by Rachel Ishikawa
Although my romantic entanglements to this day remain a short list, I cannot deny that race invariably becomes a factor in each relationship that I have. With my untraditional racial identity – part Jewish and Asian – I find that I am always in an interracial relationship, no matter what race my partner is. From the start of college with my first prolonged fling, race has played the passenger, a sort of haunting that has followed all of my romantic decisions since. Shortly after declining my first fling’s request for a more serious and exclusive relationship, I noticed him jaunting with a young woman, who – like me – was petite, nose-ringed, and most perturbingly half-asian. Abjectly, my mind wandered to a question that I think many women of color face when involved interracial relationships: am I a desired “type?”
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