Friday, April 29, 2022

"Love, the final frontier: mixed race families in Canada"/ "A project about civil rights, passion and loving one another" ("Loving" movie)


Here are some race articles and interracial dating articles:


Oct. 7, 2016 "Love, the final frontier: mixed race families in Canada": I found this article by Zosia Beilski in the Globe and Mail:

Is love the last frontier of racial bigotry in Canada? It’s a question that intrigues Minelle Mahtani, who has dared to ask whether interracial couples and their families still test the limits of tolerance in this country.

In her recent book Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality in Canada, Mahtani, an associate professor in human geography and journalism at the University of Toronto Scarborough, questions whether we’ve not just put rose-coloured glasses on our multiculturalism, especially where mixed-race families are concerned.

While interracial relationships are on the rise in Canada (we had 360,000 mixed-race couples in 2011, more than double the total from 20 years earlier), the numbers remain slim. 

Just 5 per cent of all unions in Canada were between people of different ethnic origins, religions, languages and birthplaces in 2011, the last year Statistics Canada collected such data. That figure rises only marginally in urban areas: Just 8 per cent of couples were in mixed race relationships in Toronto, 10 per cent in Vancouver.

How do people in interracial relationships experience that multiculturalism on the ground, when they introduce their boyfriends and girlfriends to family, or hold hands on a date? How do mixed-race families and their children feel about it, in their communities and in their schools?

Mahtani was the keynote speaker at last month’s Hapa-palooza, an annual festival celebrating mixed heritage in Vancouver, and she will present at the next Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference in California in February. She spoke with The Globe and Mail about the daily realities of mixed race families.

How tolerant are Canadians of interracial relationships today?

It’s an early kind of euphoria around celebrating multiracialism in Canada. We’ve romanticized this notion far too quickly. All the numbers from Statistics Canada show that yes, we are seeing more interracial relationships, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the racism is decreasing. 

People who are in interracial relationships are still experiencing a lot of racism.

What kind of criticism do mixed race people in this country still get for their dating choices?

So much depends on where the relationship is happening and the class background of the people who are getting involved. Even though there’s a greater tolerance of interracial relationships, some researchers talk about this as a kind of “repressive tolerance”: It’s not quite acceptance but a kind of toleration.

So many of the mixed-race people I interviewed spoke about the challenges that their own parents faced as interracial couples. We’re talking about kids whose parents met in the seventies and earlier, when there was much more outright, blatant racism experienced by interracial couples.

Often, the parents did not talk to their kids about the racism they faced, even though it was considerable. It’s something I call “cocooning”: These parents wanted to create a little happy home for their kids, the progeny of the interracial relationship.

This silence had a huge impact on the way mixed race children felt growing up. When they experienced racism themselves in the school system, they didn’t want to tarnish their parents’ experience of race, assuming that it was fairly pristine simply because it was never discussed in the household. And so a chasm was created.

It’s why, today, so many of these now-grown-up mixed-race people are very upfront with their own kids, talking through the racism they have experienced.

Beyond parenting, what happens between people in interracial relationships when they struggle with racist family members, or encounter stares or slurs in public?

It corrodes the trust that can exist between them because of misunderstandings. And it becomes very tiring for the person of colour always to be explaining to the person who is white the challenges that they face, explaining, “This is what it’s like for me. These are the consequences of the choices that we’re making that I have to face in my community.” It’s not easy.

It’s only through partnering and being on a really deeply intimate level with somebody that we see how they live out their lives.

For people who are not racialized on a day-to-day basis – people who are white – they see how the person of colour experiences race every single day. They understand the racial gaze a lot more.

Having that window is really interesting and it’s key for the white person. They get to experience a whole different dimension of how race is lived out in Canadian society.

Let’s turn to mixed-race Canadians: What type of decision-making goes into how they choose to partner up in this country?

We have very little information about how people who are mixed – like myself, I’m Indian and Iranian – approach dating. Most of the research has been about monoracial people, however you define that, because of course that’s a mythology too: We’re all mixed in some way, but we tend to forget that.

What I found interviewing women of mixed race in Toronto is that they changed who they decided to partner with over time.

