Here’s the summary of what went down, in his words:

I proposed to my girlfriend today, and SHE SAID YES!! I’m so humbled and blessed to spend the rest of my life with her. I’m certain you’ll want to know all the details (being your journalistic self), so here goes:

I bought the ring a few weeks ago. We picked out the ring together, but I kept the proposal a mystery. I’ve been making gifts for her for the past month to give to her every day this week, and give I did. I have her a present every day up through today. The last one, before today, was a “Gillespie Family Photo Album” that detailed our relationship, down to pasting all the movie ticket stubs to every movie we’ve seen together (there were 9 – Django was the best).

So, after giving her a gift a day for a week, I took her up to Memphis to go to the art museum her parents got married in (she didn’t think I remembered, but I did!). We went to eat at a café first and she had no idea of the proposal. We ate, paid and then drove to the park outside the art museum. We walked through the park for an hour, talking and watching all of the people enjoy this beautiful Sunday. I pointed to an open field and we walked through, observing as we went. We saw a man practicing fire juggling (no fire of course, there were children around!). Several families were picnicking in the park and enjoying the day. As we walked, I expressed to her how much I love her and how I can’t wait for her to be my wife. Once we got to the middle of the park, I stopped her.

She had a confused look on her face, as I reached into my pocket. She saw what was coming and started saying, “no, no, no.” I was immediately nervous that she would reject my proposal, but I had already gone this far so I couldn’t stop now!

I got down on one knee. I was sweating harder, because I was scared she would say no. I said, “Ashley, will you marry me?”

She hesitated again, and my apprehension grew; but, to my joy, she said “of course I’ll marry you.” I stayed on my knee for another two minutes while I put the ring on her finger. I stood up.

The first thing I remember after the haze of nervousness, was the fire-juggler. He had dropped his practice batons and was yelling, “YEAH! YEAH!” As he kept cheering, so began the other park-goers. I put my fists in the air, triumphant. I’m a bit of a shy guy, so I made no exultations, but instead put my arm around Ashley and led her toward the art museum.

We spent two hours in the art museum. I’m an enormous art fan, being an artist (musician/music teacher) myself, especially paintings. I can say though, I’ve never seen the beauty in art like I did today. We walked around and took in centuries of art, and felt a part of it together.

We drove back to my house and called our friends and family to tell them the good news. They were extraordinarily happy for us, and their joy served to augment ours.

After everything, today has been one of the most joyous days I’ve ever had. I think I’ve done my White Boy Dance several times already, today!

So, there it is. Love exists and it lives here, between us. I hope our story serves as an example for others like us (we call ourselves a Yin-Yang).

Cheers to all you guys working hard for the heart of a wonderful woman. *sips victory beer*

Yay love!!

Here’s a picture of the nice rock he put on her finger…

Look at this gorgeous couple…!!!

Congrats Whitney and Ashley!

Hi Christelyn!

I LOVE your blog. I remember when I stumbled across it & it was so awesome to finally find a community of like-minded women! I just got engaged to my boyfriend, Henry, on Saturday after my birthday dinner. We met in medical school at Brown and we’re currently doing our residencies (I’m in Boston doing internal medicine & he’s in Philadelphia doing emergency medicine). I’ll be moving to Philly in June to join him! Your blog is wonderful because it doesn’t mince words — we black women are just as beautiful & deserving of being treated like queens as any other women. I’ve heard it all, that I’m uppity and don’t know my place because I’m not interested in DBR brothas hollering at me on the street. I know my worth, and I love that your blog empowers women to embrace their options and choose the best for themselves. Anyway, I know you sometimes post when people get engaged, and I was hoping you’d consider sharing our story. Keep fighting the good fight!!

Sincerely,
“A”

Congrats to the happy couple!!

Speaking of black women who never seem to age, I’m thinking Miss Turner (soon to be Missus Turner) is not only a cougar, but a vampire. But word to the wise, ladies, do NOT wait fricking 27 years to marry someone. And don’t even THINK about using this long-arse courtship as a reason to stay with that dude you been “engaged” to for the last decade, because as reports go, Erwin has asked Tina repeatedly to marry him and she declined. The ball was always firmly in her court.

BILLIONAIRES

Prefer Black Women 

by Kola Boof

One thing I learned while living with Osama Bin Laden (against my will in 1996)…is that while the saying goes “gentlemen prefer Blondes“…..a less talked about phenomenon is that BILLIONAIRES marry Black  women.

