“Blindian” Love

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In the September issue of Essence Magazine in a special report on sex and love, four couples talk about interracial dating when the woman is black, and the man is, well, not. So we have a Polish guy, a Vietnamese guy, a Caucasian guy, and an Indian guy.  Without even reading the rest of the story, WHY did I assume the couple was from Trinidad? Or at least SOMEWHERE in the Caribbean?  Well – I was RIGHT!  They were from Trinidad.  I haven’t seen that combination outside of Caribbean heritage.

I remember visiting my cousins in Arima (Trinidad) when I was a teenager, and meeting a “Dougla” (not a nice word depending on the circles you travel in – so don’t use it. That is what I was told that he was, and that was the first time I had ever heard the word.) boy that couldn’t stop professing his love for me.  He was adorable.  I couldn’t see that there was any black in him, just that his hair had a slight curl on the ends, but my cousins made sure I knew he wasn’t “all the way Indian.”

Being raised in the states, there were some nuances of Trinidadian culture that I didn’t understand.  I knew there were a whole lot of interracial relationships in my family, and that was normal to me. At the time, my mother’s stepfather was English white, and he was the only grandfather I knew.  My aunt was German, my other uncle’s girlfriend was Asian (not sure what country), and on my mom’s side, she was the only one married to a black person.

The fact that people would look at me and this guy, who was darker than me, funny when we walked down the street was odd to me.  I grew up in the south, where black is black.  There are three races, black, white, and asian.  Not sure? Go with black.

I saw several “Blindian” couples on the plane rides to the Caribbean, and never thought anything of it until my mother explained it to me.  She said that families didn’t get as bent out of shape if the man was Indian.  I did notice that most of the time, the woman was black… and lighter or the same shade of brown as the man.  She said sometimes color makes a difference too.  I don’t know about that one, but when I think about it, I don’t know any Indian women with Black men.

Trinidad is 50/50 Black and Indian for the most part. The cultures have mixed in some ways, but are very separate in others.  Blacks are mostly Roman Catholic, and the Indian’s are Hindus – I don’t know that you can get much more different than that, maybe Jewish and Southern Baptist?

The couple featured in Essence live in Charlotte (southern US), where as I mentioned before, black is black.  It shouldn’t be that big of a deal – there anyway. The wife says that older Indian women she meets won’t acknowledge her at all. I find that to be sad, but she says she loves him and he loves her back.  Their son is gorgeous, and they make a beautiful family.

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Eva is the administrator and blogger for SocaMom.com. Follow her on Twitter at @socamomdc.