Who we are: Interracial dating and relationships in Australia Play. Get the SBS Audio app. About a third of all registered marriages in Australia are intercultural. Experts say the increase in such relationships in Australia, marriage or otherwise, reflects a sense of social cohesion and acceptance more broadly. But interracial marriage was once frowned upon and restricted by the state. This, coupled with an added social pressure, sought to discourage people from engaging in intercultural relationships.
This episode of Who we are explores the history of interracial relationships in Australia, and their associated triumphs and challenges. Hannah Kwon interracial with Chinese-born writer Angie Cui — who had three separate weddings with her Bangladeshi husband — along with Kenyan-born Stella Adlike, who met her husband while studying at university in Perth. Read more about Angie "Dating" story here. When Chinese-born Angie Cui got married to her Bangladeshi husband they had not one, not two, but three weddings.
I'm so excited. I had three. I got married three times. Laughs And there's always someone who asks me, you got married three times?
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So, you married three different people? I was like, no, no, no. One person three times. And I'm tired of the wedding dress. Laughs I'm tired about reception. Their first wedding in Melbourne was an intimate ceremony in Australia surrounded by close friends. It was really, really tiny and my dress wasn't that expensive. Interracial she was granted permanent residency in Australia, Angie had a second wedding with her husband's family in Bangladesh - which she was told would also be small. The first thing we told us was that it would be a small wedding.
But then on the wedding day, I actually noticed people were https://telegram-web.online/family-hookup-porn.php. And then, my dress was really heavy, the lahenga, it was huge. Really heavy. And the hairpiece, everything gold. It was good. I think it was around to people, I can't remember, in the wedding.
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And half of them, my husband told me he didn't even know who they are. By the time the third wedding rolled around in China, Angie was less enthused. That was huge. So australia, three weddings. Three countries. Angie says while she wouldn't repeat the experience again, sharing cultures with her Bangladeshi husband has been wonderful and eye-opening.
Like Angie's, about a third of all registered marriages in Australia are intercultural. Experts - like Tish Prentice from the Scanlon Foundation - say they play a broader role in Australia's social cohesion. So when two people from different cultural groups, or different racial groups come together and join in that kind of intimate partnership, it certainly suggests a level of acceptance, and intimacy that's special and unique.
And I think you will really miss out if I had actually closed my eyes to the fact that, 'Oh, he's of a different race', I would not be able to enjoy like eight amazing years of, you know, being with my soulmate. That's Stella Adlike, who moved from Kenya to Perth to study accounting in And we became friends, went for-- we started by going for breakfast, meeting in more info corridors. And then one day, he asked me out for dinner.
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And he was just so, so lovely. So he was when I was at work, he was taking my family out for lunch, for dinner, bringing groceries for them. So I thought, 'Oh, he's really invested. So yeah, we started dating from there. But says it's come as a surprise when people have questioned their relationship in the past.
But I think to my partner, because he's never experienced anything like that, to him it was funny. Interracial he was laughing about dating. But later on, I was like, 'No. But sometimes, she says, he's struggled to realise when she's being subject to racism, especially are dating app in singapore very more subtle microagressions that interracial occur. So sometimes I really have to do a lot of education to my partner and say, naughty dating know, when you were queuing up at the supermarket, for instance, and someone looks back, like, 'Oh, how australia I help?
So such things, he didn't understand dating how that just click for source be racist. You know, going to Kenya and going to Russia any time, which is really really nice. As well as sometimes we have his family over and they make all their different cuisines.
Same thing when my family comes in, you australia, it's, it's different. And sometimes you meet people who give you such beautiful compliments as dating. So I'll say for the most part of it, it's really, really good. I wouldn't say-- We're quite fortunate to be in Australia. As much as some people interracial be ignorant, most of the times, it's good.
Trish Prentice from the Scanlon Foundation says these unions represent a breaking down of barriers at both a personal and individual level. Australian Catholic University research fellow Dr Rachel Stevens says interracial until the mid 20th century, Indigenous women in Australia dating permission from the state to marry a non-Indigenous man.
Dr Stevens says this also extended to relationships between Chinese men and Anglo women. But within a couple of decades, this number had reduced to just a couple of such marriages. Because there was so much social pressure to restrict the marriage between Chinese and Chinese men and click women And if they did, you know, it was credit to them because they risked, you know, being disinherited from their family or social ostracization.
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You know, there was a lot of risk involved in engaging in intercultural relationships. Dr Stevens says this extended to the segregation of African American troops when they arrived in Australian during the dating World War. And up untilif a Catholic wanted to marry a Protestant they would have been excommunicated. But it's when people get married, and the question of children, you know, bringing children into the world and how they're going to be raised, apologise, near me dating site were is where the fault lines often emerge.
And this can be some tension about what faith that your child will be raised in. And so very simple things like that become quite problematic, you know, so it's often with children, australia children are born into continue reading well, that's where the issues can, can appear. Born to a Chinese-Malaysian mother and white Australian father, she says having two cultural identities allows her to have the best of both worlds.
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So I grew up with a lot of mixed race friends, I guess. My mum had a lot of Chinese friends, a lot of Asian australia in general; their kids generally were mixed race. So it was kind of a bit of a norm for me. She says the way she has identified culturally has dating throughout her life.
Carolyn says because she was mixed race, it was easier to conceal certain parts of her Asian heritage. And I guess I kind of worked through a lot of internalised racism. And now, yeah, I guess it's really nice to find people who I can share my culture with who have a similar understanding.
The Scanlon Foundation's Trish Prentice says this is a common experience among mixed race children. She says cultural identity is a complex journey that each individual navigates differently.
And in fact, that may even change as a person grows up and through just click for source life phases as well. So I think it's interesting. And I think it shows a complexity that those of a particular race or ethnicity don't have to navigate. If you kind of know that you've interracial brought up by Chinese parents, and your identity is Chinese, there's no complexity there.
But if you've got a couple of cultures or a couple of religions, then, you know, you've got to kind of work through how you see yourself and how you self identify. And it wasn't until I think https://telegram-web.online/top-ten-dating-sims.php was, I don't know, maybe five years ago that I started looking into it more, and realising that there is this thing called mixed race australia crisis, that I hadn't really heard of that term before.
And I think knowing that, you know, there are other people who can relate. While intercultural relationships have become increasingly commonplace, not everyone's experience with them are positive. Helen Nguyen had been urged by her Vietnamese mother not to dating outside of her race.
And as the only Asian person in her friend group at a predominantly white school, Helen says she did everything in her power to defy any stereotypes being thrust upon her. She says she wanted to show that she was more than just a two-dimensional stereotype. Like, I've always been a bit of an academic overachiever in high school, and I was paying australia down and acting dumb interracial trying to show that I was less smart than australia non Asian friends and trying to show that I had-- I was only around white people all the time, I would only date white boys.
I tried to be fit and active and show that I wasn't like a stereotypical awkward Asian girl. So yeah, so the rebellion manifested in a lot of different aspects in my dating choices was one part of that. But those rebellious dating choices weren't always embraced by her parents. She had a very much like us against the world mentality. And she'd always repeat like, 'White people won't treat us the same.