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Jun 17

Interracial couples on how they’re talking about race, love, and Black Lives Matter: ‘The conversation took a – Business Insider India

Diets that Work Comments Off on Interracial couples on how they’re talking about race, love, and Black Lives Matter: ‘The conversation took a – Business Insider India

The killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, as triggered a global conversation about racism, anti-racism, racial bias, police brutality, how non-Black people understand their privilege, and how to be an effective and genuine ally.

But for many interracial couples, conversations about race and privilege have always been part of their lives.

Insider spoke to two couples in interracial relationships on how they met, fell in love, and how race has influenced the way they navigate the world together.

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Chelsie, 30, and Bedford, 35, told Insider they didn't think much about race when they first started dating. While Bedford is Black and of Haitian descent and Chelsie is white, they both grew up in Utah which is 90.7% white, and both come from a Christian background. Bedford said that might have influenced their conversation on race as a couple. The only big question on Chelsie's mind when they first met was how Bedford would react to her having a son, which had been a dealbreaker with other dates.

"A little after we had started dating that someone had made a comment to me a little along the lines of 'Well, your kids will never look like you,'" Chelsie told Insider.

"I was like 'Isn't that crazy?' and he was like 'That's actually not crazy. I've had quite a few people break up with me for that reason. Just because their kids will never have blonde hair and blue eyes, their genetics don't necessarily shine through in that way.'"

Since getting married in 2014, they've had three more kids, and now work together as content creators.

We were all meeting at a restaurant and I got pulled over about a block from the restaurant, my family's there, her family's there, we were all together for a birthday.

Because I know that, more often than not, police officers are scared when they pull people over, and some of them are scared of me. So coming in and my wife wanting to fight, scream, yell, be emotional, I'm like "No, this is going to be a whole lot worse if we don't keep our heads."

Bedford: The riots are happening, and we're aware of it. It's disappointing that the riots are happening, but only because riots occur only when people aren't being heard. I understand people are frustrated with things being broken, but at the end of the day, it's been hundreds of years of a demographic, of a group of people who have not been heard.

We had a conversation and she said "Are you scared?" and I'm not anymore scared than I've ever been and I think that was kinda a turning point for her when she realized "this is the unsettledness that you feel all the time, this is how you feel."

Chelsie: I told Bedford, "My fear with the riots is it just makes the police more afraid of you." Because we were talking one time and Bedford said, "You know, it's hard as a police officer in this situation if someone's walking towards you, how much time do you give them to find out what their intentions are?" And that's what's scary for me because I was like, "Well, you have good intentions."

Bree Koegel, 31, met CJ, 35, her now-husband and soon-to-be father of their first child, through their work as fitness models for Wilhelmina.

"This isn't the first interracial relationship I've been, and Bree had known that," CJ said. "I think between her and I, there was this lack of us going into some of those deep conversations because I think we both automatically felt we stood on the same principles."

I look at it from my perspective and said, "Well, if I have things I need to unlearn, better believe the people above me in my family have things that they need to unwind too because they've gone through a lot of stuff in this world too."

I've watched after my conversations and how I saw certain things being handled. It's simple things that I saw like getting into my dad's car on the way to the store and when he turns the car on, it was on a station of a history channel based off of learning about the inequalities of the Black community.

It's difficult to look at your family and see things that you know need to be changed. There's some people in my family who didn't go to my sister's wedding based off of the fact that they didn't want her to marry a Black guy.

Bree: He was like, "I don't know why this is just hitting me different. I know that this happens, and I know that we've seen injustice caught on film before, but this feels different."

Then to see George Floyd days later, and the whole world's reaction, all of a sudden it didn't feel taboo or aggressive to post about it. It was like, "Oh no, you know what? This isn't just a problem inside our relationship to address, this is a problem the world needs to address. If we can expose our conversation to the world, and help them move this along, then by all means with these, our platform to do so."

I think these conversations with me now being empowered and me now, not really giving a cr-p about offending somebody, it's going to change the way that we engage in this world, for the better. And it's going change the way we engage as parents for the better. As scary as everything has been, I'm excited for the revolution, because of what it means for our child.

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Read more from the original source:
Interracial couples on how they're talking about race, love, and Black Lives Matter: 'The conversation took a - Business Insider India

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