What I Saw: Interracial America and Fitting In

I walked down the sidewalk on my way to work yesterday and I found myself behind an interracial couple with their two children. The man was black, the woman white, and the kids a wonderful mix of the two. And they were happy. I could tell in the way they held each others’ hands and swung their arms back and forth, all four of them. They were also having a conversation, and I could feel the positive vibes radiating from them. It was a poignant moment.

Then I looked around and noticed a small group of other people heading to the same store, and they were also looking at the exact family that I was, but not in the same way. At first it was hard to ascertain the feeling behind the expressions on their faces, but then I recognized it as disgust. The same family I saw as a wonderful representation of love and acceptance would never be universally loved or accepted by everyone in the larger society. I thought we were largely past all of that, but I realize I was delusional. There are always going to be people who think that “like should go with like,” and they assume “like” means the same color. And they will always be wrong.

And here’s the kicker: the people who gave the interracial family the aforementioned look of disgust noticed me looking at them and gave me a smile. I guess they were proving to themselves that they had no problem with black people, or maybe it was the outfit (I dress very well when going to work), but two things hit me about the switch in reactions.

1) I wondered how they would have related to me had they known that I have a family very similar to the one they had just so quickly judged

2) Did they even know about the reactions that showed and changed on their faces, or were they just so used to the surface reactions that they didn’t even realize it was going on?

Both of those realizations made me heartsick, to think that people in this day and age still have ideologies that allow them to judge others based on merely the choices that they’ve made for love, and based on the thinnest of criteria too, the ethnicity dynamic of the couple. But it happens, and I should be used to it by now. But the larger issue is that separately people don’t judge me, and they don’t judge my wife. But when we’re together people do judge us. Do they realize how hypocritical that is, or is that natural to them as well?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know how I feel when I see people give others that look because they feel that “like should be with like.” And I want to go up to them and ask them why they feel the way they do, just to see if they have a solid answer, or if they give me a blank look, one that means, “that’s the way we’ve always done it, but we don’t know why.” Do I even want to “fit in” with those people who could judge so randomly and not even realize why they’re judging?

Because that’s what it comes down to. We as a society like to feel that we fit in, that we’re accepted by others. But it’s not just being accepted as an individual, but being accepted as a group, whatever group we identify with. The problem is that too many people do whatever it takes to fit in, whether it be pretending to be like the larger group or showing disdain for something that is different. Maybe if we work harder to be comfortable in our own skins we can be comfortable knowing that others are judging us every second of every day.

And then fitting in wouldn’t be such a priority. In fact, we might just feel sorry for those who feel that fitting in is all-important. As for those people who judged the lovely family I mentioned earlier, I honestly don’t think they knew of the shift on their faces, but hopefully they’ll learn to accept that which is different from them.

Sam