Bi-racial Marriages: For Good or for Worse

By Alphonse Muhare

In Africa, to get married to a white spouse has almost zero chance to get the support of elders, who think that such a marriage is a cultural loss. African refugees who have integrated in Iowa have transcended many African interdictions, including marrying a white spouse.

As this picture from www.acclaimimages.com shows it, while bi-racial marriages are common in America, they remain sources of controversy in African refugees' community.

 

“There is no such a thing as love-taboo in my life,” Eric Lemba, 25, a Congolese refugee argues. “I go where my heart leads me.”

Two years later, his mother informed him she has found a bride for him. He asked his mother to send him the girl’s picture.

He remembers, “When I saw the picture, I was disheartened. I guess I was used to American chicks, and I did not want to have anything to do with my past.”

Many refugees, who are resettled in Iowa, go through tremendous struggle to put behind their horrible pasts in prisons or refugees’ camps during their first months in America.

While Lemba ended up loving and marrying a white girl from Dubuque, who came to Cedar Rapids for education at Kirkwood Community College, David Mabike, 28, a Burundian refugee, says he married his white neighbor “because she was there when I needed somebody to support me through my struggles to adapt to the new environment.”

Spouses teach spouses new things

Adaptation includes learning speaking English, driving a car, American laws, and understanding some American behaviors and attitudes.

"My wife taught me to speak English, to drive a car, and to stay out of trouble with the law,” Mabike says.

“Well, call it the way you want. I think what she did for me is more than integration, and I am very grateful,” he says and kisses his wife, sitting near him.

Mabike and his wife, Christie, having fun in Cedar Rapids

Most African refugees in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines view marriages between these African refugees and their white spouses as some type of rebellion against African taboos and other restrictions.

Claudine Rugamba, 33, a refugee mother of three, says she “would not sell her cultural identity” for anything in the world.

Skeptical about biracial love

She skeptically praises, “Love! What a sweet word! It is wonderful to love and to be loved. But, at the end of the day, what you remain with is the question to know what you have become. You don’t want to love an American woman or man and forsake everything you are because of love. If I were single, maybe I would love a white guy. If afterward he tells me he cannot eat my food because it is an African meal, I would tell him to get lost with his love.”

African refugees who have not gotten involved with white Whites have become so judgmental toward their relatives’ biracial relationships.

For men, husbands who get in the kitchen to cook for their wives have lost their dignity because, in Africa, men don’t cook for their wives. For women, African wives who don’t breastfeed their children in order to keep their breasts firm are irresponsible mothers because, in Africa, the primary care a mother can give to her children is to breastfeed them.

Clement and his wife, Lisa and their son, Junior in Cedar Rapids

Of course, these judgments are accompanied with a lot of superstitions.

“Children who were not breastfed are no different from beasts who grow up in a human family,” Rugamba charges.

While Rugamba can be wrong in thinking this way, marriages between African refugees and their white spouses seem to be source of all sort of judgments, shock, revolts mixed up with curiosity and resilience.

And no matter how they are perceived, these marriages have proven so far to be easy entrance to integration in America for African refugees in Iowa.

 

This site is the creation of ALPHONSE MUHARE. His resume can be accessed by clicking on his name. Fall 2006 @ the UI Journalism school