I grew up in one of the seventeen cities in the United States named Rochester Wikipedia, 2015. I felt a certain pride in hanging out with people who were Dominican, Indonesian, Laos, Filipino, Hispanic, etc. My parents taught me good morals, like not judging others by their appearance, though I did have to keep my jaw clenched when I visited relatives. Fitting into this lifestyle felt more natural to me than living in Rochester ever did. Gay, bisexual, straight, transgender, black, white, Asian, it was there and it was beautiful. All it took was one semester for me to breakup with my high school boyfriend and fall completely in love with a guy from my dorm. He was the first black guy I had ever dated. No matter how anxious I was to tell my family about my boyfriend, I felt proud of my interracial relationship, like we were the result of the world uniting and becoming a better place. While some people smiled at us as we held hands in D. The thing is, people were tolerant, but they were not always accepting. Where friends from home had laughed in my face, believing my taste in guys had somehow done a 180 as a result of moving to the city, black guys I currently went to school with were intrigued. Dating a black man is not the same as dating a white man. I was pushed out of my comfort zone and I learned more than I ever would have had I been with some someone who grew up just as I did. He showed me new music, food, and gave me a new perspective to consider. His family welcomed me with open arms and I am a better person because of it. The more attention I received from black men, the less white men wanted to talk to me, as if I had been eternally branded as a traitor. They seemed to be intimidated by my dozens of Facebook pictures with darker men, causing them to run before they even got to know me. To them, Black men were filthy and diseased, which could only mean one thing: I was too. As my luck with white men plummeted, I was inevitably pushed further towards black guys. I began attending parties where I was one of the few white people. The first time I had ever questioned my physical appearance was before I even began first grade. I was running around my house in a black one piece bathing suit and remember looking down at my stomach, thinking that it stuck out too much. Critiquing my body became a regular occurrence after that. As I slowly prodded my way through middle school then high school, my body began taking on the features of a woman. I felt that I looked the way that I was meant to look: small waist, small everything. But going to college challenged my standards of beauty. Moving from one of the least to one of the most diverse states in the U. I have always been drawn to dark haired, dark skinned, brown eyed men, but with only 1. Does this mean I will never date a white man again? Though there are challenges when it comes to interracial relationships, it is not all negative. It is a good feeling to know that you are secure enough in your relationship that the disapproval of others only adds to the excitement. The only wars I see are the ones with ourselves where we are the traitors, betraying our own happiness by worrying about skin color or the size of our body parts instead of simply finding someone we love. Retrieved from Census Bureau. State and county quickfacts: New Hampshire. Unite d States Census Bureau. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia.