A lot of mixed-race women between the ages of 16 and 20 tend to look for partners who are white.

A lot of it has to do with the kind of internalized racism they felt when they were younger. They want to become more white because they saw it as a much more appealing racial group to identify with.

But then something happens between their university years: They start looking for somebody from their more racialized side, meaning if they’re Asian-white, they try to find an Asian partner, or if they’re black and white, they choose a black partner.

That pattern sticks around until they’re about 28.

Then around 29, something else happens: They recognize that choosing a partner is about so much more than basing it on their racial category. They choose partners because they enjoy the same kind of music, hobbies or passions. These are the partnerships that tend to stick.

It’s heartening to hear that what people ultimately land on goes beyond race.

It shows how the backdrop of living and growing up in a multicultural country influences how they think about racial categories and the choices that they make in partnering up.

What about babies? We hear that patronizing gushing, that mixed-race babies are the most beautiful babies. How does this bode for new generations of mixed-race Canadians?

On the one hand, mixed-race people are caught in the mythology of, “Oh no! What about the children? How are they going to survive coming out of an interracial relationship?”

And now we have this hybrid vigour: “Mixed-race kids: They’re so beautiful! They have the best of worlds” – this notion that they have access to everything and are the world’s national, rational ambassadors with a foot in all these different camps.

It’s so much more complicated than that. The only thing that mixed-race people have in common, if they look racially ambiguous, is an understanding of the fluidity of the cultural capital that they have moving through the world.

One of the best racial barometers was the attention after that Cheerios commercial, where a black dad and a white mom and a mixed daughter were featured. There was such backlash. So many people were surprised by that, but those of us who do work in this area, we weren’t surprised at all.

It showed that the anger over racial mixing has such a long and tortured history that has nowhere near been banished.

Do we need to see more commercials like that?

We need more media that is more representative of the actual population in which we live, that reflects what it is that we’re choosing in our own lives.

We now have access to more examples of interracial coupling in Canada. It offers a different window into thinking about the possibility of successful interracial partnering.

The reality is that so many people who are mixed are choosing partners who are also mixed. It’s now moving beyond race.

It’s only through partnering and being on a really deeply intimate level with somebody that we see how they live out their lives.

Minelle Mahtani Associate professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough

Hear Zosia Bielski talk to Minelle Mahtani on Colour Code, a podcast about race by The Globe and Mail. Episode five, “First Comes Love,” can be found at tgam.ca/colourcode.



Nov. 14, 2016 "A project about civil rights, passion and loving one another": Today I found this article by Bob Thompson in the Edmonton Journal:

Ruth Negga’s motivation was personal when she pursued her role as Mildred in the film Loving.


Mildred Loving was arrested for marrying her white husband Richard (played by Joel Edgerton) in 1958 Virginia. The part was more than just another job because Negga’s father is Ethiopian and her mother is Irish.


It turns out the portrayal might be a great career move, anyway. Negga has been the focus of Oscar buzz since the Jeff Nichols film made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival last spring.


The movie is a subtle study of the couple’s journey, which saw them arrested, jailed, forced to flee their home state and then return from Washington, D.C., to appeal their case. It led to a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that race was not a barrier for marriage.


Prior to Loving, Negga played the recurring villain Raina on the ABC superhero series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She’s now turning heads playing the vigilante Tulip on AMC’s Preacher.


The 34-year-old actress, who was raised and trained as an actress in Ireland, offers her thoughts in her Irish lilt:


On being involved in Loving:


“It really was obviously a very special project for me.”


On researching the Lovings’ relationship:


“Joel (Edgerton) and I both thought, ‘What a beautiful, quiet intimacy they shared. We were so happy to spend time with this couple we adored.”


On what makes them unique:


“They are people who do extraordinary things by being themselves. That’s why this couple challenges our pre-conceived notions of strength.”


On Mildred’s blend of resilience and confidence against all odds:


“Mildred had tenacity, perseverance and self-belief. I was so impressed by that. Especially for women of colour at that time.”


