have such a short memory concerning history, or narrow vision of what’s going on widescale in this country today. And I can’t help but think that, if he lived in Arizona or California, he would be aware of the Latina and male European American dating phenomenon prevalence. But I can’t help but wonder whether it would have prompted his ire enough to write solely about that, whether the factor involved is lenience toward male sexuality, the biological base he alludes to which makes male liaisons somehow more palatable, or singling out African American/European American relationships out of the many mixed relationships which exist . In terms of numbers, that’s a far scarier scenario, and we should remember that in a monogamous society any young male led astray counts as much as any young female when he dates non-European Americans or fathers mixed children. He is still bound, morally, economically, and legally, to care for his children. His relationship with their mother is then long-term, even if he avoids marriage with her, interfering with any other family he might wish to start. The effect his dalliance has on future relationships is the same, I assure you.
There is a double standard here that is hypocritical. I understand that it is not intentionally so, and I understand it is carried over from old rhetoric and world view. We’re better than that. Instead of harping on women’s responsibilities, I would like to see, for a change, articles on the influence of full-time fathers, or fathers who have let their careers take a back seat to the hands-on rearing of their children. It has been my firm belief that what sets Western Civilization apart from other cultures is the role of the father in the family. Keep in mind that women are the primary parents of young children in all cultures, but only in the high investment parenting, monogamous, compatible marriage environment of Europe do we have a history of near equal if not equal status in society of women and men. European fathers were directly involved in the rearing of their children, unlike fathers in polygamous cultures whose involvement with their progeny was distant and removed. Before the Industrial Revolution, both parents worked at home, on the homestead. Most successful women in our society have been quoted as attributing a good portion of their success to a close, supportive relationship with their father who was their role model.
Young men are much more sexually indiscriminate than are young women, and are therefore more likely to engage in mixed sexual relationships when the opportunity arises. I don’t see any less issue with young men dating Latinas than with young women dating African Americans. When statistics show that white American women are far more likely to employ birth control than Hispanics or African Americans, especially coupled with the economic appeal the U.S. provides to the millions of Latino immigrants crossing our unsecured borders in recent years, when relationships with Latinas lacks the historical stigma associated with black/white mixed relationships, when young men have far more tendency toward engaging in unprotected sexual behavior, and when the sexual indiscretions of young men are still judged much more leniently than those of young women in our society, no, I am not at all convinced the primary problem lies with the behaviors of European American women. History certainly doesn’t support it, and relationships involving Asians, American Indians, Hispanics, and other non-African Americans into the mix, the European American partner is far more likely to be male. Heritage is just as lost in mixed children fathered by a European American man.
Let’s keep in mind the full picture and be a little more fair, unbiased, and accurate in addressing the whole issue, that’s all I ask. We need to avoid inaccurate summary assessments that alienate a significant portion of our group audience.
Notes:
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/92/12/1976.pdf
http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/390.asp
http://www.lovemusiclovedance.com/singles/interracial-dating.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage#Interracial_marriage_statistics