What No One Ever Tells You About Interracial Relationships

And some solutions about how to manage some of the challenges that you will most likely face.

Rebecca Stevens
ILLUMINATION-Curated

--

One of the first interracial relationships portrayed on screen was Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. In this 1960’s film, Sidney Poitier, a widowed black doctor, accompanies his white girlfriend to her parent’s house for dinner. The parents do not know that he is black until he gets there. The story recounts their surprise, biases, suspicions, and prejudices towards him.

Today, more than 50 years since that movie aired, I would like to imagine that society has changed and that there are more people accepting of interracial relationships. Hollywood portrays a lot of interracial couples these days — and one may think that they are more commonplace, more accepted. The reality is that even if there are indeed more interracial relationships than in the past, many people are still very much against mixed relationships.

I made a promise to myself very early on in my life. Skin color was not going to determine whom I fell in love with and decided to spend my life with. So much so that I have let myself be free to love the person that spoke to my heart, mind, and soul. And it so happens that that person happens to be white. We met 26 years ago, on a warm…

--

--

Rebecca Stevens
ILLUMINATION-Curated

I write about racism, but there are so many other things I would like to write about instead. Help me dismantle racism so that I can get to that.