Comments on Bahá’í Thought: Swirled in South Korea

It just gets me thinking about all the different s...

2009-12-01T13:07:01.032-03:00

It just gets me thinking about all the different sorts of swirls, I guess. As a White male in the U.S., I live in a country that has traditionally not tried very hard to distinguish between Asian ethnic and national identities. So I'll admit to being a bit surprised when I read about, e.g., Chinese-Korean babies as 'swirled'. It was outside of my familiar understanding of diversity. And that got me thinking about our marriage.

Racially, Negin and I are both considered White. But we certainly have an inter-ethnic marriage. We come from different kinds of immigrant experiences, although both our families were fleeing religious violence when they came to this country. We come from different economic classes. These are all real distinctions that make our marriage a unique kind of swirl.

The U.S.' willingness to receive refugees and immigrants in the early 1900s and in the 1980s definitely played a role in the fact that we ever met and fell in love. So do the pogroms in Eastern Europe and the religious and political violence in Iran both before and after 1979. I never thought about our marriage as being shaped by these forces before.

Day-to-day, Negin and I are members of our immediate community - that's the more salient identity. That's where we have an obligation and a responsibility to work alongside our neighbors to transform where we live. But it's good to be reminded that we are shaped by all this history. Even if racial and national lines don't have a spiritual reality, they do impact social reality - and that has an effect on each of us.

Lev, eloquently stated as always. Sounds like you'...

2009-11-30T21:54:04.138-03:00

Lev, eloquently stated as always. Sounds like you're living in an area that will make for interesting reflection about these issues. I'm curious to hear more about how this relates to your marriage if you're willing to share.

Allison, good question. There has been a lot in the press recently about interracial relationships in Asian countries. May be the topic in general is becoming more interesting to people as the swirling accelerates?

"...some of the dynamics related to forming famili...

2009-11-30T20:49:24.345-03:00

"...some of the dynamics related to forming families across the color-line are universal while others are unique to the racial and ethnic histories of different countries."

Thanks for this, Phillipe. It gives me new food for thought in my own marriage. You also said something early on in the post: that "we are moving towards a swirled world." This really caught my imagination. As more and more people are shifted around the globe by a variety of forces (e.g. moving from small island nations increasingly threatened by climate change, fleeing as refugees from war-torn countries, etc.) more of these sorts of stories may emerge.

The community Negin and I live in has been shaped and re-shaped by global social reality as new groups of immigrants arrive. At one time from Cambodia, at another from Puerto Rico or Dominica. As a result, families where one partner is Latino and the other is Cambodian, children who are swirls of culture and language and ethnicity, etc. are perhaps inevitable. In a way, it is as if the struggles that the world goes through are leading us toward this new reality.

Really interesting to see this coming up in countr...

2009-11-30T11:46:01.106-03:00

Really interesting to see this coming up in countries and contexts other than the US. I saw a piece on interracial relationships in South Korea recently, not sure where. Wonder why they're getting so much press about this issue...