Multiracial Love: Nineteen Years

We've been conditioned to believe  that marriage is a declining experience. That love fades with every passing year. That our wedding day will always surpass our anniversary. If you have married your best friend that is not the case. I married mine after only 4 months of dating. 

You see real love sees the past as the bottom of the mountain. It sees time as history. It sees length as depth. Tonight I tell my guy that after 19 years our love isn't diminishing its deepening. Here’s to 19 years growing in love with you Heath. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We dated for 4 months. At month five we were engaged and by month 9 our wedding was in full swing.  

Celebrating another anniversary with this man will never get old or be taken for granted.

Nineteen years loving each other well. Together we have built a home and a family. Te Amo! 11:11

Multiracial Love: The "New" South

In a lot of ways my family represents the (new) South. We are interracial, in love, and doing life like everyone else in the South. We work, have a mortgage, and go to the town festivals. Our Sundays are spent at a multiracial church where two of our core values are loving people unconditionally and standing united. On Sunday mornings, our Church truly contradicts Martin Luther King’s thought that “ the most segregated time in America is Sunday mornings.” The south is more diverse and progressive than many may think. That is why as a born and bred New Yorker I chose to stay.

However, we don’t lose sight on the fact that it was just 47 years ago that our marriage was not just unheard of but forbidden in North Carolina. The amendment, outlawing interracial marriage, remained a part of the North Carolina Constitution until 1971. It still shocks me to know that 47 years ago our family would not be recognized as a family.

At times we do still experience racism in real tangible ways. For example, when my husband and I go out on date night, yes after 19 years I still date my handsome fella, we are given separate checks. Small I know, but it still has a huge impact. It doesn’t happen every once in a while, it happens every time. I’ll never forget the time my hubby went to a local pizza joint with our son and he was asked if he was our son’s “social worker.” Or how about the time my son was called a ‘nigger’ at summer camp by a 4-year-old. I could go on and on about the disrespectful way some have treated our family but when you are at the heart of changing the way people view families it will come with challenges.

It’s not always easy to have to explain to our son at such a young age that some may never like him because he is multiracial. Too many times we have been forced to have difficult conversations with him about why things are different for us. So why stay?

Why Stay...

We stay because we see hope. Hope in our friends who are raising multiracial children in our area. Hope in churches like ours showing what it means to love one another deeply. Hope in our family that we are changing the narrative about what it means to be a multiracial family in the South. Hope in knowing that our family is a Southern family with strong values and love of all people. We are the new South and proud of it.

Multiracial Families: Not Unicorns

I love to see multiracial families in my community. Growing up in NYC seeing a multiracial family is something I took for granted. Here in the south, it’s another story. Therefore, when I see others that look like us I am excited. I want to run up to them and hug them. Do worry, I don’t. I don’t stare or linger as many do when they see my little family but it warms my heart. It helps us feel not so alone on this journey.

“Unicorn: a mythical animal typically represented as a horse with a single straight horn projecting from its forehead.”

— Webster Dictionary

Seeing other multiracial families solidifies my thought that we are not unicorns. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Twilight Sparkle as much as the next fairy princess!  However, seeing other multiracial families in the South forces a new conversation.  A new narrative if you will. 

“Like many families in America, we want our son to grow up with a strong sense of family ”

The new narrative is one that shows the world that multiracial families are strong and full of love. That we are thriving and happy and that its ok.  One in which multiracial marriages are not fetishsized but rather welcomed into the fold. Staring at us while we are eating dinner or shopping at target only makes you look ignorant and makes or family feel isolated. We are not mystical beings, we are flesh and bone just like you. 

I want people to know that yes I am Afro-Latina, my husband is white, and we are raising our multiracial (adopted) son in a small farming town in North Carolina with the same hopes and dreams that they have for their families. Like many families in America, we want our son to grow up with a strong sense of family and hope our relationship provides him with a model for what a healthy, loving, partnership looks like. Like any family, we celebrate the ups and work through the downs together. Like all families in America, we are not unicorns.