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Can interracial marriage work?

Mary, a 42 year old African American woman, and David, a white man of 49, talk about their marriage, its up and downs, problems they have encountered and obstacles they have overcome. Interview by David Hay Jones.

Mary, a 42 year old African American woman, and David, a white man of 49, talk about their marriage, its up and downs, problems they have encountered and obstacles they have overcome. Interview by David Hay Jones.

Question: Hello, Mary and David. Let's start with you, Mary. What's the most common marriage question you are asked by your friends?

Mary: A couple of my friends are curious: What's it REALLY like to be married to a white guy? And then some of the comments are silly and racist: Is a white guy really able to satisfy a black woman in bed?, that kind of nonsense. On the whole though, we just talk about the usual marriage stuff that girlfriends talk about. It has nothing to do with race or color.

Question: How about you, David?

David: Race is a very touchy subject. I've found that white guys won't talk about it with me. If I am with a group of black guys and they're relaxed and they know I'm not going to be offended, they can kid around. It's tedious stuff, but you take in on the chin most of the time.

Mary: You know, we're not interracial at home. We're just Mary and David and our son Ben. We're often pushed into discussions we don't usually think about. Obviously I know that David is white, I can see that, but it's not as though I go around thinking about David the white guy all the time. It's David my husband, David the man I love, David the father of my child.

David: And David the guy who forgot to pick up Ben from taekwando.

Mary: Yeah, that as well!

Question: How did you guys meet?

David: I was a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I just happened to be visiting Vanderbilt and needed to use their library. I couldn't get in, I didn't have Vanderbilt id. The guy on the desk was beng an a-hole about it. Mary was working in the library at the time. She was doing a Phd and the library was one of her side gigs. Anyhow, she got me into the library, helped me find the books I wanted, we got chatting ...

Mary: And the rest is history. Next question.

Question: Hmmm, OK. How did it work out with one person being in Michigan and the other in, where's Vanderbilt?

Mary: Nashville, Tennessee. It worked out fine. We'd visit each other. This was in the early days of the internet. We were both at good universities with excellent computer facilities (it wasn't so usual to have your own laptop back then). We had daily contact. It might not have worked in the days of snail mail and landline.

Question: I'm impressed you were able to keep the relationship going over a distance. It must have been tough.

David: Not really, not when you're crazy in love. We spent vacations together, traveled together. I went to Kenya to visit Mary's grandmother who was this lady way up into her 90s, a woman who had never left her tiny village. I met with her parents, who lived in Sacramento.

Question: What was that like?

David: Pretty intimidating. Mary's dad is this brilliant intellectual -- he got his doctorate from Yale. He loves literature and poetry, painting, music. Her mother ...

Mary: My mother is the sweetest lady but very protective of her five daughters, of which I am the youngest. She was a little concerned what I was doing with this guy who seemed bohemian and carefree. My mother is a hard-working businesswoman, never at rest. She's always got half a dozen irons in the fire.

David: Let's say Mary's mother was worried I was not ambitious enough. And I was studying the wrong subject: political science. Mary's dad said you should either study something useful like medicine or law, or you should study something edifying like literature or philosophy. Political science was neither one thing nor the other.

Question: Mary, did you meet David's parents.

Mary: Oh yes. His mother is a sweetheart, a Norwegian immigrant who still has that accent going on after 40 years in the country. She is an angel, very caring, very loving toward her family. And David's dad is, or was -- he is dead now -- a bit, well, special.

David: What Mary is trying to say is that my dad was an idiot. He was strictly blue collar, worked in a paper mill most of his life until he lost his job and then started his own contracting business. He worked hard, but he never traveled, didn't read, his horizon was limited to say the least.

Question: Was it a problem for him that you were with Mary?

David: It was never stated. He wasn't really a guy who could articulate his feelings. He was uncomfortable around people who weren't like him. And he could say stupid things without realizing they were stupid. Racist remarks, stuff like that. But he wouldn't understand they were racist.

