Re: “Love is Colour-Blind”

Posted by admin on Dec 3, 2008 in Issues & Ideas, Letters to the Editor | 0 comments

Reading Nicole Douglas’s article “Love is colour-blind” caused me to want to respond to her article about interracial marriages. It addressed what probably bothers many Canadians who live in our multicultural society. However, I think Douglas explored this subject’s iceberg from the tip, and not from its deeper roots. I am not disagreeing with her observations of negative views about interracial relationships but rather adding to it from a much wider angle.

People who enter into interracial relationships are very courageous people because they have to overcome various barriers that are imprinted in their minds through their cultural heritages, not strictly their skin colour. Normally, it is most comfortable to go for one’s own race and colour if one is not ready to turn a blind eye to some not-so-normal elements of another culture or race. As Douglas exemplifies, some of these relationships are very successful. Any antagonism against such relationships without good reason is a blow to multiculturalism. And those who support multiculturalism will have to keep supporting such relationships even when they don’t consider them acceptable, because people share humanity and they also share God.

But the success rate is determined by the quality of people who are involved in a relationship. And I think the best division of humanity is neither race nor colour, but the quality of being human. For example, from my African heritage, there are some tribes who are intolerant of intertribal marriages. This has nothing to do with the colour of the skin or race, but it has everything to do with superiority conflicts between tribes. As a result, many girls suffer a life of trauma when they marry men from tribes, whom they think are inferior.

Antagonism of interracial marriages does not stand alone: it often branches out of a nation’s many underlying issues that can range from racism, discrimination or familial views. The fact that human relationships are the same all over the world should be taken into consideration.

The majority of those who are against intercultural relationships are generally a small number from any race or culture with a negative “state of mind” that could make every relationship impossible in life – not just in a few countries, but in any corner of the world.

– Riel Dut