People Stare
I have three younger sisters who all have fierce spirits. While I admire their passion, I sometimes write them off as dramatic. This is particularly true when it comes to whether or not people care about what the skin color of their significant other is. They were very defensive about that topic, which seemed silly to me. I figured if the guy treated them right, then no one would care what their skin color was. I made the mistake of thinking that everyone had the same mindset as I did. It wasn't until my youngest sister's boyfriend asked me to go to the mall with him that I felt what my sisters had. We walked into the mall in the hopes of finding a promise ring. He wanted my opinion, which I thought was sweet. To an outsider looking in, I suppose it could have looked like we were a dating couple. I felt the disapproval before we even entered the mall doors. People stared at us shamelessly. Once we got to the doors, a man held the door open for me but dropped it on my sister's boyfriend. I turned around thinking that there was about to be an argument, but my sister's boyfriend brushed it off. It was then that I realized this was quite possibly a daily battle for a black man dating a white woman or vice versa. I finally understood my sisters' attitude, and I didn't like it.
They Don't Understand
I can't tell you enough how often I've heard people ask my sisters why they can't find a white man. I always roll my eyes at those comments. If you've found every quality you're looking for in a person, then why would you go searching for someone else? However, this goes both ways. When I was working the night shift at Wal-Mart, I spent a lot of time with a black man my age. We were hired on around the same time and were on the same cleaning crew. It just seemed natural that we would click. There were several black women that hung out together. They stocked the shelves. I began noticing that one of them expressed interest in my friend even though he always avoided her. The woman and her friends began calling him a traitor to his race when he refused to go out with her. If skin color was as irrelevant as it should be, then maybe they would have told their friend 'he's just not that into you.'
Times Are Changing
As a supervisor, it shocked me when a coworker told me he didn't want to be a cashier because people never came to his line 'because he was black'. I dismissed his comment and told him to get on a register. Then, I watched as lines gathered and no one left to go to his register. A young white man eventually came to him and said that he didn't care if he was purple as long as he rang him up. If all of a sudden people avoided me because of how I looked, then I would be furious. It forced me to see that racism is not an issue of the past. Many of our grandparents have not had their hearts healed and are passing their hatred and fear down to us. Despite stories like this, I'm confident that they are failing. I watch my coworkers, my sisters, and my friends mingle without regard to race. I see millennials as the generation that will not have to tell their grandchildren to pick their friends based off of their personality rather than their skin color because they will have already shown them.
Bonus Lesson: Interracial babies are beautiful babies.