On why Nichols was the right filmmaker for the story:


“Jeff elevates the ordinary to greatness, which makes him the perfect fit because this is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”


On the positive response to Loving:


“What’s great about this is that people are introduced to Mildred and Richard. I think they will take their rightful place in the civil rights canon.”







This week's theme is about dating:

"Avril Lavigne Says She 'Tried to Resist' Falling in Love with Mod Sun: 'The Most I've Ever Tried'"/ 'I Followed My Heart'




"Relationship FUNdamentals"/ "Making it work" (couples counseling)






My week:

Sun. Apr. 24, 2022 Productive: Today I did my laundry and I helped make lunch.

I also did some cleaning and recycling this weekend.

I'm sure some of you guys are like: "I don't want to read about you cleaning."


Tues. Apr. 26, 2022 Little Debbie's: I tried some more of their snack cakes.

Swiss Rolls- they're chocolate cake with vanilla ice in them, and they're chocolate- covered.

Cosmic Brownies- these are hard to chew with colored chocolate candies in them.

Oatmeal Creme Pies:- these are 2 oatmeal cookies with vanilla icing in between them.


Free or Subsidized Counseling: I was messaging one of my friends on Facebook.  On her status updates she writes about being sad, so I sent her this:




Apr. 26, 2022 Jonathan Tucker: I was looking up to see if he's in any new TV shows and movies.


Palm Trees and Powerlines:

"A disconnected teenage girl enters a relationship with a man twice her age. She sees him as the solution to all her problems, but his intentions are not what they seem."

Palm Trees and Power Lines (2022) - IMDb

.
This is a remake of the short film by the same title and writer and director Jamie Dack.  I saw the 15 min. short film on Youtube.  I liked it.  There are a lot of comments on it:


"Sixteen year old Charlotte ambles through a summer day when she's followed home by Tommy, an older guy. Tommy helps her escape her loneliness, but after betraying her trust, Charlotte must decide what matters to her most."

Palm Trees and Power Lines (Short 2018) - IMDb


Here is the short film:

(2609) Cannes: A teen girl strolls on a summer day. But a man follows her home. | Palm Trees and Power Line - YouTube


I watched this interview:

Palm Trees and Power Lines: Jamie Dack, Lily McInerny, Jonathan Tucker on Their Cautionary Tale



The Black Donnellys: This TV show came out in 2007.  Tucker was in the 5 main characters.  This was where I really became a fan of his.

"Four young Irish brothers are caught up in New York's underworld of organized crime."

The Black Donnellys (TV Series 2007) - IMDb

You can watch the whole season (13 episodes) on Youtube.  I remember a bit of the pilot and the show.  I don't know if I'm going to rewatch this:


(2609) The Black Donnelys (01-Pilot) - YouTube



Apr. 27, 2022 Twitter: I followed him on Twitter:

jonathan tucker (@jonathanmtucker) / Twitter

I then retweeted all 17 of the posts of the movie Palm Trees and Powerlines from Tucker's page onto my page.


I'm reading all the movie reviews/ articles about this movie and saving this into my email/ blog.


Apr. 28, 2022: I'm happy and excited about this movie and Tucker, and I hope I get to see this. 



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"Relationship FUNdamentals"/ "Making it work" (couples counseling)

 Feb. 20, 2022: I found this in my old physical news articles:


Feb. 1, 2019 "Relationship FUNdamentals": Today I found this article by Tamar Satov in the Edmonton Journal:


Trivial Pursuit, Star Wars edition, will always have a place in my heart.


The game was the first Father’s Day gift I bought for my husband when our son was just a few months old. It may be an understatement to say that I married a huge Star Wars fan, so when several weeks went by and we still hadn’t taken it out of the box, he was getting antsy. 


“Are we ever going to play my new game?” he would wonder aloud. He had a point — we hadn’t been spending much quality time together; sleep deprivation and our new responsibilities seemed to crowd out everything else. 


So we sat down then and there on the living room floor and set up the board, beers in hand, asking each other questions about the minutiae of Star Wars lore, laughing in a way that we hadn’t since becoming parents.


This kind of lighthearted connection is crucial to any couple’s relationship, but it can easily fall by the wayside when kids enter the picture, says Ashley Howe, a couples and family therapist.


