Dating while black:
What will grandma think if you bring home someone of a different race?
Nneka McGuireChicago Tribune
Editor’s note: Meet. Assess attraction. Court her. (Or him. Or them.) Confess feelings. Discuss monogamy. Marry, maybe. Make babies, if you want. In many ways, the mechanics of dating are universal, regardless of whether you’re black, white, brown or “a colorless person,” as Raven-Symone famously described herself to Oprah in a 2014 interview. Still, race can color dating experiences in minute and major ways. Many say there are common, cultural threads, and we’re here to tease them out. Call it a labor of love. The following is the fifth of eight in this online series.
There’s something sexy about contrast.
It commands attention in home decor. It sounds sweet on the tongue — ebony and ivory, living together in perfect harmony. It tastes delicious as dessert, from black-and-white cookies to vanilla ice cream drizzled with hot fudge.
In relationships, though, the joining of different races can be seen as subversive. Balked at. Dreaded or dismissed.
To be sure, attitudes are a-changin’. We’ve come a long way since Mildred and Richard Loving, a Virginia couple arrested for intermarriage and booted out of the state, soldiered on to the Supreme Court to win the landmark Loving v. Virginia case in 1967. The court’s decision struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
In 2015, 17 percent of newlyweds married someone of a different race or ethnicity, according to a 2017 analysis from the Pew Research Center. And the uptick in interracial marriages has been steepest among African-Americans. Since 1980, the number of black newlyweds who tied the knot with someone of a different race or ethnicity shot up from 5 percent to 18 percent. That trend’s stronger among black men, who are twice as likely to intermarry as black women.
Still, some black women and men with nonblack partners acknowledge that they have to reckon with family disapproval and cultural differences.
Vin’Keia O’Neill, 37, laid eyes on the man who would become her husband in early 2007. They were at the same nightclub. She was immediately attracted to Aaron, who is white. When she spotted him dancing with a black woman, she said to herself, “All right, he dances with black girls.” Before then, she didn’t know he was “down with the swirl.”
She tapped him on the back, the two exchanged numbers and, by November of that year, she was traveling to Michigan to meet his family at his sister’s baby shower.
And she was nervous. Very. “I was meeting all the women,” she said. “I was meeting grandma. I didn’t know what grandma thought about African-American people and how it was during her time. What would she say?”
Ultimately, “I did not know how I would be perceived,” she said, “and I wanted to make sure that I represented for my people well.”
The people she’s referring to are black. “I think because we’re not the dominant culture … we’re always trying to be accepted by the dominant culture,” she said, adding that it's a constant effort to be seen as an individual, divorced from racial stereotypes.
The Michigan trip went off without a hitch. But her nervousness wasn’t unfounded. In a prior interracial relationship, she’d dined with her partner and his parents, who were visiting from Pittsburgh. When she excused herself to go to the restroom, O’Neill said, the mom followed her and delivered a jaw-dropper: “My son didn’t tell me he was dating a colored girl.”
The relationship ended shortly thereafter.
Like O’Neill, Greg Edwards is also 37 and was met with harsh words regarding an interracial coupling. But this time, the heat came from his family.
Edwards, a mobile and web application manager who now lives in West Chesterfield, a South Side neighborhood, attended college in De Pere, Wis. He met a woman, Sara, in a bar, and they began dating. When he brought her home, his mom was far from pleased.
“She didn’t approve of me dating someone white,” he said, a reaction he didn’t anticipate. He’d never known she’d held those views — “I didn’t find out until I was grown.”
Mom’s disapproval didn’t prompt Edwards to pump the brakes. He’s now married to the same woman, and they have three sons. “Your parents can’t live your life for you, so you’ve got to just keep it moving.”
Cultural differences also worm their way into interracial pairings and manifest at perhaps unexpected places.
Like the pool.
“I don’t want to go swimming every other day,” said O’Neill, who lives in the South Loop and now has two children with her husband. After nearly eight years of marriage, she still tells him, “I don’t have blow-and-go hair. I don’t have a relaxer. When I get in the water, it’s going to be a long process until I can get my hair back straight.”
When they first met, she said, “I had a weave in my hair,” and he was perplexed. “How does that process work?” he asked her. “Show me.”
Hair, and conversations surrounding it, can be managed. Family matters are more difficult to untangle.
If your beloved is a different race, these moves can help you harmoniously maneuver challenges at any stage of the relationship.
Talk like it’s going out of style. Communication is critical in all relationships, said Porschia Johnson, associate therapist at Lincoln Park Therapy Group, but “it’s particularly important for interracial couples to communicate well and to be on the same page.” Talk about social justice issues. “Make sure that the person of color doesn’t continue to feel like a marginalized person within the relationship,” she said. Dig into feelings. Discuss what it’s like “being a black person in America.” Use relevant TV shows or movies as jumping-off points for those sorts of conversations, she suggests.
Formulate a game plan before family time. If one of you suspects your family might be uncomfortable with the relationship, or outright hostile, prep beforehand, Johnson said. Make sure your partner isn’t blindsided. Ask him or her questions like, “What do you need to feel supported? What is it that would make you really mad? What would be triggering to you?” Decide how you want to handle any discord. Don’t wing it. Go in as a united front.
Ask for an assist. In the black community, Johnson said, there’s a stereotype that couples therapy is not an option. It is. “It doesn’t make you weak to go to couples therapy, it doesn’t mean that your relationship is failing, it just means that you might need a little help sorting through some of the issues and figuring out what those cultural barriers or differences are.”
Zero in on the similarities. Humans are humans. “We bleed, we cry, we all have hurt feelings,” O’Neill said. And also: “Men are men.” She noted that her husband leaves his socks out. He does not pick up the toothpaste on the side of the sink. And he forgets things. “We assume something different of a white man or an Asian man or black men,” she said, but “they’re all the same.”
Do the math. Race aside, Edwards said, any relationship “is an investment,” so you need to examine your portfolio. Make sure “the weaknesses and the strengths balance out, so that you’ve got a good return.”
nmcguire@chicagotribune.com
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