The Curse of the Cultural Mosaic

I was on my way to the Library one day when I entered a conversation with an elderly Jewish man from one of my classes. When I’d mentioned that I was dating an Orthodox Jew, the old man decided to approach me and tell me “how it is”.


I knew what was coming.


My father had warned me about such things when I first started dating the love of my life. It was a lecture I’d more or less gotten from a few religious friends of mine, and had I not stopped the old man, probably would have gotten from him. It’s a lecture that all people get when they date someone from a traditional, homogenous culture, different from their own, that is paranoid about dying out in the multicultural mosaics and melting pots of North America.


It goes something like this:

• You two can never be together.
• You’re from different worlds.
• He/she is just using you until he can find one of his own people to settle down with.
• Better you get out now.
• It’s best for the both of you.

It is the curse of the religious, and of the culturally homogenous. You date one, the wrong one, and you find yourself hearing this lecture time and time again as the community tries to rip you apart in an invasive and racist fashion. They’ll spy, shun, criticise, and even strike at you, because they’ve convinced themselves you’re out destroy their beliefs and practices by luring one of their own away into temptation.

Some, like my parents, a Reform Jew, and a Filipino Catholic, defy the community, get married, and have beautiful children. Children who fit cosily into a North America full of mixes, and often end up settling down with a secular-minded all accepting soul mate. Others change religions, and in some cases, identities and personalities, to settle down with someone on the fringes of one of these close-knit communities who is willing to “marry out” for sake of a happily ever after with someone they love.

Unfortunately, this rarely happens, and instead, you end up with people like my friend Bob.

Bob is a nice guy and a hard worker with a good sense of humour. Of Moroccan origin, he has an interesting, albeit, in my opinion, cruel, outdated and racist, policy towards non-Moroccan women. As far as Bob’s concerned, they’re good to get your sexual ya-yas out, nothing more, and sets himself a limit on how long it’s acceptable to date one. In his opinion, two months is just enough to use the woman sexually and dump her without getting emotionally involved.

My late great uncle Jo had a similar policy. A kind, loving man who enjoyed a good laugh; he had a series of mistresses that satisfied him physically, but would never let himself get involved emotionally.

These women, by virtue of their ethnicity and religion, weren’t the marrying kind, and he tossed them out like yesterday’s trash.

Then there’s my friend Janna, a hyper-orgasmic blond who used to be famous for sleeping with anything, male or female, that crossed her path. With a blatantly racist attitude towards people like me who sit on the so-called identity fence, she is presumably at work sowing her wild oats until she is ready to marry a man her ultra Conservative Catholic family will deem acceptable.

On a bus in a culturally homogenous part of town I overheard two Asian boys complaining about the slim pickings among women within their community. According to these two young men, half the available women are spoiled, selfish airheads, while the other half are so conservative they won’t so much as kiss a man. From their perspective, there was nothing to do about it, and their rants conveyed all their frustration in their helplessness.

I wanted to tell them there was a simple solution, but I knew I’d be wasting my time.

They’ve been taught that there is no world outside their community, and no available mates beyond it.

The media deals sporadically with this sensitive issue.

Sympathetic writers, producers, and directors occasionally grace the silver screen with the dilemma faced from in and outside of these communities. It is from this sympathy that films like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Keeping the Faith, and Bend it Like Beckham come from, but, two of the three have unrealistic and unlikely endings.

In most of these films, nobody uses anybody; the love interests aren’t racist, and everyone lives happily ever after. The protagonists change their identity, and live the rest of their lives content with their loss of self. The children of the mixed unions are welcomed by the community, and life goes on.

Now here’s a shot of reality.

When my parents got married my Great Grandmother on my father’s side disowned him and my Asian grandmother had nothing but contempt for my mother’s white, non-Catholic husband. While both immediate families eventually got along, I had to deal with the racism from an Asian community that regarded me as white, and, on the other side, the tinge of contempt from a white community who’s only encounters with my mother’s people was when their houses were being cleaned. As both sides were more or less secularized, the friction I experienced was mild compared to the horror stories I’ve read about in books like Christine Benevenuto’s SHIKSA, a study of ethnic and non-Jewish women who “marry-in”.

So what’s to be learned from all this?

I want to make clear that I am NOT saying that different religions and cultures shouldn’t mix.

I think that if more people were a little more open minded you wouldn’t have the widespread misery caused by marriages between incompatible people in order to perpetuate the culture. At the same time, if these closed communities were more welcome to outsiders, you might have more people coming in with open hearts and open minds, willing to adopt the faith, culture, and identity, effectively solving the problem of “slim pickings” among potential mates.

Under the existing hostility and close mindedness of many of these cultures, I am warning the world.

If you’re dating a devout someone from a different culture or faith than yours,

Not everyone is as open minded and loving as my family. Make sure you know where you stand as soon as humanly possible, especially if you’re looking to get married. You don’t want to waste your love and your time on someone who regards you as an outlet for their wild oats until they can find someone more acceptable to their community (unless, of course, you’re just looking for sex too).

You deserve better.