“For parents, it often becomes all about function — about keeping the kids alive and healthy,” she says. Busy lives crammed with work, school, playdates and chores can lead to monotonous routines with little room for parent-only fun. Or worse, it can leave you feeling disconnected from your partner.


If you’re looking for a way to rediscover the fun this Valentine’s Day — and all year long — we’ve got a few suggestions to take you beyond the run-of-the-mill date night.


1 See them in a new light 


Parents who spend most of their together time at home can easily fall into the trap of envisioning their partner as that guy/girl in the track pants and stained T-shirt. “It helps to be reminded how your partner is seen out in the external world,” says Howe. 


If you have the opportunity, sit in on a presentation your partner is giving, or listen in on a sales call, she suggests. 


“Look at them through a different lens — watch the way they walk into the room, how they interact with others.” Some couples take this playful attitude a step farther; Anna Toth, a registered marriage and family therapist, recalls a couple who, as frequent business travellers, decided to meet up in a city and pretend they were strangers having an affair.



 2 Learn something new together 


Boredom can kill relationships, says Howe. To keep things interesting, try picking up a new skill with your sweetie by taking a wine-tasting course, learning a different language or anything new to both of you.


For Debra Scott and her husband, Brad, Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes fit the bill. They get a sitter once a week so they can go to a class together, but they also trade off one additional night a week where they each go solo. “It has lightened our moods a lot, in general,” says Scott. “You connect more with your partner when you’re not so caught up in the day-to-day.”


The slight unease of being pushed outside your regular routine is sure to bring you closer, says Howe. 


“Learning something new uses the same part of the brain that kickstarts arousal,” she says. “It does so much for recharging relationships.”



3 Laugh down memory lane


It’s great to tell each other fun stories about your relationship, says Toth. You can recall your first date, your wedding or, as Jenn Wright, mom to Liam, four, and Caitlyn, two, suggests, that crazy anecdote that always makes you bust a gut. “We often reminisce about something funny that happened to us in our early days of dating or marriage — something that really makes us laugh out loud,” she says. 


Like the one Valentine’s Day she and her husband, Steve, went for a long drive after dinner and ended up going through what they called “X-Files fog” in a town they’d never heard of. Good times.


If you’re stuck in the present, put on some of the old tunes from when you first met, says Sherry Theriault, a mom of two kids (15 months and three years). “It brings back so many memories that you can’t help but laugh.” 



4 Take a cue from your kids 


Challenge your honey to a game of cards, Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit to lighten the mood. Play video games like Rock Band, if that’s what turns your crank. 


And if you don’t know what fun activities your partner might enjoy, don’t be afraid to put the question out there.


“When we’ve been together for a while, we often think we know everything about our partner,” says Toth. But you may have no idea that your spouse was once a hula hoop fanatic or a Donkey Kong master. Ask ’em what fun things they used to do,” advises Toth.


“We play like kids whenever we get the chance,” says mom Carla Ala-Kantti. “Water-gun fights, playground equipment, bikes, skateboards — nothing is off-limits.” If you’re more of a dancing fool, follow Jason Graham’s lead and try a few impromptu moves with your partner, as he does with his wife, Stephanie White. 


“A good song pops onto the radio and we almost absent-mindedly start moving closer together and getting down. Usually one of us has a spatula or a rake in our hands — doesn’t matter, we just can’t stop the boogie.”


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"Making it work": Today I found this article by Kristina Virro in the Edmonton Journal:



There’s a misconception that going to couples counselling means your relationship is in a really, really bad place.


It was Mark and Lindsay’s* first time in couples counselling, and I could tell. They were overly eager to engage in small talk for as long as possible, but their voices trembled ever so slightly as they talked about the weather.


“First time?” I asked. They nodded, sullenly.


Mark and Lindsay were in their late 20s and had been married for about a year, which had been a surprisingly stressful experience for Lindsay.


“I always blamed my anxiety on something else,” she said. “But then I realized it might be coming from our very relationship.” The small talk ended there.


