IN Guess who’s coming to Dinner, a 1967 American drama film starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn, we see a young white woman bringing home her new fiancé, a black physician, to meet her parents.
Now, fast forward to 2012 and you find your daughter bringing home to dinner a man whom she fancies except that he is of a different race.
What will your reaction be?
Will it be very different from that of Matt (Spencer Tracy) and Christina Drayton’s (Katharine Hepburn)?
In Malaysia, we do have many mixed marriages and most parents have braced themselves sufficiently for love relationships between Malays, Chinese, Indians, Eurasians and Caucasians.
But the feedback I got was despite the modernity of this day and age, most Malaysian parents are still not very comfortable with the idea of the fusion of colours on the opposite extremes of the colour spectrum: black and white.
Good friends yes, but to go further than that is a different matter. This reminds me of what Christina Drayton said in the movie:
“She’s 23 years old, and the way she is, is just exactly the way we brought her up to be.
“We answered her questions. She listened to our answers.
“We told her it was wrong to believe that the white people were somehow essentially superior to the black people, or the brown or the red or the yellow ones, for that matter.
“People who thought that way were wrong to think that way. Sometimes hateful, usually stupid, but always, always wrong.
“That’s what we said. And when we said it, we did not add, ‘But don’t ever fall in love with a coloured man’.”
I am all for cross-cultural education and appreciation.
When I was lecturing or presenting papers at conferences, I enjoyed wearing the kebaya, cheongsam or sari to reflect the multi-ethnic diversity of Malaysians.
When I hosted dinners, the menu would be an assortment of dishes from different cultures.
During my travels, I would be very interested in the country’s cultures, traditions and cuisine.
For instance, from Nepal, I learnt how to wear a Daura-Suruwal, which is a traditional Nepali dress; from China, I experienced the “fire cupping” for the tired traveller’s body and from Cambodia, I learnt how to cook a popular Khmer dish called Amok trey which is fish covered with kroeung (a marinade paste) and coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.
When we are exposed to others quite unlike ourselves, we learn a great deal.
Basically, aspirations and needs are relatively similar despite the skin colour.
There are universal values like taking care of our health, being considerate and mindful of others and being polite.
There are also common threads in bringing up children, in the importance of education and in the pursuit of dreams.
However, there are also obvious differences in the way we perceive what happens around us and good taste in one culture may not be the same in another.
Having said that, differences may blur over time and boundaries that once existed between cultures in one generation may not be there in the next generation.
I like the phrase “To separate the chaff from the wheat” which means to separate things of value from things of no value.
What are the things that we look for in a person?
Some girls look for the 5 Cs when choosing their future spouses — Cash, Car, Credit card, Condominium and Country club membership.
Others look for physical attributes. In the choice of a mate, my advice to my children has always been value-based: God-fearing, responsible, sensible, diligent and true.
So the acid test presented itself when my five-foot-three (1.6m) daughter brought home a six-foot-five (1.9m) male specimen for dinner.
The coffee coloured God-fearing, responsible, sensible, diligent and true Sudanese guest and the yellow coloured Malaysian daughter offered to prepare the dessert — an orange coloured carrot cake with cream coloured cheese frosting in my white Irish kitchen.
Now, that is what I call a colourful setting.
I could not agree more with what Matt Drayton said, “There’ll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out....... But you’re two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happened to have a pigmentation problem….”
Happy Valentine’s Day
SOURCE: Guess who’s coming to dinner? - Columnist - New Straits Timeshttp://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/guess-who-s-coming-to-dinner-1.45449#ixzz1m9zgCQdE
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