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Many date outside their race |
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Raymond Jami, who is black, and Rocio Mendez, a Latina, have been dating for more than three years."As I grew up, my mom never taught me to just stick to one race," said Rocio. "If the person was nice, then of course, I was going to be his or her friend, and color was not a factor for me at all." She and Raymond, both 17, are seniors at Lawrence Early College High School.
Jenny Hamilton, 18, said she grew up in a diverse world, so interracial dating has never seemed taboo. Jenny, who is white, is dating Isaac Gill, 18, an African-American. Both will attend college in the fall -- Isaac is going to the University of Southern Indiana, and Jenny is going to Xavier University.
"As I grew up, my mom never taught me to just stick to one race," said Rocio. "If the person was nice, then of course,
I was going to be his or her friend, and color was not a factor for me at all." She and Raymond, both 17, are seniors at Lawrence Early College High School.
Jenny Hamilton, 18, said she grew up in a diverse world, so interracial dating has never seemed taboo. Jenny, who is white, is dating Isaac Gill, 18, an African-American. Both will attend college in the fall -- Isaac is going to the University of Southern Indiana, and Jenny is going to Xavier University.
"I went to school with people from a bunch of different races, and my parents' friends were of different races," Jenny said.
Isaac agreed that interracial dating isn't a big deal. "A good amount of my friends are black, and I also have a lot of white friends," he said.
Area students Brandon Boston, Sudarsan Chandrasekhar and Megan Cochran, all 18, are like the majority of Americans, according to a 2005 Gallup Poll.
The survey found that a majority of Americans approve of interracial dating. As a group, young people had the highest approval rate -- 95 percent.
"Race isn't the issue; finding the right person is the issue," said Sudarsan, who is of Indian descent and dated Megan, who is white, briefly. He will be a freshman at the University of Indianapolis.
Nearly half of all Americans reported that they have dated outside their race. Sixty percent of Americans between the ages of 18 to 29 have dated outside of their own race -- the highest percentage of all age groups.
Interracial marriage may be widely accepted now, but it's only been 41 years since the Supreme Court, in the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision, ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage violated the 14th Amendment. In fact, presidential candidate Barack Obama's white mother and African father married in 1961 at a time when interracial dating was legal in their home state of Hawaii, but illegal in others, including Indiana.
The Indianapolis teenagers interviewed by Y-Press agreed that religious differences are often more challenging than dealing with different skin color.
"My parents had issues with me swinging my religion back and forth. I was interested in Hinduism for a while, but then I saw that as a problem because my parents were Catholic," said Megan, who will be a freshman at IUPUI.
"I think that they were trying to kind of break me away from the non-Catholic thing and trying to keep me Catholic," she said, noting that was one of the reasons she and Sudarsan broke up.
Rocio and Raymond said that toward the beginning of their relationship, religion was hard to sort out.
"He didn't know any other religion other than being Muslim, and I've grown up since I was a baby being Christian and Pentecostal," Rocio said. "So those two kind of collided, and his family was totally against what my religion was and my beliefs were against his religion."
Raymond thought they could both keep their own faiths even if they got married, but Rocio was doubtful that could work.
Brandon, who is biracial, is dating a Hispanic woman at the University of Notre Dame, which they both attend.
He grew up around mostly whites because his mother remarried a white man, whom Brandon considers his father.
Brandon said he and his girlfriend share friends who accept the relationship.
But the story is different when it comes to older generations in his girlfriend's family. Some older adults have difficulty accepting interracial relationships.
"Her parents had had apparently some bad experiences with the African-American community and they didn't want her to date a so-called 'black guy,' " Brandon said. "They wanted her to be with either a white guy or a Hispanic guy."
Her father said he wouldn't pay for his daughter's education if she continued dating Brandon, so she's seeing him secretly now and declined to be interviewed.
The teens have not let differences stop them from appreciating the positive side of their relationships. Raymond learned Spanish, which has improved his communication with Rocio's mother.
And even though she didn't date Sudarsan for long, Megan is glad she did.
"Dating interracially is one of the best things I can suggest," she said. "You'll get a nice perspective of other people's traditions and you'll learn a lot, too.le's traditions and you'll learn a lot, too.
Tags: Many date outside their race Race Dating interracial dating |
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