Dating. It's something everyone thinks about, and many if not most experience during college. Walking around campus, students spot couples holding hands or kissing as their paths diverge and they head off to class. The reasons people choose their partners vary. Some simply aren't concerned with the race or ethnicity of the person they date. For others - a seemingly small minority - race is a factor.
Seniors Al Vazquez and Celeste Dodge met last year while abroad in Spain. They had the usual pre-relationship jitters. Neither had a clue the other was interested. "I had no idea she had even glanced my way. I was like, 'She's out of my league.' She's too pretty," Vazquez said.
Dodge, however, was receptive to Vazquez's interest, and counted on her friends to let him know. "I told my friend I thought he was cute. God bless friends," she said.
During the matchmaking process, their respective races never was an issue. Vazquez is a Cuban from Miami; Dodge is white, from California. But to this day, for these two, race has been little cause for discussion.
"I don't look at him and say he's of a different race," Dodge said.
Much of this stems from the fact that Vasquez himself rarely makes an effort to hang out with other Hispanics. He explains that he feels more comfortable in the "white" community. "I'd rather hang out with my friends and do 'white things' than force myself to go out with [Latinos]."
Despite his identification with whites at Tufts, Vazquez still feels a tie to his Cuban heritage, which plays an important role in his family life. When he came to college, he jumped into the Latino scene at Tufts through participation in the Hispanic American Society, now called the Association of Latin American Students (ALAS).
Because many members of Tufts' Latino community hail from urban locales, Vazquez, who comes from a suburb in western Massachusetts, didn't feel like he fit in. "That's when I got my first impression that these people are different from me," he said.
Vazquez says that there are times when he needs to 'put on the salsa' and reconnect with the Latino community, something he calls "recharging."
"There's a different flavor in my Hispanic friends that I enjoy that's in me and my family."
When he "recharges," Dodge doesn't go along. "When he hangs out with his Hispanic crowd, I usually take the night off. I don't fit in. I don't feel comfortable. They talk fast Spanish. Right there, off the bat, I feel uncomfortable. They're way more feisty; so much emotion, so much energy," she said.
Rub?©n Salinas Stern, Director of the Tufts Latino Center, says that this cultural disparity Dodge experiences is one of the reasons Latinos usually date within their own race. "The Latino student is very strongly ethnically identified. It is very important to them to date within their culture," he said.
Carrying the culture to the next generation is equally important for Latinos, according to Stern. "Their culture is important to perpetuate, and it is important for them to raise their children in that way. So, I think it is a positive," he said.
Sophomore Caroline Park, a Korean, agrees that minority students often feel pressure to pass on their culture. She said feels pressure from her parents to find a spouse within her ethnic group. "My parents believe I should marry a Korean man [because] I should keep the whole blood line going."
Park went on to say that her parents' rules are very specific, even discouraging her from marrying someone from another Asian nation. "[My parents] have certain prejudices against other Asians," she said.
Junior Nee-Kofi Mould Millman alluded to similar cultural tenets surrounding marriage. "People in general say that it's okay to date outside your ethnicity, because you're ultimately marrying someone from your own culture," he said.
Sophomore Miyuki Tsukada explained that marrying within ethnic lines is not difficult for everyone. She is surrounded primarily by Asians, so her dating pool draws from this community. "It's not that I look for Asian people, but if I meet them at the Start House, most likely they're Asian," she said.
Some students' social groups are less homogenous. Junior Liz Conn is biracial, and her friends are diverse. Her taste in guys, however, is not quite so eclectic. "I am attracted to white boys. I have been able to relate more, and have been accepted more by white people," she said, explaining that she comes from a white, upper-middle class, Cleveland suburb.
For Alexandra Haney, race as a dating criteria didn't initially enter into her mind. Haney, who is white, never gave much thought to her black ex-boyfriend's race. "I had to describe that he was black, and that caught me off-guard because I never had to describe that any of my [past] boyfriends were white."
Haney found herself providing a rather detailed description to friends away from Tufts. "It wasn't just enough to say that he has brown hair and brown eyes. Otherwise, they wouldn't be getting an accurate picture of what he looked like," she said.
"It felt ludicrous because I realized that we do assume when talking to our friends that they are dating someone inside their race, and it never occurred to me that my friends did that."
She said that her friends would only envision her with white guys. "I knew that because I'm white they would automatically assume that I was dating a white guy," she said.
She says that in her experience, this type of assumption is more prevalent in the white community. Haney says she has no preconceived notions about who her non-white friends date. "I don't assume anything until I have heard differently."
Although Haney dates outside her race, she thinks she is the exception, rather than the rule. "I think interracial dating is rare [at Tufts]," she said.
She notes, however, that there is seemingly no connection between her observations and the general sentiment on campus. "I don't think it's really frowned upon. I didn't encounter any weird looks or rude comments," she said.
Haney theorizes that students date within their ethnic groups simply because their social scenes often don't expose them to perspective partners of other races. "I think that people tend to stick to their own groups as far as friends go, and that's normally how you would meet boyfriends or anybody that you would date."
