I was compelled to write this blog only to get my feeling out and see how or if other people shared my dilemma. It's not necessarily a problem, but it can be quite tiring when so many situations come up in a short amount of time.
I suppose I should start with a little background. I'm a 36 year old black female and my bow is a 48 year old white man. We have a long twisted history, but we are together and in love almost ten years later. We have not had the perfect relationship, but i must say that we really do like spending time together and doing things together. He has five children from a previous marriage and I have 4 from a previous marriage. We are not married and have no intentions on messing up our relationship with such paperwork. We are a proud blended family.
With that being said that is where the similarities stop. I am a democrat, he a republican. I'm a seventies baby, he a sixties. We both agree that there is a higher power, but differ on who or what it is. He is a pessimist and I an optimist. I'm a Seminole, he a Gator, that says it all. We have very heated discussions and we sometimes have to apologize afterwards, but our most heated conversations come when race is involved. No matter what the conversation, we seem to be on different sides. Do other interracial couples encounter this problem? I'm certain that not everyone has the conversation the same way, but I have to know does the difference in race ever become a problem. Sometimes after me and my guy have a conversation I find myself soul searching wondering if racial tensions will be the undoing of us.
The Trayvon Martin case has opened up a can of worms in my house. No Zimmerman was not white, but the media portrayed him as white, and the cops wrote caucasian on the police report, and his dad is white, so...........that's how we get here. I stand firm in my belief that Trayvon was standing his ground, where my guy seems to think it was ok for Zimmerman to stalk and shoot Trayvon because he was suspicious. I love him dearly, but his view really disturbs me. To top it all off, he himself has young black sons (ok, interracial) as do I. How do we keep them safe when their lives are not valued. How is it fair that I have to raise my sons with different rules from even the man that I sleep next to and love that they look up to. It's such a perplexing issue! We were also at odds during the Jena Six debacle back in 2006.
We both have a very competitive spirits, so I know that is where some of this comes from. Could it really be that black and white people are so different that we feel compassion differently? I watch this man move about with such grace and poise, the man that I love and respect, the man that I see me growing old with, and still it comes that one moment where I see him as my foe. I pay close attention to social media and I see such hate from both sides. It's sooooo embarrassing. The issue will never go away, I just hope that living in this polarized nation doesn't ruin me and my guys cacoon of serenity. I know that it is our unbreakable bond that sees us through these differences.
