Your Thoughts on Interracial Marraige

In "Guess Who" a humorous interpretation of the modern day classic, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", Percy Jones, a black urban professional, has plenty to say about his daughter dating Simon Green, a hard worker who happens to be white. Some of the more interesting points in this movie are the idea that Simon Green has quit his job because of his boss's indifference to his marrying a black girl. Mr. Jones himself is a proud black man who has worked hard to provide for his family, and simply assumes that his daughter would date and marry a black man like himself.

Thing is, Mr. Jones is not without his own faults, and while the daughter breaks off the engagement with Green as he tries to hide the fact that he is now unemployed he is worried that she would not want him because he is now broke, not because of his being white.

The movie taps into some common stereotypes about interracial relationships, from a humorous perspective. One of which being that a black woman from a well to do family would only be interested in a white male who is either already successful, or moving in that direction. However, the analogies are light, and, in the tradition of all great comedies, ignorance is always put aside for the greater good at the end.

This is not always so in real life, however, as evidenced in the November 2002 issue of Essence magazine when Audrey Edwards makes an interesting, if not convincing case for why African-American men should only date other women of the same race. She begins her article stating that she told her son Ugo to 'bring me home' a black girl early on, at the age of 7, in front of other people, at that. She then digresses to explain that the message is one she always reinforced, along with those any parents would communicate to a child, don't do drugs, finish school, and use a condom. Ok so my parents didn't reinforce the idea of using a condom to me but I didn't necessarily need for them to either, while children think they're superheroes and that it won't happen to them I never had those delusions about having sex. Furthermore the idea that this is something that most African-American parents should or have done is a bit offensive.