Rachel,
MD.
…because a past boyfriend of mine was of a different race then mine.
I was lucky to grow up in such a diverse community that when a racist comment was made it was shot down even faster. In high school, even though everyone had their groups of friends, race truly did not matter.
My parents didn’t care that I had a boyfriend outside my race. My sister didn’t even see his color, she just saw how happy he made me.
It seriously didn’t matter to me if he was black, Hispanic, biracial, Asian, white, Latino. All that mattered to me was how he treated me. And he treated me like a princess, a Queen.
To the rest of my family in the south. It mattered. In fact, I remember one of my older cousins asking:
“Did his parents force him to get those dreadlocks when he was a kid?”
I wish I had said something. But the only thing I could utter out without screaming was “No.”
My great aunt was worse though. From the day she first saw pictures of him to today to the day we broke up, she still won’t talk to me.
It’s been 3 years.
Note: Said boyfriend and I did not break up because of family or race. In short, we just grew apart and decided that at that point to just be friends.
