Joye Beard,
Corpus Christi, TX.
In the 23 years that my husband and I have been married I’ve noticed some disconcerting things about being in a mixed race marriage. First, I’m not comfortable around other white people at all. If they’re open minded it’s not so bad. But most are not, and once they learn that I’m married to someone from Mexico you can see judgment in their faces. Second, Hispanics and other ethnicities are often apprehensive of me until they meet my husband. As though marrying a minority makes me less threatening or approachable or maybe even less of a white woman. But I think the thing that makes me really upset is the assumption that if a white woman is married to a Hispanic male she must be uneducated and poor (not our case at all). I can’t tell you the number of times my husband and I would be in line at the grocery store and the checkout person’s first response is…will you be using food stamps or WIC? It’s that kind of common place stereotyping that makes me wonder how we as a society will overcome the race card.