This year alone, we have SEVEN high profile engagements between billionaire men and what are supposedly (according to Western culture) the most undesirable women on earth—Black women.  And the fact that these women are more “authentically Black” (their genes more African looking and less
Mixed/European) is meaningful here.

From CEO of Norton Anti-Virus Peter Norton marrying Gwen…to Naomi Campbell and Janet Jackson snagging two of the richest men in Russia and the Arab world….to Mellody Hobson and George Lucas….to Africa where Black billionaires in Uganda, Algeria and Burkino Faso married “educated” business-owning Black African women…..the phenom is glaring. But the media is not making a big ta-do about it.

They’d rather do books & t.v. specials about how unwanted & unmarried the masses of Black women are—which isn’t a suprise considering Hollywood and the MEDIA have worked the last 100 years to cast the image of Black women as negative, unattractive, maid-driven and forbidden.  

Even Black men’s media in America scorns and rejects the Black woman’s image as “rat-like,” non-status worthy and not fit for procreation.

After all….in a White supremacist country the goal is to make White babies, not Black ones. So the problem with Black women is that their wombs produce Black babies–and they are literally devalued in the dating pool for that alone—then accused of being “angry, bitter, ugly” merely because our society doesn’t want to admit that the onus is placed on producing LIGHT/MIXED/WHITE people and demonizes the production of dark skin and actual Black people.

It’s true. Yet in the face of all that hatred for Black women and their Black baby-making wombs….Billionaires (and not just billionaires, but the world’s most powerful men IN GENERAL such as President Barack Obama)…..are still choosing BLACK women.

(NORTON SECURITY creator Peter Norton and his new wife, Gwen—-his 2nd Black Wife).

When I first wrote about my experiences with Bin Laden ten years ago, I also wrote about Condoleeza Rice being chased across North Africa by Moamar Khadafi…I wrote about the song he wrote about her. (*Yes, long before the Western media reported Arab male leaders’ obsesion with Condoleeza…I wrote about it in my autobiography).

And during the time that I worked for Khadafi at White Bride I watched one Arab billionare after the other come and go with tall, chocolate African mistresses (and sometimes even wives) in tow.

Back then, Palestinian leader Arafat had a Black American mistress who was also a porn star.  Some of you will call out her name. I won’t. But I remember him buying her a mansion in Italy and an apartment building in London. The following year, when Osama Bin Laden released me, he gave me a farm in Kenya and a house in South Africa.  Though I didn’t want or like Bin Laden…two other men that I’d dated during my era as an actress-model in North Africa were also billionaires….one of them married a Black woman, the other married a Korean.

Luckily I went on to marry a wonderful Black Man, a marine, Simon Palacio, who during our 10 year marriage became a millionaire selling his own electronics to the U.S. State Department!

So, you see, this is the other side of the coin…one that isn’t talked about.

Black Women may not get the hoodrat athletes and rappers. But we are very popular with BILLIONAIRES.  Bill Gates once dated a Mixed Race Black woman….and today, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner and Donald Trump all have Black mistresses….aside from the 7 marriages scheduled for Billionaires and Black women in 2013.

The most powerful men in the world……prefer what?

 
I THOUGHT ‘CHOO YOU KNEW.

Of course we here at BB&W celebrate their impending union and are happy for them. The larger story is what this message sends to single black women everywhere. This here is an example of an accomplished woman merging her life and resources with an equally accomplished man with unlimited resources. And at just 43, she is still within child-bearing age, so she has secured a stable foundation if the two decide on any George Jrs. or Mellody Jrs.

Mellody chose well, and will marry whom she deems as the best man for the job. Not the best black man, but the best man. Remember young tenders, it’s never gold digging to expect your life partner to be equally-matched in terms of education, class and financial status. What we see here is the new, NEW Black Woman, who isn’t beholden to what “PC Black cabal” thinks someone of her status “should” marry so she can “keep it real.”

To be sure, there are countless high-achieving, educated and top echelon black women who are powerhouses in the boardroom, but mules in their personal life. My closest childhood friend, beautiful, and intellectually gifted, is married to an ex-convict. She’s put up with all sorts of nonsense over the years–infidelity which resulted in her contracting an STI not once, but TWICE, spotty employment on his part, battling with him over his ‘hood parenting style, I could go on and on. And she could have had anybody. ANYBODY. But she chose him. Men of every color were enamored with her, but in her head and in her heart, she never felt like she deserved to be with a man of quality. Her low self esteem and reluctance to take anyone seriously who wasn’t black kept her from living her best life. She has her regrets–we’ve spoke of them. She now knows where she’s erred, but she still refuses to leave, mainly because of religious convictions.

