Test Subjects: Interracial Relationships Article {Rough Draft}
Oh boy! You know that note I wrote about failure? Well I got the opportunity to write for my old job about a subject that I'm so passionate about that I probably dream about it 90% of the time. I got a timeline to do it in, and me thinking I would have no issues in submitting it, I blacked out and haven't submitted anything. Causing me to feel a great deal of embarrassment and doubt in my writing. Because this time, I'd be writing for an actual editor of a magazine. She'd be critiquing and correcting my work. I saw lines of red and side notes and scribbles that transferred me back to high school in English class. I never proclaim to be a writer, just someone who loves to write thoughts and theories out. Mt punctuation is never correct, my grammar is usually the only thing I feel confident in because I learned that an expansive vocabulary can make any article of garbage sound somewhat professional and proficient in the subject matter. With all that being said, I'm going to write out my article, for you all to read, and I'm submitting it as is.
Interracial Relationships {in the Church}
When people use the phrase 'product of your environment', I can take that context lightly. I grew up around mostly white people. My dad was in the military, and I had the blessing of getting to experience different cultures and different types of people, and in that I saw the beauty in difference, not color. So with that I don't typically fall under the stereotypes that most people think of when they see me.
I remember being in 9th grade at my predominantly (by predominant, I mean my sister and I were 2 of the 5 black girls that made up the student body) white Christian school walking across the gym talking to a couple friends about how I was raised to not really care about dating or marrying outside of my race. As soon as I began talking to my friends about interracial dating and listening to their responses on the matter, one girl decided to chime in with her disapproving manner and change the subject because she was uncomfortable with the topic, made me very aware that not everyone was raised to believe the same way, Christian or not.
While I enjoyed high school and my friends, the remainder of my 4 years were sprinkled with instances like that. It wasn't something that stopped me from being who I was. It didn't stop me from liking who I wanted to like. It didn't stop me from putting my heart out there knowing that the probability of rejection was higher than the acceptance rate.
I always thought it was weird that the Christian schools I attended (from the time I was in 5th grade until high school) had underlying issues of race and it's value in regards to dating and marriage. Guys that were 13, 14, and 15 knowing that they liked me as a person, but couldn't get around to the fact that it couldn't be anything else because their parents didn't approve of it left me to wonder how much value was placed on this in churches.
Like high school, my family attended a predominantly white church. We were the resident "ethnic" family. With that came the responsibility of knowing that people are curious. My parents taught my sister and I that people ask questions to gain an understanding, and with that we had to learn to be patient with questions regarding our hair, whether or not we tan in the summer, if we could swim, and a multitude of stereotypes. Albeit most of those questions were portrayed in an innocent way, so I was very free about the questions I could answer. I was as open as I could be so that people would feel comfortable and not afraid to approach me. In the time that I had been part of that church I came across 2 healthy interracial marriages. Blew my mind. I was in love with seeing how they interacted with one another and realized that it was no different then how people of the same race interacted.
I do believe there is this perception that people will have a much harder time in an interracial relationship with people always judging the couple or giving them a hard time, but in most cases marriage is work. Divorce occurs all the time with people of the same race and it occurs with people that are of a different race, but every situation is different from the next. I am not programmed to think that my relationships will fail because of my color, so with that in mind, I will put forth the same amount of effort into any relationship to make it work.
Now in my mid 20s I have seen a bit of a cultural shift in interracial marriages, but surprisingly it's not just the new encounters of interracial relationships that give me hope, it's the ones that occurred in the late 1800s and through the times where it was the least acceptable. Against all odds. I do hope to see more healthy marriages and healthy interracial marriages in the church, especially down here in the South. I want people to learn that it's not an unacceptable thing because of the skin color.
When I found myself liking guys that were "off-limits" in other words, white, I would approach it cautiously sometimes and recklessly other times. I felt that being a black girl and liking a white guy only meant one thing... there was a shot that he would like me back. I never took into consideration that the guys I liked would try to tip toe around the fact that I was black and they were white. I laughed all the time at that. It was so apparent, but I figured if he bled, his blood would be red, and if I bled, it'd be the same color, so what was the big deal? Pigmentation? If my color were the cause of their reservation I never apologized for being just another girl that liked just another boy. Still not sure where to fit this in or if it needs to be left out.
Interracial Relationships {in the Church}
When people use the phrase 'product of your environment', I can take that context lightly. I grew up around mostly white people. My dad was in the military, and I had the blessing of getting to experience different cultures and different types of people, and in that I saw the beauty in difference, not color. So with that I don't typically fall under the stereotypes that most people think of when they see me.
I remember being in 9th grade at my predominantly (by predominant, I mean my sister and I were 2 of the 5 black girls that made up the student body) white Christian school walking across the gym talking to a couple friends about how I was raised to not really care about dating or marrying outside of my race. As soon as I began talking to my friends about interracial dating and listening to their responses on the matter, one girl decided to chime in with her disapproving manner and change the subject because she was uncomfortable with the topic, made me very aware that not everyone was raised to believe the same way, Christian or not.
While I enjoyed high school and my friends, the remainder of my 4 years were sprinkled with instances like that. It wasn't something that stopped me from being who I was. It didn't stop me from liking who I wanted to like. It didn't stop me from putting my heart out there knowing that the probability of rejection was higher than the acceptance rate.
I always thought it was weird that the Christian schools I attended (from the time I was in 5th grade until high school) had underlying issues of race and it's value in regards to dating and marriage. Guys that were 13, 14, and 15 knowing that they liked me as a person, but couldn't get around to the fact that it couldn't be anything else because their parents didn't approve of it left me to wonder how much value was placed on this in churches.
Like high school, my family attended a predominantly white church. We were the resident "ethnic" family. With that came the responsibility of knowing that people are curious. My parents taught my sister and I that people ask questions to gain an understanding, and with that we had to learn to be patient with questions regarding our hair, whether or not we tan in the summer, if we could swim, and a multitude of stereotypes. Albeit most of those questions were portrayed in an innocent way, so I was very free about the questions I could answer. I was as open as I could be so that people would feel comfortable and not afraid to approach me. In the time that I had been part of that church I came across 2 healthy interracial marriages. Blew my mind. I was in love with seeing how they interacted with one another and realized that it was no different then how people of the same race interacted.
I do believe there is this perception that people will have a much harder time in an interracial relationship with people always judging the couple or giving them a hard time, but in most cases marriage is work. Divorce occurs all the time with people of the same race and it occurs with people that are of a different race, but every situation is different from the next. I am not programmed to think that my relationships will fail because of my color, so with that in mind, I will put forth the same amount of effort into any relationship to make it work.
Now in my mid 20s I have seen a bit of a cultural shift in interracial marriages, but surprisingly it's not just the new encounters of interracial relationships that give me hope, it's the ones that occurred in the late 1800s and through the times where it was the least acceptable. Against all odds. I do hope to see more healthy marriages and healthy interracial marriages in the church, especially down here in the South. I want people to learn that it's not an unacceptable thing because of the skin color.
When I found myself liking guys that were "off-limits" in other words, white, I would approach it cautiously sometimes and recklessly other times. I felt that being a black girl and liking a white guy only meant one thing... there was a shot that he would like me back. I never took into consideration that the guys I liked would try to tip toe around the fact that I was black and they were white. I laughed all the time at that. It was so apparent, but I figured if he bled, his blood would be red, and if I bled, it'd be the same color, so what was the big deal? Pigmentation? If my color were the cause of their reservation I never apologized for being just another girl that liked just another boy. Still not sure where to fit this in or if it needs to be left out.
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