Mark was desperate to keep his marriage together, but he also seemed to know it might be unsalvageable — which is something I see a lot in my practice. In these cases, one partner has been asking the other to come to counselling for months, or even years, but until the relationship is really endangered, they don’t think counselling is necessary.


When I started working with couples two years ago, I quickly learned that relationship issues don’t discriminate. Whether I was working with 20-year-olds or 70-year-olds, heterosexual or same-sex couples, the monogamous or polyamorous, similar issues kept showing up. 


And with them came questions I repeatedly had for myself, too: 


how do people who lovingly share wedding vows get to a place of such disdain, resentment or withdrawal? 


And am I bound to repeat the same disintegrating patterns in my own romantic life?


It was through answering these very questions that I was able to uncover some crucial tips on how to maintain a healthy relationship. Here’s what I’ve learned.



Listen to what your partner says (like, actually listen): My first few sessions with Mark and Lindsay were filled with timid “I don’t knows” that made it hard to conduct the session.


Eventually, however, Lindsay made a difficult admission: “There were so many instances where I told you why I felt unhappy, Mark, yet you never seemed to hear me.”


After a moment of silence that was heavy with sadness, her husband replied, “I guess I just didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”


I see this a lot: someone continually says something is bothering them while their partner thinks it’s “not a big deal.” When we feel like our needs are continually brushed aside, it becomes all too easy to feel like we’re in an unsupportive relationship where our partner just “doesn’t care.” 


And so begins the journey down Resentment Road. And in fact, a month into therapy, Lindsay said she wanted a divorce.


When your partner tells you something, listen. Whether it’s some minor story about a topic you couldn’t care less about, or a significant concern about their career, do your best to give them your undivided attention — even if that means forcing yourself to listen. 


That work email can wait and so can the laundry, because making your partner feel heard is a feeling that lasts.


Speak up: In my work with Anne and Mary*, a couple in their mid 30s, Anne expressed that she felt invisible and neglected when Mary failed to ask how her day was. “Doesn’t she want to know? Doesn’t she care?” she’d ask rhetorically.


This is when I utter one of the most commonly-used phrases in couples counselling: “I’d love if you could ask Mary that rather than asking me.”


Many of us are so afraid of conflict, or so stripped of quality time with our loved ones, that we forget to tell them what we need. I started practising this habit myself. I might tell my partner, 


“I need to vent about something but I just need you to listen rather than give me advice, OK?”


Remember, it’s impossible for someone to be helpful when they have no idea what “helpful” means to you.



Be teammates, not adversaries: I have a sneaking suspicion that the culture of competitiveness that plagues our country’s workforce has seeped into our relationships. 


Just as one might feel the need to prove themselves to a boss, couples seem fixated on who’s more tired, stressed or overwhelmed in their relationship. Instead of leaning on the person we’ve chosen to be our partner, we often use them as a yardstick for our own exhaustion.


Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, instead of competing about whose life is harder, we work with our partner to make things better together?


For me, I’ve consciously learned to listen empathetically when my partner says he’s tired, rather than allowing the defensive part of me to start arguing about why my day was worse.


I’ve realized that competitiveness encourages distance rather than closeness. 



Go to therapy sooner than later: I so desperately wish people didn’t see couples counselling as a signal that their relationship is headed for the rocks, because that is simply not the case.


Couples counselling isn’t just about talking through what’s going wrong; it also offers a beautiful opportunity to check in with your partner in a safe space where you have each other’s undivided attention. 


It gives you the chance to discuss what’s going right in the relationship, and celebrate the awesome parts of it, too.


My eagerness to debunk therapy’s bad rap is precisely why I gave my clients Courtney and Michael* the advice I did as we wrapped up our 10th and final session together.


A couple in their 30s, they had been working on improving their communication skills so they could avoid explosive anger during difficult conversations.


“Come back when you’ve caught a cold,” I said. Confused, they asked what I meant.


“Couples therapy is like going to the doctor,” I said. “It’s not very useful to go when you’ve been bed-ridden for days and are on the tail end of your sickness. You want to catch the bug early on.”


I added: “When you feel like your relationship may have caught a cold, that’s when I want to hear from you again.”


 *All names have been changed


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