“She doesn’t look like the type.”

And the other micro-aggressions you get while in an interracial relationship

My girlfriend is white.

I say this knowing that many people are now forming an opinion of me, of her, and of how we must act.

I know this because I live in the south — the home of the Confederacy. For those who don’t know, those are the people that were entirely ok with considering me 1/3 property and 2/3 human and keeping me in chains.

The south was also home to Jim Crow laws, laws that only blacks had to follow. Those laws were ended in the 1960s. My parents were 3–4 years old when those laws ended, just for context how long ago open racism was.

I went to a high school that was founded for the sole purpose of keeping blacks away from whites. This school was founded in the early 80s. This school isn’t the only one of its kind.

I paint this uncomfortable picture to let you know the type of deep-seated racism and unconscious bias I’m constantly surrounded by. Imagine being a black male dating a white female in an area that has a history of hatred towards not only blacks, but interracial couples as a whole.

The micro-aggressions and downright ugly behaviors that I’ve had to deal with throughout the course of my…