Why do interracial relationships have a weird element of status to them?

Real talk, what are relationships actually about? Are they not just agreements between two people who find something beneficial in each other? Ideally, people would date because, you know, they love each other or whatever, and the “benefits” would mostly be emotional and sexual. But in reality, hell no people do not only date for love. Money, security, hell, I even dated somebody once because my mom bet me $10 I couldn’t get a girl from Tinder to go out with me in a week.

Status, though, seems pretty fucked up to actually acknowledge when we talk about our dating lives. It’s definitely a thing, though. Like when Instagram models date Soundcloud artists, you know? Or football players date cheerleaders in high school, to be cliche. It’s obviously a status symbol for both people involved in the relationship, though no one’s going to just say it out loud. And, as much as even I don’t want to admit it, there’s certainly an element of status involved in interracial relationships.

I’m a lesbian of color. Historically I’ve mostly dated or “talked to” (the phrase makes me gag) white women, which shouldn’t be an issue. Shouldn’t. But the more I do it, and the more I think about it, the more I watch the same problem arise again and again and again in my love life. There’s always a tradeoff, I feel, when I’m dating a white woman. For me, I get out of entirely disappointing my parents with my romantic decisions. They’d always wanted me to have a white boyfriend growing up, out of an internalized racist view of white males as superior not only as partners but as people, and when I came out as a lesbian, the “boyfriend” part was off the table, at the very least. Dating a white woman meant at least somehow living up to their standards for who I should date. For my white boothang, the reward is a figurative a get-out-of-jail free card when it comes to racism. After all, how can she be a racist if she’s in a relationship with a person of color? (Yes, I rolled my eyes at that sentence too.) In a way, we get to be each other’s trophies–and we’re both burdened by it.

No matter how much I might care about this white woman and she might care about me, the benefits of our different races will still always be visible. The older members of my family will gloat about her gorgeous European features and success in conforming to conventional beauty standards. They might even suggest we only adopt white kids later on, “even though you’ll look like the nanny when she’s not around.” Zing! In a lot of cultures, for a lot of different people of color, white women are seen as status symbols. It’s fucked up, I know, but it’s true, and it’s impossible for that to not be in the back of my head when I’m in a relationship with one, especially because I’m trying to watch myself before I start fetishizing her as some sort of badge of honor. It’s racist because by treating whiteness as an ideal, I’m diminishing the value of people of color as romantic partners (and people) by definition. It’s frustrating to have to consider all of this, but as a person of color, I’m burdened by the need to think about race practically all of the time.

A time I don’t want to be forced to think about systemic racism and oppression? A date. Like, if a girl wants to talk about why black lives matter or diss ol’ Don for wanting to [insert racist Trump idea here], that’s great. I’m down. But if I’m on a date with a girl and she’s the one saying something racist? Awkward. So awkward. Like, I-want-to-jump-from-this-moving-car awkward. It’s happened to me multiple times, and I hate it. But I’m not a confrontational person, and if it’s subtle enough that I can reasonably chalk it up to ignorance, I’ll bite my tongue for the moment if I otherwise like the girl.

For some reason, I don’t feel that the white women I date feel the need to check themselves when they talk about race around me, almost like they think that I’m somehow different from other people of color. As if I can be explained with some racist food analogy to a coconut or a twinkie or something, as if I’m basically “white on the inside.” None of her friends think she’s racist because she’s dating me, and she doesn’t think it’s even possible for her to be racist anymore. She has to be aware of the status symbol thing, at least in the back of her mind, stimulating her white savior complex and feeling like she’s doing my brown ass a favor just by being white in my presence in public.

Even if it’s subconscious, even if she’s so good to me on a personal level, I can’t help but feel like some kind of shady deal is happening, a Definitely Not Racist Award in exchange for a social signal about power and status. It’s uncomfortable, especially as I start realizing how little this white woman, like all other white people, is actually forced to consider race. White people don’t have to think about race nearly as much, since systematic and structural racism aren’t constantly bogging them down in their everyday lives. They don’t have to worry if the barista was just having a bad day or if he was rude because he wished they were being deported instead of ordering coffee. They don’t have to wonder if their name is too “ethnic-sounding” to get a callback for a job, or if their natural hair will be called “unprofessional for the workplace,” or if they’ll get kicked off of an airplane for speaking a foreign language. They just don’t. So if they don’t think about the complicated dynamics of an interracial relationship, I can’t blame them. But I can’t just be quiet about it. These issues are real and they affect real relationships, and to avoid talking about them means, potentially, to avoid being honest with yourself and your intentions, or being wary about your partner’s intentions. It’s not fair for the burden of that to fall on the POC partner’s shoulders, but it’s inevitable.   

The only tangible way most couples can deal with this is by being mindful. It sucks a little bit to admit that “thinking” is the best way to deal with something, but more often that not, it’s the truth. We aren’t going to be able to snap our fingers and rewire the way most Americans think about race, regardless of how much we’d like to.