Crossing Borders - Interracial Dating

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        Nimal Ponnezhan

English 152 Professor

Crossing Borders Rough Draft

Interracial Dating

In the hodge-podge of American culture you are bound to find interracial dating.  There are many differences between people.  One that is obvious to the naked eye is the difference of race.  In the society that we live in it is sometimes difficult for people of different races to be a couple.  The Dominant Culture puts out an invisible border that separates people of different races.  

        In an experiment that I did with a white friend named Michelle, we went out as a couple.  Me being Indian and her being Caucasian posed some difficulties for some people to understand.  We first went to a park and decided that we would just sit on the swings.  There was another little Caucasian girl next to us.  The next thing I saw really surprised me and Michelle.  The mother of that little girl came and quickly grabbed her daughter and brought her to another part of the playground.  All along, the mother looked at me and Michelle in a weird way.  After that, we went to the shopping mall.  Keeping in mind that we are in a predominantly white suburb, we held hands at the stores.  People looked at us as if we were from another planet.  I guess they could not believe that an Indian guy and a white girl could be going out on a date.  We even brought another one of my friends to see the reaction of other people that me and Michelle could not see.  Our other friend, Jim, said that many people kept on starring at us.  Also that some people were whispering about us after they had passed us up. This really was a surprise to me.  This experiment that I did was a real eye-opener because it gave me the evidence that people really were not happy seeing different races dating.  Although this is not the opinion of all people, it seemed to be the opinion of a quite a number of people.  These people are what keep the invisible border present in society.  

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        The real question that I asked myself is why this happened.  One conclusion I came to was that since this was a primarily white suburb, people would not be too open to different races just being there.  If someone different from them was to come into their society, it would be natural for them to not accept them.  Especially in a situation that involved dating, people would be closed minded.  Not only would they want themselves having nothing to do with interracial dating, they would want others of their same race not to be involved with interracial dating.  The white ...

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