When I found out she was marrying the convict, I told her, “You can do better. He’s not good enough for you.” She flipped. She accused me of being “high and mighty” because I was seriously paired with The Hubster at the time. Without actually saying the words, she told me that since dating a white guy, I think I’m too good for black people. So…I backed down. I wasn’t going to lose 20 years of friendship over a dude, so I kept my mouth shut and stood up as a bridesmaid at her wedding. But knowing what I know now, I’ll never be quiet again. Ladies, it is OK to feel like you deserve better. So WHAT if they call you “bougie.” Be “bougie” and if you so please, marry the BEST man for the job. Just like Mellody is.

Mazel tov to the happy couple.

The newly engaged couple, Shaun and Victoria!

I am THRILLED to announce that Shaun Brown has asked his girlfriend, Victoria for her hand in marriage, and she has accepted! If you’ll recall, Shaun Brown is our resident conservative. You can read more here. This is the first interracial relationship for both Shaun and Victoria, and it took a while for both of them to adjust. But their love, common values and devotion to each other overcame it all, and Shaun asked for Victoria’s hand on Christmas.

Here’s what Shaun had to say:

Victoria and I have been praying together and separate for about 9 months for God to move in our relationship and guide us.  We both wanted to move our relationship to the next level.  We also wanted to make sure we where ready, and really could be the best person for each other at that next level.  We have been joking about wanting to get married for about a year now.  I knew this time last year that I wanted to be with Victoria for the rest of my life.  I have never loved someone as much as i love her, and my love for her grows each day!  I saved up enough money to buy the ring in February of this year.  This ring has been sitting in my gun case for 11 months.  I had to put it out of sight because i wanted to give her the ring so bad!  We kept praying and discussing the idea of getting married and about 3 weeks ago we both got the same message from God.  Everything is going to be alright.  I had asked God for a sign of when the time would be right.  When Victoria told me the had gotten the feeling and message from God that everything was going to be alright.  I was overjoyed!  God had laid that same message on my spirit just a week or so before that.  Christmas has always been a time people propose, the lights, the smiles, the opening of presents and joy in the air.  It is just a perfect time to share the love you have for someone.  On to the fun part, how I proposed to her.

I got a red box from a close friend that was big enough to put the ring box inside.  This red box had a Santa on top of it to help hide any HINT that it was a engagement ring.  I was able to hide the box INSIDE of the Christmas tree.  It was hard to see from the outside unless you knew to look for it.  After we opened presents on Christmas morning, i told her she had 1 more gift and she had to find it.  Victoria was looking all around the house, and after about 2 minutes i told her it was in the living room.  I kept giving her hints until i said “Look in the tree”.   She saw the box and she had this HUGE smile on her face.  She said “What is it?!?” I told her to let me see the box so i could take the tape off.  We opened the box and i got on one knee in her living room.  According to Victoria i said a bunch of stuff, but all she could remember was “I love you with all of my heart and i want to spend the rest of my life with you.  Will you marry me?”  She said YES!!!!!

We are going to start planning the wedding starting next month.  We are looking at the first weekend in November of 2013, but we have not set a date as of yet.  First we got to get a budget together!!

We want to thank the BB&W community and Chris for your support and encouragement with Interracial relationships.  I hope one day our story will help someone else take that leap of faith and find someone you LOVE, no matter their race, color, creed.  We both are so happy and excited!  Happy New Year!

Congrats, Shaun and Victoria!

By “Long Nguyen”

First off, let me start with a disclaimer. This is my own analysis regarding my interracial relationship with my parents. It is based on only my viewpoint and my own memories and feelings. My parents aren’t here to offer their own point of view on anything, and they certainly would not approve of me airing out our laundry on the internet for strangers to read and judge. So to protect their privacy, I will not be posting this article under my real name. Also, this shouldn’t be used as a guide to explain family conflict regarding interracial relationships with every Asian family. This is my story and mine alone.
OK, since we got that out of the way, you can just call me “Long Nguyen.”

