My Personal Experience of My Interracial Marriage

On my family, the community, and ignorance

This piece was a request of Kaitlyn Ramsay from a “Friday Office Party” thread on Substack Writers at Work. (It was originally posted on another older publication of mine, and I’m giving it new life.) I was given some potential topics including:

✔️ how to navigate what's best for your kids and how you make decisions as a couple and/or where you disagree or see things differently and how you move through it

✔️ a letter to those who are ignorant and what you wish they could understand

And with the intention of responding to those two prompts, I managed this:

✨ Also: my post may be too long for your email inbox, and if so, you’ll have to read the full article over on our email community’s actual site.

My children are just as white as they are black. My children are actually neither of those things; they're entirely just themselves. Neither of those two statements are false. I'm a little biased, but the two biracial children of my husband and I (he's Caucasian, I'm African American) are a couple of the most awesome toddlers you'll ever meet. I consider our son to be a brilliant wavy-haired and dimpled Adonnis and our daughter a fair and elegant Cleopatra. The two are actually very messy and broke little dependents who are determined to push behavioral limits and their parents' buttons as often as possible. They're lucky in the way that they're so cute. We call them our little "zebracakes" because I loved to eat the snack food of the same name while pregnant with them both. And to my husband and I, they're our whole world.

Our children look like a perfect blend between my husband and I. You might not guess that our son has a white parent just by his appearance. But I have been mistaken for holding a doll (or someone else's baby) while out in public with our daughter a few times. "Oh! She's really yours then! I mean, she actually IS a doll with her looks!" The race of my children has gotten my family more than just occasional stares due to appearance, however. It has caused us to live many unique experiences and continues to affect our lives.

In Our Community

My family lives in the state that could be considered the buckle in the Bible Belt of the USA, Mississippi. We reside in a charming, slow-living retirement community town where everyone knows everybody else and their personal business. Our community loves Jesus, our Momma, SEC football, and southern-style sweet iced tea.

But the south is called "dirty" for a reason, and a history that intertwines with hate is a large contributing factor. The dust of past bigotry and prejudice may still choke you up on a windy day. The plight of women trapped in a domestic role required of them from their childhood days of playing with toys weighs heavily. Intolerance of non-Christian faith is celebrated and even rewarded. The disparaging level of respect that I sometimes receive without my husband's company compared to when we two are together is remarkable. We paid handsomely to buy a car from a dealer who called me a "gal," and then asked to take my family's picture at his car lot for his own advertising assets. "We'll gitcha later!" was his reply when I explained that we simply didn't have the extra time right then.

Some especially malignant types of people here would realistically call my children two "abominations" with disgust. And many of their associates would immediately agree with them, too. This may be a smaller portion of the population, yes, but that portion is not nearly as small as is safe to not make some strategic decisions for the safety and wellbeing of my kids. I remember the year that the KKK attempted to adopt a highway here as I type this.

On Ignorance

There are so many things commonly thought about me, my husband, and our family that are absolutely wrong. I've long considered it to not be my problem and not my job to address or correct outside ignorance and misconceptions about our lives. That role would be exhausting, and if it is not directly causing a negative effect in my life, someone else being wrong about us is victimless.

I don't bother with correcting people on my marriage. Our kids have two parents who are very much married to one another legally. We aren't only dating, and our families actually approved of us and gave us their blessings, even if we courted for only a short amount of time. We were not forced to marry because I got pregnant, either. The man actually loves me and asked me to share my life with him for better or for worse, and the kids came after actively trying for nearly two years for our firstborn. Both sets of grandparents love both kids to pieces and back.

Neither child happens to play any sports, just like their parents (I did play a little Ultimate Frisbee in college, though). Their parents aren't only together because I gave their father an STD. My husband listens to and knows a lot more about rap music than I will ever care to. We both share a love for all of his favorite rock and metal artists. He's also a very good cook and loves flavorful food. I can't dance at all, unless you count taking ballet up until college. I'm not at all good with styling my or anyone else's hair. I can't sing well, although my husband disagrees. Some misconceptions point to us as the parents, and some are more silly than others, but I don't take the time to set the record straight about anything. There wouldn't be time left over to get anything else done, if I did.

In Marriage and Family

Most of the time, my husband and I are of one accord and agree with how we approach raising our children together in all ways. We're very much alike and hardly have any large rifts or disagree strongly with one another one way or the other about most things. It can actually get pretty boring at times. Our household is blessedly peaceful in this way, and we get to remain a united front for our kids. But there does come some times when my husband and I cannot see eye-to-eye on a matter. This usually will happen over trivial subjects, such as the children's play date activities or what to pack in their lunch. Rarely, however, something significant will force us two to debate each other about our particular stance and then negotiate a way forward.

For example, my husband views the kids gaining a college education as highly optional, whereas I see it as something that should be considered as their first option. He'd also allow our adult children to drink a beer in his presence, but I view this as disrespectfully tacky and something to be forever avoided. When making a decision that affects our children when we have differing views, my husband and I have settled on a model to follow in order to proceed:

First, we reassure each other that we both do desire whatever it is that is in alignment with the highest good of our two little children. Naturally, we each think and hope that our own perspective is what fulfills this standard, so we take further time to hear why the other (wrong) parent believes that their solution is a better option. We've learned that it is helpful to avoid speaking in absolutes and arguing with non-negotiable ideas or views. The collective happiness and union is more important to us than needing to "win" and be right. With having respect and believing that we can trust the other, we both have made many agreements that started out in dissent.

My husband and I are significantly more alike than we are different, but we have both undergone some personal changes in the pursuit of parenting our children well amidst our few differences. Instead of folding under the pressure of feeling obligated to be present at either of our respective family of origin's church, my husband and I have decided to introduce spirituality and religion to our children in a joint effort from our own home for now. This will do just fine, as the kids are still very young. I have modified the way that I prepare food and the selections that I feed the family to reflect our shared priority of making healthy decisions. On hot, sunny days, I have also adopted the practice of applying sunscreen and make sure to slather some on the kids as a precaution. My husband is careful about calling our son "boy" in a certain context and he doesn't refer to the children as "little monkeys" (in public, that is) no matter how awfully they're behaving at the time.

I struggled to write this piece. I did. That’s why I’m up at my bedtime tasked with its edits. I struggled even though the one requesting its production very generously gave me the freedom to take my writing and go in whatever direction that I felt aligned with taking it. I struggled even though my single source of reference was my own life experience! There are so, so many stops where I could have visited and chosen to linger for a little longer while writing this, and I will never run out of things to say about what is contained here. And I'm far from a celebrity or quotable popular figure. I'm "simply" a Mom of two biracial kiddos by my husband of a different race from mine. And that's all that I had to be to create this.

So as you receive this, know that this is all in the flavor of my own personal experience, and it is completely unique to any other similar stories circulating. I don't consider myself to be an example or an ideal model of any group. With that considered, take only what is useful to you, and please feel free to leave all of the rest here for me to have.

I, after all, know just what to do with it.