Radio Interview with Cyrus Webb and the Definition of a GloLo Relationship

Cyrus Webb, also known as The Male Oprah, invited me to chat with him on his radio show Conversations Live on 92.3 FM in New York and also broadcast on blogtalkradio.com. It was an interesting interview for me starting with the first question. Cyrus said that people usually think that a multicultural relationship means a biracial relationship, what I refer to in The Globalisation of Love as a GloLo coloured relationship.

I thought to myself, right there live on radio for all of New York to hear, ‘they do?’ In The Globalisation of Love, Chapter 1 Global Alliance Strategies, I ask the question, “What is a multicultural relationship, anyway?” and answer the question with three definitions of a multicultural relationship. A Same Samemulticultural relationship is one where the couple share the same nationality but have a different personal or family culture. For example, an American woman from a Mexican immigrant family in Texas will likely have a different ‘personal culture’ than a man whose family is 5th generation Bostonian, even though they both are American. A Different Different relationship is when both nationality and culture are different. I am Canadian and my husband is Austrian. The mix can be ethnicity, colour, religion, language and anything else under the cultural umbrella. A Same But Different relationship is where nationalities are different, but cultures are the same or thought to be the same. For example, a Black American man who marries a Black woman from Africa might think, “We are the same, we’re both Black”. Yet there are a lot of cultural differences between Americans and the many different countries and cultures in Africa so this couple is the same yes, but they are also different.

What Cyrus made me realise, right there, live on radio for all of New York to hear, is that a ‘multicultural relationship’ is defined by the individual. People relate to each other and see differences and similarities in each other according to their own cultural lens. What you see in your GloLo partner that is different from you is what you choose to see whether it is the same, different or the same but different. To listen to the interview in full, go to: Conversations Live