My parents were born and grew up in Vietnam, and did not move over here until they were adults after they had graduated high school over there. I was born and raised in the United States. For them, Vietnamese was their primary culture and American was secondary. It was the opposite for me.

Dating was not an issue at first, as I was one of those overly studious, awkwardly shy, awesome at math, nerdy Asian stereotypes in school and I never really had a serious girlfriend for a while. I went out on dates here and there, but they usually never went anywhere and nothing was substantial enough to tell my parents about or introduce them to anyone.

Of course, knowing that my parents grew up and spent much of their lives in Vietnam, I expected that their clear number one preference would be for me to date and marry a Vietnamese girl. Since both their primary culture and primary speaking language is Vietnamese, there would be a lot more familiarity to make it easy for them to relate to her and her family. They also wanted my future wife to be well-educated, have a good job (or be on the way to one), and come from a nice respectable family, as most parents would. No surprises there.

I have tried to ask out Vietnamese and other Asian girls. I am attracted to Asian women, but I just never really hit it off with any. As I grew older, I then found myself extremely attracted to both white and black women as well.

I never really brought up my attraction to non-Asian women growing up because I assumed it would not be THAT much of an issue. I was also striking out left and right with all women, so I had no one to bring home to show them and see how they would react. I figured “Well, I was born and raised in the US, it shouldn’t be that big a deal if I dated someone an American and not a Vietnamese or Asian girl.” I went to public schools for elementary and middle school, so I had a diverse array of ethnicities amongst my friends as well, and my parents never talked badly of or objected to any of them.

In high school and then college I attempted to date mostly Asian and occasionally white women, as I mostly hung out with kids that were part of the Asian student associations in my schools and those were the demographics most readily available to me, so I didn’t realize how mistaken my assumption about who I dated was until later.

In graduate school, I made a lot of new friends, but it just so happened that most of them were black. It was nothing I specifically sought out, for whatever reason it just out that the people I best got along with were a lot of the black students in my classes. Of course, since I found myself around a lot more black women than I had ever been before, I found myself attracted to some of them. I then tried to ask a few black girls I met out, and that’s when I really learned about my parents’ view on interracial dating.

It was at this point in my life that we started having a series of serious sit-down talks. No surprise, Vietnamese women are at the top of the dating preference list, for obvious reasons as stated above. The consolation prize would be non-Vietnamese Asian women. Even though they wouldn’t share the exact same language and culture, my parents felt like their cultural values and sensibilities would be close enough for them to feel somewhat comfortable with. Any non-Asian race or ethnicity was not preferred, and even white women were included in this group, which surprised me because several of my cousins had at this point in time broken that barrier and married white women. Then again, my cousins were not the children of my parents, I was.

This new bit of knowledge did make me wary of whom I tried to date for a short while. However, I was still vastly unsuccessful with dating. When I moved away to start my first full-time career oriented job, I was tired of being alone and felt limiting my dating pool was detrimental to my social health. I made the decision to date whomever I was attracted to, no matter what their race or ethnicity was.

As I was still falling flat on my face in the dating scene, I then opened the door to online dating for the first time. In my preferences, I checked the boxes of every single race and ethnicity they listed as being someone to match me with.

After a few more misses with girls on that dating website who were Asian, white, black, and Hispanic, I finally really and truly clicked with someone. And, oh yeah, she’s black. Whatever, we seemed to have quite a bit of chemistry during our e-mail exchanges and online chatting, let’s just exchange phone numbers so we can set up a date and see how it goes.

As I said before, I can be extremely shy and quite socially awkward. This can lead to a lot of painful silences on dates. This didn’t happen with her! On our first date we were supposed to do the dinner and a movie thing, only we never got past dinner. We sat in that restaurant and talked for more than 4 hours. It might have been longer, but they had to clean up and close the place down, so we got (politely) kicked out. Suffice it to say, that first date blossomed into true love and a very serious, committed relationship.

I told my parents about her after we got serious a few months in. Aside from being black American and not Vietnamese or Asian, she was everything else they could ask for. Her parents are both working professionals, and when we were first dating she was in graduate school on her way to having a good job. They saw that I was “crazy” about her so they were willing to give her a chance.

But they began nit-picking her, without even meeting her yet. They didn’t like that she cursed in some of her Facebook status updates (only occasionally just to vent, mind you). They felt it was inappropriate to see her in a bikini in one of her profile pictures (she was not in a suggestive or provocative pose and she was with her mother, both of them covered in mud).

