A relationship is an opportunity to learn so much about life, love, and how another person sees the world. I want to write about a million articles about the things I have learned in my current relationship alone. I could write a book on how it felt to finally be in a truly healthy relationship, or on the advantages of a girl from a small town dating a city boy who is also an excellent tour guide. My current boyfriend has taught me what commitment means, how to deal with hateful people, and even how football works (OK, I am still sort of fuzzy on that one!).

That said, I would like to talk about a particular aspect of our relationship that has grown and changed my perspective for the better.This is often the first part of our relationship that people notice. I am a white Latina, and my boyfriend is a proud African American man.

When I bring my boyfriend to visit the town I grew up in there are stares. There are big pickup trucks flying confederate flags associated with a legacy of slavery. These incidents are both unsettling and infuriating, but the subtle racism is another kind of injustice. It is insidious and creeps into so much of society. It is my old high school friend wrinkling her nose at the idea of dating a Black man and assuming that dating one means you are automatically attracted to every single Black man. That’s like saying Lil Yachty and Ben Carson are the same person. It’s old people rolling their eyes and saying racism is over while automatically referring to black victims of police brutality as ‘thugs” in the same breath. It is the people who see our PDA as a political statement and a white couple’s as “cute”. These little bits of racism are especially troublesome because too many people think that to be racist you must be running around in a pointy white hood, and they do not examine their biases.

I have had to come to terms with my own subconscious prejudices from growing up in a white southern town. For instance, I did not always notice how little diversity my favorite old movies had because to me it was the norm. Swapping spit with someone of another race does NOT make you immune to being problematic. Of course, neither does being “colorblind”.

Colorblindness does you no favors in an interracial relationship. It can actually be a type of racism. Even well-meaning people often assume that being in an interracial relationship means you do not see color and somehow exist in a magical post-racial society. This could not be further from the truth. That is not to say that my boyfriend and I only focus on our different skin tones and cultures, or that we fetishize these differences. Broadly speaking, we are just two people that love each other. Still, I understand that his ethnicity is an intrinsic part of his identity that I should love and celebrate as much as any other part of him. If I were to close my eyes and ears to this aspect of his existence and insist on being “colorblind” I would be disrespecting a big part of who he is. To be a better partner, I must acknowledge that while I was being lovingly babysat by white neighbors, my boyfriend was being told by white neighborhood children that their parents did not want him in their house. (Yes, that actually happened to him as a small child)

Acknowledging privilege and struggle is a part of love. Of course, these are lessons that I could and should have learned before this relationship, but I am incredibly grateful that the person I love is willing to let me learn more every day by his side.