In a country where racial classifications create social hierarchies that assert the superiority of white skin and Caucasian features, and the inferiority of "black" skin and Asian features, interracial and interethnic couples in Lebanon are abhorred, stigmatized and socially ostracised.

"I'm a stranger in my own country," Saeb Kayali, a Thai-Lebanese, told Al-Akhbar.

"Demeaning gestures, head-shaking, stares, and under-the-breath comments are the most passive of the reactions we get in public," "I remember once a woman asked my friend, who happened to be right next to me, if I spoke Arabic," Kayali said, "And I always get questions like 'Where are you from? Lebanon. No, where are you really from? Ummm, Lebanon. No, like where are your parents originally from?' And even after I explicitly tell them that I'm Lebanese they just continue asking."

As Kayali narrated countless instances of "misunderstandings," Lebanon's racial bigotry, whether conscious or unconscious, and the long-ingrained notions of racial inequality, are very clearly present in today's society.

Power institutions, including the societal body, are not only combating interfaith marriages but also interracial ones. While the need to overcome the former has vigorously surfaced in the last few years, the latter is still to be acknowledged and defied.

Blatant racism

"Demeaning gestures, head-shaking, stares, and under-the-breath comments are the most passive of the reactions we get in public," Pi, a Filipina woman married to a Lebanese man, told Al-Akhbar.

Racial intolerance in Lebanon has caused the alienation of mixed-race couples from family members, who disown them for marrying someone they consider to be 'inferior.' People of African or Asian heritage are automatically associated with allegedly 'inferior' domestic workers by virtue of their phenotype, and their identity is accordingly erased and replaced by an array of racist stereotypes.

"At first we didn't even hold hands in public. Then I asked him how is it okay for others to express hatred but not for us to express love?" Pi added, "now we act like any endogamous couple and if someone is disturbed he or she can simply look away."

"His family didn't speak to him for five years," Pi said, "they didn't even know me, but my Filipina features were more than enough reason for them to disapprove of our marriage."

According to Rana Boukarim, spokeswoman for the Anti Racism Movement in Lebanon, "Many families eventually come to accept the interracial marriages, which may be seen as a decrease in racism. However, when questioned, these family members, who were initially against the idea, often say 'but she is different from other Filipinas'."

Moreover, couples who are driven by love to cross the color line face socially-constructed derision because they, and their mixed-race children, provoke the invisible yet existing laws of racial segregation.

"They used to call me Oreo"

"I remember one time, light-skinned Lebanese students refused to sit next to an Afro-Lebanese kid because they thought his dark skin color was 'contagious' and they feared they would turn black." Mixed-race children face blatant racism at school as their fellow classmates fail to censor their speech. While interracial couples are mentally and psychologically aware of notions of race and the difficulties that might be ahead in ethnically homogenous communities, their children are not.

"Back in preschool, kids used to call me 'blacky' or 'Oreo' as if my skin color is my name and identity," Walid Yassine, a 22-year-old Congolese-Lebanese told Al-Akhbar.

"I was called 'the Chinese kid'," Kayali said, "even though I'm not half Chinese to begin with."

Thrust into a world of racial stereotyping, mixed-race children experience disparities in self-esteem, self-degradation, and identity-related struggles. Unless the child is aware of his or her mixed heritage, overcoming the internal turmoil that could result from such confusion could take a lifetime.

"I felt different and I knew I looked different but I didn't understand why I was treated differently," Gabi Kheil, a 24-year-old Gabonese-Lebanese told Al-Akhbar.

According to Charles Nasrallah, founder and director of Insan Association, when introducing an Afro-Lebanese to a class full of light-skinned Lebanese children the first reaction has always been very aggressive and abusive.

"We've had incidents where the students would spit on the dark-skinned kid