Then when they finally did meet her, they didn’t like the dress she wore to meet them (it was a cute but colorful and casual one-piece from Old Navy, not short and not revealing at all). They also didn’t think she was polite enough (and therefore, not showing enough respect) towards them. Really, it felt like they were just complaining about any little thing to use as an excuse to not approve of her. And I felt if she were

Vietnamese or Asian, they would be much more forgiving of these perceived “faults.”
But through all this, we remained strong together, and my parents seemed like they were trying harder to accept her and our relationship.

Until they saw some pictures I e-mailed them of us together.

“My girlfriend wears her hair natural, and I support her for it. Most of the time, she has her hair down in twists or braids, or sometimes just tied-up in a ponytail. Every once in a while, she doesn’t do anything with her and “lets it all hang out” so to speak. When she does this, her hair can get quite poofy and big. I honestly think it’s quite beautiful.”

The one and only time my parents met her, she had her hair down in twists. But it just so happened in these pictures that I sent to my parents that her hair happened to be “up.”

They thought her hair was too “wild.” Trying to convince them her hair was not a big deal (which was harder than I expected because apparently they had black co-workers who agreed with them to validate their point of view) led to learning another set of revelations.

Ultimately, they were against our relationship because they perceived that black American culture and Vietnamese/Asian cultures are far too different to be compatible. Because of this, they felt as if they would not be able to relate or get along with a black family. My parents were also afraid of racism against us and our future children (this especially became a hot topic when the Trayvon Martin murder happened).
However, most of all, I believe they felt that I was rejecting or abandoning their native culture from Vietnam in favor of black and American culture. In graduate school, they once told me they thought I was acting “too black” when they observed me hanging out with my group of predominately black friends, celebrating our graduation. During the course of this relationship, they described to me this fear they had that I would “transform into a black man” and become “unrecognizable” to them when all was said and done.

Now, I recognize how ridiculous this is. At this point in the story, they had only met her ONCE and had never even met her family! However, I will not absolve myself of blame for perpetuating these misperceptions and ill-conceived notions. I believe I made things worse and validated (in their minds) their irrational concerns by becoming avoidant with them.

It can be difficult and wearisome to deal with their resistance and discomfort with our dating relationship week in and week out, and I am not a confrontational person, so eventually I hardly ever discussed the various ins and outs of my dating relationship with them at all. This was problematic in the sense that it more than likely prolonged and dragged out our conflict instead of getting it settled much sooner. It also made things worse because I was “lying by omission” to them. They were hurt by the fact that I wasn’t being open and honest with them, as they were not being told of different and at times important things going on in my life.

“You see, in Vietnamese culture, your entire family (not just your significant other and your own children, but also your parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) is supposed to be the most important part of your life and your community.”

By not being open and honest with them, I was not only distancing myself from them but also being completely disrespectful to them. The ideas of the children “leaving the nest” and becoming “completely separate and independent” from the parents is seen as being a very American or Western cultural value. So to my folks, based on my actions it seemed like I was rejecting both them and also Vietnamese cultural values in favor of American cultural values instead. This in turn led to them feeling that my girlfriend and our relationship were both bad, corrupting influences on me.

Things finally came to a head, but we all decided to get past our differences and work everything out, because in the end we love each other. They have gotten to know my girlfriend better and spend some more time with her, and now they like her (although they’re still trying to get a handle on her natural hair, but whatever). They are currently supportive of her and our relationship as well as where I want to take it in the future.

It helps that my girlfriend and I are showing that we are interested in learning about (and therefore not rejecting) Vietnamese culture either. We bought some books about Vietnamese culture and CDs that help teach the Vietnamese language. We are going through them together, using my parents to help guide us and answer any questions we have.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give any credit for my girlfriend for putting up with all of this and sticking by me. I couldn’t have done it without her unwavering love and support of me and of us. One of my greatest fears is that she would break up with me because of this struggle with my parents. I certainly would not have blamed her, and I understand the feelings of those on the various interracial blogs I peruse that have stated they wouldn’t date anyone if their family can’t be accepting of them.

This conflict with my parents certainly did cause strains on our relationship. We survived not only because we love and support one another, but also because I was able to assure her and demonstrate to her that I believed in our relationship and did not allow my parents’ disapproval to break us up.

“So yeah, I’m going to ask her to marry me. Very soon.”

