From: M.Titahmboh@lut.ac.uk (Mana TitahMboh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: Re: New Topic ( WHITE/BLACK MARRIAGES )
Keywords: In article <1992Dec14.195258.5951@panix.com>, mukasa@panix.com (Michael K Mukasa) writes:
Date: 16 Dec 92 13:57:22 GMT
Organization: Loughborough University

|> While I was hanging out this weekend with a few African friends, both men
|> and women, letting the cold ones go down nice and slooooowww :-) :-)
|> We started debating a very firey topic.  I dont know if it has been
|> discussed here to exhaustion, because I only recently rejoined internet. 
|> If it has, please mail me the conlusions.
|> 
|> The topic was what do you think of guys who go abroad and come home with
|> white women.
|> 
|> -Do these marriages contribute to, or destroy the African family and
|> society.

Sometimes a marriage -any marriage- can break up a family. okay so the kind you
are talking about particularly lends itself to this role, but i wouldn't say
that it is these marriages as such which are responsible for the breakups. I'm
afraid it is usally the rather boring concept of misunderstanding, admittedly
usually caused by the cultural differences of the couple. As for the society, I
doubt whether a few intercultural marriages can really distroy it. Rather
dubiously, if these marriages fail they have little chance of "destroying the
African" society. If a lot of them succeed, that's when the culture is in danger
of -maybe not being destroyed- at least not beng sustained. It works -or not-
both ways.

|> -Are the men who marry these women mentally colonised, seeking to have the
|> white man's possesions

Thats a very chauvinistic thing to say in the 90's ... "possession " indeed!
Sometimes yes! But nobody can base a marriage- at least not one that they hope
to last- on using their "partner" as a symbol.

|> -Does the African man (Not all but some) promote these values among the
|> society by equating beauty with lighter skin. 

Yes. If read ebony, look at the ads. I remember an editorial in that publicatioh
dealing with this same point and what do you think was on every other page?
(though this is american you could apply it to africa proper... lighter skin
being african, not white skin here.)

|> -Would the above attitude be the cause so many skin lightening products
|> (like AMBI) are sold on the continent because the women are trying to look
|> "more beautiful" in the mens eyes.

Not as such. I don't think - at least I hope not- they are doing that purely
"for the men".

|> -Why is it when you see a brother with a white woman, she is usually
|> mediocre.  Yet when you see a white man with a sister she is FIIINNNEEEE!!

You tell me! I can't disagree with that observation!

|> -Since this is not a colour blind world and no concrete steps are seeming
|> to be taken to make it one, is rejection of white women cultural
|> self-preservation.

whose rejection of white women? It is usually the failure of a marriage due to
"cultural incompartibility" [ please don't promote that expression].

|> 
|> The women claimed there were not enough good men to go around.  The men
|> said the women were in hiding or taken.  Some men claimed it was not okay
|> to date or marry, but having a fling was okay.  This infuriated the women
|> to no end.

Rightly so. one day, in a feat of glasnost, I told my girl friend i hadn't had
any "special" feeling for her before we first started going out. that was a
mistake... but now i know and luckily for me she has since forgiven me.

|> The some of the women claimed they were treated better by these guys than
|> some of the Africans had treated them.

Ask them to call me! [ but keep my girlfriend out of it please ]

|> The guys wanted to know why when a brother had a white woman across his
|> arm they said "look at that cute guy with that ugly woman....." Yet before
|> he went out with that woman he was not cute.

its all a question of how high a profile this mythical guy kept before. Too low
and you don't get noticed...too high and you are seen as arrogant! I ought to
know.

|> 
|> Anyway I would like to hear peoples views.
|> 
|> Kiggundu.
|>  


mana luc