“ANTI-RACISM” IS JUST RACISM: How Anti-Racist Activism Affects Interracial Couples Like Us.

In a country with an ugly history of slavery and racial segregation, interracial families have been the ground zero of fighting against prejudice and building bridges. We have spent time educating people about racism, including within our own families. Many white parents deeply feel the racism their mixed-race children face and take a more active role in fighting against interpersonal and structural racism.

And yet, if you believe the most extreme anti-racist activists, children born to interracial couples are not created by the love of two free and equal human beings, but the results of a relationship between an oppressor and a victim. How do you think this would impact how they see themselves?

I believed I had the right to be angry hearing this language take over, but I stayed quiet. There is so much fear going around when it comes to criticizing any aspect of the current anti-racist movement for fear being called a racist.

It was the movie Loving, based on the story of that loving couple that made my marriage possible, that woke me up. Watching Mrs. Mildred Loving say, “I will raise my family here, I do not care what they do to us,” I teared up. I felt like this courageous woman was speaking directly to me.

We should defend our intrinsic right to be free humans and the desire to be united as humans at all costs. We should all remember what the Supreme Court concluded, that “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry” are “odious to a free people.”

I traveled half a world to settle in America. I will raise my family here. I will not allow misguided teachings to tarnish the sanctity of my marriage, invalidate my experience, and create divisions and chaos in my family.

Yes. Stand up to bigotry.