Is love really (colour) blind?
Does race matter when it comes to relationships, asks
YOUNG people today are more openminded about relationships, race and how the two may tie together.
While some older folks may still be resistant to social change, youngsters are increasingly more accepting about people of different race groups dating.
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University students Nadine Marriday and Thomas Quinn are coloured and white respectively, and have been in a relationship since February. They met through mutual friends and both have previously been involved in interracial relationships.
“We have had an encounter where someone called us a ‘chessboard’,” Marriday said. She is also well aware of interracial couples being called “Top Deck”, the trade name of a chocolate slab with brown chocolate underside and white chocolate top.
It is no secret that cross-cultural dating can be a minefield. Every culture has its own quirks and what is socially accepted, expected even, in one, may not fly in another. This clash of cultures can lead to misunderstandings that could strain relationships.
Heart-to-heart discussions and teaching each other made the relationship more exciting, as a way of tackling cultural challenges, Quinn said.
Marriday said her parents accepted her relationship with Quinn. However, they treated him slightly differently from how they would if he were of the same race.
“My parents aren’t interested in being a part of our relationship,” Quinn said. “We were born into a free country and don’t experience race issues among peers.”
Marriday said: “I believe we need to objectively understand the roots of racial categorisation and its socio-political purposes, then make up our minds about race.”
Recent matriculants Amber Nicholson and Litha HewittColeman are a mixed couple who have been in a relationship for 18 months.
Hewitt-Coleman is the child of a white father and an African mother. Nicholson is white.
“I love Litha’s culture,” Nicholson, who attended Hewitt-Coleman’s mgidi ceremony last year, said. Mgidi is the celebration of when a Xhosa man returns from the bush, transforming from a boy.
Opinion leaders, friends and parents can play a fundamental role in the shaping of young people, and can influence relationships.
It may be that they do not agree with the kind of job their child’s partner does, or where they live. Ultimately, differences in what is seen as traditional and “right”, and what is seen as contemporary and a “phase”, may influence how a mixed couple is accepted by the family, if at all.
“My parents taught me that colour does not matter,” Hewitt-Coleman said.
Dancers Midian Thackwray and her boyfriend, who prefers to be called by his stage name, Njongo, are a white and black couple. They have been engaged since January.
“We don’t see colour because we are children of God,” Njongo said. His brother is also in an interracial relationship.
Thackwray said her parents had accepted Njongo because “they know him as a person”.
Njongo said his relationship with Thackwray grew out of an initial friendship.