I hope you found this to be an interesting and enjoyable read.
Sincerely,
“Long Nguyen”

Founder and editor, Fri Forjindam brings the glam, romance and magic in this holiday issue, but she’s also added a twist–an awesome contest.

Here’s what you could win…

:
Our prizes to you include: 1. Queens glam camisole set by ëa Lingerie from Bella Bella Boutique ($135); 2. Mathilda “I do” dress by Kirribilla ($385); 3. First kiss coat by Kirribilla ($475); 4. Autographed book copy from celeb planner – Debi Lilly, A Perfect Event (Amazon; $19.99); 5. Maison rouge figue spray from Voluspa (Bella Bella Boutique; $19); 6. Jade “Lady Jewel” fascinator by Blair Nadeau Millinery ($115); 7. Emerald green tatum earrings from Kendra Scott Jewelry ($95); 8. 20% Off Discount to Merci New York for Madame Mathilde; 9. Nourishing bath cream by Nougat London from Bella Bella Boutique ($55); 10. Tiffany blue bridal pumps from Angelesque Stilettos ($299) Note: giveaway shoe is ruby red; 11. Aromatic flavored body butter by Yume Blush ($50); 12. Gilsa Paris mimi noir lingerie bag from Bella Bella Boutique ($29); 13. Original portrait mosaic (& 10% off Discount) by Postrgram ($79.95).

So what are you waiting for? Get over there now!

Ken simply knew he had just found his best friend.  “I can tell Andie a lot of things and I ask her for a lot of advice.  I consider that a best friend.  I share my life with her.” After over 4 years with his best friend, Ken knew there was only one thing to do: Man up and put a ring on it.  In true New York fashion, he went to the only place where fairytale-worthy engagement rings can be found, at least according to Andie’s obvious hinting:  TIFFANY’s.  “It was much easier than I expected…I picked it because I knew that she would like it.”  He proposed the night before his Eurotrip, his self-proclaimed last bachelor stand.  [At the time], “We were arguing over nonsense, of course.  It was very simple.  Some people might consider it pathetic, but the point is not the situation or the atmosphere, but the answer.  I proposed while we were heading to bed.  I took out the box and asked her to open it.” “He asked me, ‘Will you marry me?  I know I should have asked within the first year I met you,” Andie remembered.  “I said yes, of course.”

For Ken, no flashbulbs went off when he realized this was forever. “There was no AHA moment.  It was something that developed over a long time being with the same person.  Realizing, you know what, we have a lot of things in common.  We also might have some differences, but I think they also make us a better pair.  Obviously, she does a lot of things really well like maintaining the home and cooking.  She has a career and is educated.  She comes from a good family.  Those are obviously qualities you look for in someone else.”

Andie:  “And I’m fucking gorgeous.”

Ken:  <laughing>  “And she’s very gorgeous.  I’m not going to curse.  You can always try to settle or keep looking for the next best thing.  But sometimes you know. You just know.  There’s no formula, just intuition.”

For the bride-to-be, she knew he was the one after a trip to a karaoke bar.  He was being his typical a**hole self and pissing off the staff by ringing the service bell.

Andie:  “That little jerk…  First of all, he didn’t fit my blueprint.  You know, the blueprint that most women have in the back of their heads.  That’s just ridiculous and sets women up for failure.  Because you miss out on that magic of just connecting with someone that doesn’t fit that criteria.  No one person has all of that or will have it in that moment.  It could be later on in life.  Women don’t understand that they can meet men who haven’t achieved everything on your list, but if given time can do so.  By throwing out my list, I opened myself to goodness. Ken is not the man I met 5 years ago.  He’s actually better now because I know the real man now. I know every day he’s growing and changing, but the real man in his purest form is very attentive, deeply, deeply, loving, and deeply generous.  Very hardworking and extremely responsible. When I first met him he was not into trying new things or joking. And now he is.  People don’t believe me when I say Ken plays pillow fight with me or that he sings in the shower.  Don’t knock something off the bat yet because for that present moment it doesn’t fit.  Give someone a chance to grow with you.  You just have to make sure that person in their purest form matches you and everything will fall into place.

