"A Redemption Story": Life is Neither Black nor White

As I stare across the room at the people who laid down the path before me, I can’t help but notice the grace that is present through it all.

To my right is my mom. Hard-working, independent. Her eyes look tired. Tired from a long week of preparing her home, feeding her family, and a life of loving the people that sit at her table. On her right is her own mother. The mother that cares for her husband, and the mother that she now cares for, as if returning the favor. She grins a short grin, the one that indicates both pride in her parents’ legacies and nostalgia for the days where life didn’t seem as short. She turns her head and looks at me on her left, grinning a similar grin, but one that says to me that her current joy cannot even be expressed in words.

Across the table and down to my left is my dad. Gentle and perseverant. He is content. Content in the fact that his family is here, together with food on the table and laughter bouncing from our mouths. On his left is his father-in-law. The father-in-law that is losing his hearing, but still growing in heart. The father-in-law, with a twinkle in his eye, places his bigger-than-life hands on my dad’s shoulder and out of the corner of his mouth whispers, “I am so glad you are in this family.” And to this my dad says, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He enters back into the conversation, I am sure with the history he shares with this family flashing through his mind.

These are the days where my parents are realizing that their impact is running thin, as they have taught most of what their kids have to learn, and watched their parents and in-laws live lives that they both desire to embody and to remold. You see my parents, sandwiched between the generations of caring for nearly-adult children and rapidly aging parents think that the story of their own life is often surpassed by those that they care for. But little do they know that in this very moment, a culmination of both of their lives, and the lives of many people around this table have been influenced perhaps because of one “yes” they said to love, justice, and change.

This “yes” goes back to the days of the 80s, the days of their youth. The days where their relationship was young, but interracial tension unfortunately, was not.  (It may be helpful to tell you that my mom is white, and my dad is black. Information fairly crucial to this story.) 

My mom, a small-town girl, raised in a farming family, as the youngest child lived life attempting to prove that just because she was a girl, didn’t mean she was a wimp. She worked just as hard as the men in her family and was just as tough. She played on the boys’ basketball team and won many awards in 4H.  She attended Sunday school and had the seeming reflection of the perfect child. As a young, white woman in the 80s, her battle with the world was proving that she was not any less because she was female.

My dad, a large-city guy, raised in the apartments of Denver by his grandmother, as the oldest son. He spent most of his time working and playing basketball, helping care for his sisters and staying out of trouble. He was obedient to his grandmother, and learned to treat women and all people with respect and dignity, even though that was not often how they were treated.  As a young, black man in the 80s, his battle with the world was proving that he was not any less of a human because of the color of his skin.

Fast forward to the time where they were dating. Both attending a small, private Christian College, both looking for their place in the world. Their love at the time, seemed like a Romeo and Juliet affair. Star-crossed lovers in a small town land, simply 20 minutes from my mom’s home, a town that was still working through what it looks like to actually see interracial friendships, let alone interracial romantic relationships.

Needless to say, the first time my mom brought my dad home, the first time my mother’s parents met my dad, was not the first time they had thought about the implications of their relationship on the world.

My mom once put it this way, “My parents were the most devout of followers of the Lord. They always taught us to love people of all colors: yellow, green, red, blue, or black. You just don’t marry them.”

You might be able to imagine how the unraveling of the story goes from here.

Let me put it this way, have you ever come home during the holidays with your significant other to a noose hanging on the basketball hoop? Have you ever been ostracized by your significant other’s family because of the color of your skin? Did your mother, father, or any family member walk you down the aisle? Well my mom’s parents showed up at least, sitting in the back pew of the church sanctuary.

“My mom believed that God was disciplining her for loving me too much. That, by wanting to marry a black man, God was indicating that she had put too much love, too much favoritism in me as the perfect child. That even in her love for me, God was calling her to love himself even more,” mom would say.

I can’t even imagine the pain of this reality. The division between family members because of the race of who one chose to love. Yet, the call they faced to remain true, to love one another, to be together in the face of racism and hurt, they felt, was a call directly from God.

This “yes” they said to one another and to God came at a price. My mom had to give up her privilege as a white woman, in a small, conservative town. She had to give up her family for a time, in order to gain someone who loved her more than life itself. My dad had to give up the need to prove himself, to attempt to prove that his dark skin was not a threat. He had to give up a desire to stay under the radar, because interracial couples stood out like a sore thumb during that time. They both had to give up their image, and understand the looks they would get as they entered restaurants, grocery stores, office max, and even churches because of the symbol that their marriage stood for.

Eventually, they would have to give up the safety, the protection, the innocence of the three girls they would bring into the world. For these were the children, the literal byproducts of racial reconciliation. Yet, for me and my sisters, what our light brown skin and curly hair would say to the world, is that life is neither black nor white.

