What Color is Your Love?

I remember when I first started reading romance novels back in 8^th grade. I’d tell you how long ago that was, but let’s just say dinosaurs were still roaming Earth. The covers of these books usually featured a blond-haired, blue-eyed heroine and a dark-haired, flinty-eyed hero who was generally much older than his ingénue love. Was it a reflection of real-life? I seriously doubt it was an accurate picture even way back then of their appearance or their ages.

Now is the point where I should step up on a politically correct soapbox to say race shouldn’t be a factor when it comes to romance writing. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is. Just yesterday, I was having a conversation with a highly-educated professional woman who happens to be single and African-American. I mention her race because it plays a role in our conversation. She was bemoaning the fact that it was difficult to find her male counterpart to date because a lot of them were dating white women.

That got me thinking. Was this actually true? I had to admit that when it came to interracial couples of my acquaintance, the preponderance were males of another race married to white females. According to research published in 2013 by the Pew Research Center, African-American men are twice as likely as African-American women to intermarry. Among Asians and Native Americans, the trend is just the opposite (Wang, 2015).

Now, I don’t want to go into a big dissertation on the trends in interracial couples and marriage. Let’s just say that you can check out US Census figures and the Pew research and find the following statistics: In 2013, more than one out of ten new marriages were among couples of differing races; nearly seven percent of all existing marriages were interracial.

So where is the diversity in romance? It’s coming. I’m not sure I would go so far as an article in TIME from May of 2014 which loudly proclaims in its headline: “Steamy Romance Novels Flush With Color,” and includes the subhead: “interracial relationships are a hot new trend in love lit.”(Sachs, 2014) However, I will say that the issue is coming out in the open for a lot more discussion. That happened at Romance Writers of America’s 2015 national convention. We’ve also had those discussions in my own RWA chapter.

I see women of color banding together to support one another’s careers. That’s fantastic. We should all be supportive of efforts to make our romance writing a truer reflection of love in all its many forms, no matter the race, gender, or number combinations.

Should the focus of interracial romance always be about race? First and foremost, they should be about love, about two people who are right for each other because they like and respect the other person. I do think we would be fooling ourselves, though, if we say it’s a non-issue.

I live and teach in an area that is split roughly down the middle between African-Americans and Caucasians. Just as my colleague’s concern about the number of black men dating white women came out in conversation, so have I heard people—both black and white—express concerns about interracial relationships. Prejudice is still out there. Personally, I prefer to address things head on rather than pretending it doesn’t exist. I’ve never been a proponent of what I call the “emperor’s new clothes” philosophy.

So, when you read the second novella in my series “Teacher’s Pets,” I don’t steer away from the fact that Ben’s a really hot white guy dating a really hot black woman, but I don’t feel I’ve made it the central conflict either. (Perfect Harmonie, Teacher's Pet #2, coming May 25!)

And I have to say to my sister of another mother…thanks for giving me the idea when you said, “Hey, put me in one of your books.”

Sources:

Sachs, Andrea. (2014). “Steamy Romance Novels Flush With Color”. TIME. Retrieved from: http://time.com/43710/interracial-romance-novels/

Wang, Wendy. (2015). “Interracial Marriage: Who is ‘marrying out’?”. Pew Research Center. Retrieved From: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/12/interracial-marriage-who-is-marrying-out/

Ask The Experts

Come close, I have a secret to tell you. It wasn’t Al Gore who invented the Internet, but I know who it was. Teenagers. Just ask them.

In my non-writer life, I teach high school. I have learned several important things while teaching. First—teenagers know everything (this probably won’t surprise anyone who has a) been a teenager or b) parented a teenager) , second—teenagers believe teachers can’t hear, so they will talk about anything in front of them, third—it’s highly entertaining to keep your mouth shut and listen to the massive amounts of misinformation they spit out and swallow.

I have also become fairly unshockable. I might have already been that way since I write erotic romance, but I guess that’s up for debate. That fake news story about the guy who stuck the canned cinnamon rolls up his… well let’s just say I bought it for about ten seconds, so I guess that still makes me somewhat vulnerable to surprise. I mention this because the topics of conversations among teens have changed a bit since I was at that all-knowing, omnipotent age.

My friends and I talked about things like what might happen after a nuclear war, the meaning of life, and some things all teens still discuss—who was having a party and when, and who had ____________ (fill in the blank with beer, pot, etc.). We talked about going to college and what we wanted to do with our lives.

Here’s the conversation I stopped in the middle of a computer-based class I facilitate during what would be my planning period:

“When you get the harness, I can show you how to put it on right, cuz if you ain’t got it on right it ain’t  gonna work.”

“Some boys let you do it.”

Yeah, you’re right. They’re talking about strap-ons and butt sex. So I say…

“Y’all need to change your topic of conversation right now. We’ve had this discussion before about what is and is not appropriate to talk about at school.”

Eyes pop wide open. Everyone stares at me.

“You know what we’re talking about?”

I smile when what I really want to do is laugh my butt off. “I know this might come as a surprise to you, but you did not invent sex. And again, discussing strap-ons and harnesses in class is not appropriate. Change the topic.”

So, at this point, I’m sure there are some out there saying that was all you did? Well, let me ask you something—would you smack your puppy for messing on the floor before it knew better? I’m house training because—you guessed it—someone hasn’t already done that with these students. That’s part of the reason many of them end up in alternative ed.

However, I have to think they’re not totally different from many teens these days. However crude their conversations might be, they also—I’m forced to admit—have something in common with the teenagers of my time.

They know it all. They have it licked. The world is theirs.

So my amusement is also tempered with nostalgia. That’s what we were all like before we actually had to start living life. Imagine if we could hang onto some of that boundless arrogance and optimism.

RWA 2013: Top Ten Things I learned

10.  “Downtime” is a figment of your imagination.
9.   Big rooms are cold. Little rooms are hot. Dress for both.
8.      The shoes that were so comfortable when you tried them on before conference magically no longer fit right.
7.      5 city blocks are impossibly long when you’re wearing anything other than walking shoes.
6.      There’s a reason I walk on tracks…it’s hard to stare at guys’ butts without falling off a treadmill.
5.      Bring tissue to the lunches because everyone will cry….laugh…cry…you get the drift.
4.      If there’s a workshop you really want to attend—everyone else does too. Get there early.
3.      No matter how big the tote bag you left your room with is, it’s not big enough to carry everything you will pick up, so bring a spare.
2.      Like locusts on crops, women can strip a publisher’s book signing within minutes.

And.... the number one thing:

           Don’t worry about how much the conference fee is, you’ll bring back enough free books to offset the cost…really…I did…and I got to a couple of books signings that had already been stripped by herds of voracious readers.