***Special thank you to Christelyn Karazin and the commenters who sent constructive criticism and positive energy towards both the couple and me.  I read ALL of the comments and know who you are.   You were my saving grace, honestly.  Karma can be a biznotch, but she’s coming at y’all with a blessing.  WORDS DEMONSTRATE CHARACTER. ***

She’s also engaged to a gorgeous ginger. As a non-native, Kari looks at America with an outside-in prism, and noticed that, while she had no qualms about dating, mating and marrying interracially, many in America didin’t share that view. She interviewed me and several other bloggers, including one of my favs, Afrobella, about this and thought I might share:

Interracial Love: Happiness, Differences, and the Cultures in Between

Kari Cobham

Original post: Outlish Magazine

The first thing I noticed about him was that the man could take an amazing photo.

The second thing was his gloriously red, curly hair. The third: he defiantly had an Obama bumper sticker on his pickup, when journalists weren’t supposed to have a public, political opinion.

We coexisted in professional obliviousness for several years, working together on assignments, and running into each other at mutual friends’ get-togethers. But it wasn’t until I left the newspaper that we noticed each other as more than deadline buddies.

He was more travelled than most Americans, and embraced my Trininess with curiosity and respect.Sean made me mixtapes of the most intriguing music. His creative genius came out in paintings and photos. He was more travelled than most Americans, and embraced my Trininess with curiosity and respect. He could be an endearingly scruffy, urban farmer. He was as addicted to the outdoors as I. And he moved with a gentle aura and generosity of spirit that made my bruised hurt melt.

I fell. He proposed on Pirate’s Bay in Tobago. We’re getting married this year.

It never crossed my mind not to get involved because he is white. Did I notice he was white? Yes, but sort of like I’d notice what colour shirt he was wearing.

And maybe that’s mostly because of my Trinidadian upbringing. More than 20 percent of the population is mixed, the Central Statistical Office’s 2000 Census says. Which isn’t to say that Trinidadians aren’t race aware or that interracial relationships won’t raise eyebrows for some. But it is an environment where mixed race people are pretty much the norm.

I’m in the 20+ percent mix, a blend of East Indian, black, white, and Chinese—that I know of—which essentially means to me that I’m in no position to judge by race, nor am I inclined to.

One thing that I found hard to grasp, years ago, when I attended a historically Black college – in the U.S. – was the perceived taboo of dating someone white. Years later, and still living in ‘the States’, articles like this August 2011 Wall Street Journal piece – “An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage” – make me roll my eyes.

It prompted me to email this to a friend: “Why is this some epiphany that black women should expand their relationships outside their own race? Since when should race matter when it comes to love? It’s not about race. It’s about how the other person treats you, how they feel about you and show it, and how open they are to your own culture…NOT about the colour of their skin.”

But, unfortunately, everyone does not see it this way.

I reached out to Karen Walrond, a Trinidadian photographer and writer, who runs the popular Chookooloonks blog, and now lives in Houston, Texas, because she’s travelled internationally with her English husband of ten years, Marcus, and their mixed daughter, Alex. I was curious about her experiences.

Karen Walrond. Image credit: chookooloonks.com

She admitted that there were certain small towns in Texas they’d probably do well to avoid. Most of what she’s experienced is what she called “disbelief”. Nothing antagonistic or hostile. Just a kind of social disbelief that they could be a couple. And only in the U.S.

When they lived in Trinidad for a few years, it was the most relaxed and least conscious she’d ever been about the fact that they were an interracial couple, she said. I can believe that. People aren’t that overt in their reactions.

For Walrond, in the U.S., restaurant hosts get confused when she and her husband show up to claim a table for two. She also sees the disbelief, when they’re standing in a grocery checkout line, fingers strung together, and are treated as separate customers.

I know exactly what she means; I just didn’t have a word to describe it then. Case in point: when Sean and I moved into our new home, our new neighbour tried to leave muffins with me, when I answered the door. She gave a start and an embarrassed chuckle, when I introduced myself as the woman of the house. Disbelief.

I found it entertaining, part of me revelling in her discomfort. Still, it irked me.

I know that we could be in for far worse reactions – although Sean and I have never really experienced any overt prejudice or negative reactions about us, as a mixed race couple. But we’ve only travelled together mostly in major U.S. cities or in the Caribbean. When we do get startled looks from others, we meet the stares with stares of our own.

She makes her husband Marcus carry a family picture in his wallet …Walrond gave an interesting anecdote, though. She makes her husband Marcus carry a family picture in his wallet to show “well-meaning” people concerned for her daughter’s safety with this “stranger” that this was, in fact, his child, too.