As you read, I hope that you are still picturing the image of my mom and my dad and my mom’s parents sitting together at our thanksgiving table. You might be wondering what became of my parent’s and grandparent’s relationship. You might be wondering what is becoming of that relationship now.

What I can tell you now is that just about around the arrival of my oldest sister, my grandparents, by the grace of God came around. Not only did they come around but they still apologize to this day for the harm, the hurt, the pain that they put my parents through. And somehow, also by the grace of God, my parents forgave them. But all of this forgiveness was bought at a price. And all of this forgiveness is still unraveling, in the lives of me and my two older sisters and our own stories of being somewhere in between the spectrum of black and white.

My earliest memory of an awareness that something was different about me, about the way I looked, takes place in the check-out line of a grocery store.  Little me, brown-eyed and hair somewhat reflecting Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld, overheard a woman ask my mom a peculiar question. The woman said something like, “Your little girl is so beautiful. Is she adopted?”  I am sure, with confidence, gusto, and a bit of frustration my mom responded with a resounding “No.” 

This was not the only time that question would be asked of my mother in this life. I always wondered why people would ask that. To me, our family was nothing but normal. Unfortunately, the rest of the world, even in growing up didn’t see it that way.

It was not hard for me and my sisters to catch on to society’s portrayal of black people. We knew that people did not trust black people. My oldest sister recalls being followed around a clothing store by a salesclerk when she was with a white friend, but the salesclerk did not follow her friend.  Racial micro aggressions were hardly micro. Even though we were only half black, we knew the styles to avoid, the groups of people to hang out with, and the kind of image to portray to avoid being labeled as anything derogatory or threatening to society. We were brown enough to often be reminded that the staring our family gets in public places might not be because we are tall or because people are wanting to wave and be friendly, but because in fact we don’t exactly look like the average American family.

Of course, you could say that we got away with a lot because we were just light enough to get to take on the label as white. We never experienced explicit violence and up front racism. We got all the privileges of being white while still being able to contribute to conversations of what it meant to be a person of color.

However, the confusion only arose when people would make comments like, “because you are black, does that mean you can dance?” Or, “can you afro your hair?” People did not understand that not all characteristics of blackness carry over to every person of color. Neither did they understand the dilemma when they would say things like, “you are the whitest black person I’ve ever met.” What in the world is that supposed to mean?

In college, I was faced with some of the most subliminal racism that I’ve had the privilege of not facing the rest of my life. Being used for advertisements because I am “photogenic” (oh please!) and tokenized to bring up the diversity count, told me that I am only valued because I help the image of an institution.

And then, almost as if in tribute to my parent’s story, I meet a tall, blonde haired, Dutchman. Early in our relationship he told me that someone asked him if he really wanted to date a black girl, as if they were saving him from some kind of destruction and gnashing of teeth.  And he didn’t just date a black, excuse me half-black girl, he married her.

Our relationship, to me is a further unraveling of the story that brought me into existence. While the cultural moment of today in many ways is different from the time of my parents budding marriage, the sacrifices they made to get to where they are have allowed me to experience a piece of life that both is in itself redeemed and on its way to redemption.

My story, inter-mixed (symbolically and racially) with my husband’s, is one that is redeeming what it means for life to be neither black nor white.  My increasing awareness of the reality of my family’s history with race came at the expense of pain and hurt, ostracism and confusion, and a false sense that we only belong in binary categories.

I acknowledge that I have much of the privileges of being white, but also experience the implicit racism that comes with being a person of color. I never know if I can speak to the experience of being a minority because I also dance on the line of being a majority.  On any given day my racial identity could transform to being white, black, kind of white, a little black, or something in between. However, I am growing to understand that maybe I don’t have to choose. I can be both. Because of the collision of my white mom and black dad’s historical and physical DNA, a revolution is breaking in and as a result, I represent both sides of the same coin, rolling towards reconciliation.

I am not ignorant enough to believe that the final book end of the struggle and story of this beautiful, colorful family of mine can be closed, either.  There is more of the story out in the world, beyond my own family, that has been left untold and left in need of reconciliation and redemption. But, there is redemption yet, to come.

As I am drawn back into this moment, this moment of sitting around a table, staring across the room at the people who laid down the path before me, I can’t help but notice the grace that is present through it all.

 A father-in-law who let go of fear and judgment, embraces my dad, who once was labeled as the “other.” My mom, once ostracized and made stranger, looks at her parents in love and compassion.

But there are still more around this table: two sisters, a brother-in-law, and a husband. People influenced by the same path yet who will help lay down a foundation for the future.

Some might say this is a moment of shalom. A moment where the past, present and future all intertwine and culminate in some sort of flourishing. I am reminded that shalom comes at a cost, but it is in these moments of shalom where the glimpse of redemption is sweet and signifies an even sweeter, even bigger picture of redemption to come.