Mary: David's dad is no longer with us, so let's be generous to him and say he was a man of his age and background. He did what he could do.

David: That is generous, too generous. But it's interesting, whenever race is part of an equation, people think it's the entire question. With my dad, it wasn't only race. He was uncomfortable about Mary's family's liberal politics, their money, their social circle, their education. My dad was someone who thought right and wrong was what he thought was right and wrong; it was common sense, something you didn't have to think about. Then he met Mary's dad who towered over him physically and in every other way, a man who could quote philosophers and writers, and my dad was out of his depth.

Question: When the two of you decided to marry, how did your parents respond?

Mary: My mom and dad asked me whether I was really, really sure. They wanted to know if I was aware of all the extra obstacles I was putting in my way by making race a big part of my life, not because they had a problem with it but because others would. And they wanted to know whether David could provide the things a family needed, whether he was driven enough, They liked him a lot, but David always seemed a bit too laid back and relaxed to them.

David: My mom supported me. My dad didn't talk about it, and he didn't attend the wedding. He said he was busy. My mother, aunt, and brothers attended from my side of the family, while hundreds of Mary's relatives attended.

Mary: Dozens, baby, not hundreds.

David: Anyway, I didn't talk to my dad much after that. And I didn't go to his funeral.

Mary: That was petty of you.

David: No, that was important to me.

Mary: As you can see, we still have some healing to do.

Question: OK. Let me ask, are there any issues that are specific to interracial couples?

David: There's this dumb idea that when a white person marries a black person, he's gonna sell out and become a pretend African American. He's going to become a kind of race traitor. It seems stupid, but I've encountered that sentiment.

Mary: That's true. My black friends think I have to be white for the marriage to work, that I have to turn my back on who I am and pretend to be something different. The truth is an interracial couple is neither black nor white. They can be comfortable in both groups, but they don't totally belong to either. An interracial couple has specific issues, so we're usually most comfortable with other interracial couples. They don't constantly ask questions about race. We can be ourselves. White people especially have trouble knowing how to talk to a black person, as though there is some special skill or art involved.

But black people are usually pretty good at reading white company. We've always been in a minority, so we have learned how to speak and behave in a way that white people find acceptable. We know how to handle ourselves. But when we are in all-black company, it's different, it's more relaxed. We don't have to observe those white rules, the dominant culture rules.

David: It is weird to see how lost many white people are when they are in a group of African Americans. They're so uncomfortable. My dad and his friends were like that. It's like they had lost their tongues or had landed on the moon and didn't know what to do.

Question: How are things for your son?

Mary: A lot of this race stuff is vitally important to my generation and older, but less so to younger people. To young kids, it doesn't really exist. Ben has white friends and black friends, Asian friends, European friends. Race isn't an issue for him. Fortunately, he hasn't been exposed to any stupid race crap yet.

Question: Can you protect him from that?

Mary: In America? Are you kidding? It'll hit him soon enough, when he's stopped for being a young black man driving a car, or being a young black man in an upscale mall. All of that cruel stuff is waiting for him out there in the world.

David: Mary's right, that stuff is out there. We just have to do our best to give Ben the love, the self-confidence, the pride to shrug off that nonsense as best he can. We have a gifted and highly-educated black president, and that's great, but America is still a very racist country. Lots has changed, lots of improvements have been made but there are millions of people just like my dad who don't think the races should mix and who are threatened by something as basic as a young black man driving his own car. It's sad, it makes me mad, but that is the reality of this country.

Question: Do you have any words of wisdom that you can give to a young interracial couple wanting to get married?

Mary: If you love each other, if it's what you really want, then do it. Tackle each problem together. Be open, don't be too defensive, be prepared to have your worldview change from the foundations upward, and always be there for each other.

David: Yeah, and if friends or family don't support you, screw 'em. Once you're married your wife is the most important person to you. You owe your heart and your loyalty to her. Don't get beaten down by small-minded people.

Question: Mary and David, thank you so much for this conversation.

Interview by David Hay Jones

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