By Margaret Kamba
Inter-racial relationships have now suddenly become common with numerous dating sites available. Some of these match-making sites have flooded social media platforms among them Tik Tok with very good looking white men of various ages looking for African women to date and perhaps settle down with.
Whether or nor these are genuine, it is only those who have successfully gone through with these who can testify if they are indeed real.
So many questions however cloud the mind among them being whether or not the cultural background of the two people affects the relationship and if this is not another form of colonialism. One thing for sure is that it brings in a lot of controversy and who knows what else.
Many women who are mostly the ones getting into these relationships with the white men, I believe suffer the most as they naturally must lose themselves in pursuit of a richer lifestyle.
Losing one's identity seems very common to women who for instance when getting married must drop their maiden name to assume that of the husband and lose their shape when child bearing. It takes a whole lot of exercise to regain that once gorgeous body but the scars remain to show whoever cares that you once bore a human being.
Back to the Tik Tok videos of the inter-racial marriages and couples, there could be more to it than meets the eye when it comes to the relationship between the couple itself and the extended family.
How do you get home to an inter-racial family and introduce your black wife or white husband? How do you get home with a 60 plus year old and introduce him to your younger parents? How do you ensure that your child, the fruit of your inter-racial family fits into both families without any form of discrimination?
Love has no boundaries. This is the reason why we are seeing these things happening. However who defines what love is because it is in the name of love that we are seeing some of the most unbelievable expressions of it as men claim to love other men and women and men or women loving multiple partners?
Many girls have been left heart-broken and required to fend for young children left behind by some of our foreign nationals when they return home. The children born out of such relationships also must remain with no link to the departed fathers. The boys and girls must grow up deprived of a father’s love, culture, financial support and care.
Dr Zhang Yong executive director of the center for African film and TV Studies at Zhejiang Normal University says inter-racial marriages between the Chinese nationals and the black race in particular have been met with some resistance back home.
In the film Africans in Yiwu he captures how one family disowns its daughter because she has fallen in love with a black man.
The Chinese girl captured in the film must live away from her parents along with her son born out of the consummation of the relationship. The grandson is kept away from the love and care of his grandparents and will perhaps grow up to the laughter and ridicule of other age-mates who will question why he has no grandparents.
The other relationship captured in this film however shows parents that accept the young black man who has humbled himself and committed to having the wife make all the decisions as in the oath of marriage he takes during his vows.
He must stomach this new phenomenon which is far different from his African culture which makes the man the head of the family.
Dr Fay King Chung in her book Reliving the Second Chimurenga writes about how her grandfather putting a shield on his family.
“He was determined that we should not grow up to be uncivilized “mountain dogs”, the name given to Chinese who had grown up outside China, illiterates who knew nothing about Chinese culture or values. As a result, he took it upon himself to teach us how to use chopsticks, how to write some Chinese, and some parts of Chinese history.”
She adds that “My grandmother had followed my grandfather out to Africa. I did not understand that this was an unusual step for a peasant woman to take until many years later when I made my first visit to China. In 1973, I visited the villages of my grandparents, and found myself surrounded by elderly women whose husbands had left China half a century before and had never returned. My grandmother had refused to be constrained by tradition and had displayed great courage and determination in embarking into the unknown. Unlike the grass widows who had remained in China faithfully waiting for their husbands to return, my grandmother took her fate into her own hands and left for Africa, a continent of which she had no knowledge.”
Dr Fay King Chung was born in the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, the third generation of a Chinese immigrant family come from Nanpan Village near Guangzhou. Her grandfather, Yee Wo Lee, the fifth son of a large peasant Chinese family, emigrated to Rhodesia in 1904 at the age of seventeen and became a successful cafe owner. Her father was a successful businessman called Chu Yao Chung. Her mother, Nguk Sim Lee, was a Chinese-trained nurse who emigrated to Rhodesia to get married. She died whilst giving birth when Fay Chung was only three years old. After her mother's death, Fay Chung and her two sisters were raised up by her grandfather and grandmother, assisted by a Shona nanny named Elina.
Inter-racial marriages in the People’s Republic of China PRC are still a new thing with many families shunning such marriages to the extent of disowning a family member.
Many Chinese nationals are only beginning to be exposed to other the black race with many of them showing surprise at seeing black people.
It is not only these inter-racial marriages that are complicated, even different tirbe marriages can get difficult.This stems from the cuisine eaten, dressing raising the children, who visits and who doesn’t. It can be hectic.
Zimbabwe has seen the birth of many children not only from inter-racial marriages but inter-tribal relationships. We have exposed the children born in these relationships with multi-cultural experiences that are both positive and negative. Those that are able to meet their grandparents from both sides are most fortunate and perhaps not, but those that have only been exposed to one side, lack something.
Whatever the differences, whatever the circumstances, these must be set aside because the innocent children are not to blame.