Considering that Sean and I plan to have kids one day, it was startling to think that that could one day be my worry…That we’d have to decide if it was a viable solution to quelling other people’s confusion, even if we viewed their confusion as unfounded, if not silly.

Relationships of any kind should be defined by the character and compatibility of the people in them, not by skin colour. So I still don’t get why people can’t accept that two people, of two, different races, can and will be together. All I see is the beauty of it.

Being with someone from another culture teaches you new things. When Sean and I started seeing each other and it got serious, the biggest surprise to me was that I could be that comfortable with someone outside of my own culture.

Being with someone from another culture teaches you new things.For a long time, I’d had this tacit expectation that regardless of where I found myself in the world—in this case, Florida—the ideal partner would, among other things, be from the Caribbean by birth or ancestry, if only so they’d understand me, without me having to explain myself or become a reluctant teacher.

But Sean has lived in Turkey. He’s explored the streets of Jerusalem, surfed in Costa Rica, swum in Jamaica’s Dunn’s River Waterfalls, climbed the Mayan Ruins in Chicen Itza, and roamed the Grand Caymans and the Bahamas. In the U.S. Air Force, he worked alongside men and women from around the world. Best of all, his minister father and doting mother raised him to see way past colour and culture, and his upbringing and life education had not been limited to U.S. borders.

By the time I came along, his understanding, his willingness to learn, experience and embrace all I brought to the relationship was as much a part of him as my Trininess was a part of me. (Barring, of course, his occasional penchant of putting my pelau in tacos and being too lazy to look things up in his copy of “Cote Ce, Cote La”.) We learn from each other all the time.

When I talked to Patrice Grell Yursik, Trinidadian beauty bloggerati, who has been married to her white husband Steve for ten years, and lives in Chicago, she noted that their differences became their strengths.

“He has learned so much about Caribbean culture and black culture, and I’ve learned what it is to see the world through his eyes,” she told me.

Like me, she’d expected to marry a Trini. She’d even fought being attracted to Steve because of those expectations, but she didn’t close herself off to the possibilities. And he turned out to be her soulmate.

“We’ve made each other better people,” Yursik said. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

Patrice Grell Yursik of Afrobella.com. Image credit: styleunited.com

I spent 30 minutes chatting with Christelyn Karazin, who co-wrote the book “Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race, Culture and Creed” with Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn to gain some insight to how Americans view interracial love. She gave me a bligh, she said, because African American history was not a part of mine.

The younger generation without scarring is infinitely more accepting, but the generation that experienced Jim Crow Laws, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement is still alive, and the pain of unspeakable disenfranchisement is hard to forget and hard not to pass down, she said.

The younger generation without scarring is infinitely more accepting…“The scars are still there for some people,” said Karazin, who dealt with her own internal and practical struggles of having a white husband, and runs the blog www.beyondblackwhite.com for women of colour interested or involved in interracial and intercultural relationships. “There’s a general fear of losing what they believe is a fragile community to begin with…(interracial relationships) are more accepted, but people still stay within the same ‘melanin levels’.”

She helped me to truly understand on a personal level the historical prejudices that existed around me and Sean in the U.S. Of course, understanding our current environment doesn’t mean that I agree with the varied and long held biases or judgments that come with it.

Undeniably, Trinidad has its own unique cultural, racial and class prejudices that I don’t have the word count to explore. Yursik told me that she’s lost friends and at least one family member because of her relationship with Steve. But my upbringing taught me that regardless of the views of others, racial mixing and my own ethnic make-up are beautiful. I’m grateful for that. Even moreso, I’m grateful for my family and his, focused as they are on our happiness rather than our differences. That should be the norm—everywhere.

But, as much as I wax poetic about the beauty of interracial relationships, and how they should be accepted and the norm, the fact is that Sean and I don’t operate in a perfect world and that people do judge us for being together, because our skin tone and our cultures are so completely different. That’s something I frankly do not agree with, but will have to come to accept.

Do I think it’s stupid? Yes.

Will I ever accept it, as it unfolds? Never.

I will live and love him. I will return the stares with defiance. I will have to deal with the challenges that we can’t even fathom now. I will protect our children, as best as I can, and help raise them to celebrate their ethnicity and their cultural duality. And I will try not to engage ignorance that could lead to violence. It is the best that we can both do.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a good man is a good man, whether he’s purple, pink or orange. If there’s anyone in my space – family, friends or strangers – who can’t deal with that, then I offer a scathingly polite ROCK SO.