"Those People"

“Those People”

            I knew it was going to be bad day because I had not been home all week. I had not answered my mothers or fathers phone calls. I had texted them where I was and that I was okay but still it’s as if they knew that I was with my boyfriend all week. Sure, enough I got home and all the lights were off and I could already hear the lecture I was going to get. I ran straight upstairs to my room. But my parents heard me and called me into their room. I was trying to mentally prepare myself for the lecture I was about to get. Although I thought I was prepared I truly wasn’t.

            I walked in unable to look at my mother and father who were sitting on the edge of their bed. I swear I could feel my heart falling out of my chest because it was beating so fast. I tried to make the situation into a funny one and tried to make a joke. I said “Haven’t seen you guys in forever.” There were no laughs and not even a smile. I was looking around the room unable to meet their gaze. My father didn’t even wait for me to sit down before the questions came.

“Why do you think you not being home all week is okay? I mean you were hugging this kid in front of my house and I don’t know what you do outside of my house.” I couldn’t help but look at him crazy because of what he had just said. They finally asked me if he was my boyfriend. I couldn’t answer that even though he was my boyfriend. My father asked “Why does he have to be black?” In that moment, it was as if I had been slapped with the reality that my parents had a prejudice against a group of people that they did not even know. I was so upset but I let him talk and say everything that he was feeling. He said that those people weren’t good and that I should be smarter than that. I was so shocked but I finally snapped out of it and I tried to remain calm but my hands were shaking. It was probably the first time I had ever cried in front of my parents. It wasn’t because I was sad or hurt I was just angry. I finally looked up at him and said “What’s wrong with you. You act like you know him when you don’t. the fact that you’re judging him because of his race is disgusting because you hate when people do it to you.” At this point I was yelling, and in my family, no one ever yells at my father since he is the head of the household. I finally just left because I felt like I was suffocating on my own tears.

The next few days weren’t easy either because I had to take my mother to work and there was complete silence in the car. Until she broke the silence. She said “You know we only want what’s best for you.” I was still angry so I argued “No you just want me to end up with a Mexican man, and for what so he can treat me like shit but you don’t want me to be with someone who is from another race who actually makes me happy. You don’t care about my happiness you just care about how this is making you look.” She just sighed and there I was with tears in my eyes at 6 am.

It was about a week later and my oldest sister Griselda saw me doing homework at home and she asked “So what happened I heard dad screaming at you.”  I tried to explain calmly to her what happened but I couldn’t help but to cry. She looked at me with tears in her eyes too and said “That’s literally what broke my relationship up.” She began to tell me her story of how she introduced her boyfriend who was also black to my family and how they completely rejected him and how it made her relationship even harder than it should have been. She said “If it’s worth it you need to make it work, because at the end of the day any man that our father will meet he will not accept, it will just make it more difficult because he is from a different race.”

A month later as I look at the argument and how my parents reacted to it I am still disappointed. But I now look at them and at how they were raised and what experiences they had ad why they think the way that they do. I am still trying to explain my relationship to the and they have become more accepting. This is actually very reassuring since interracial couples have had to take their relationships to the supreme court. One example is the Loving vs. Virginia case where interracial marriage was illegal until the Supreme court ruled it unconstitutional to not allow couples of different races to marry. It is evident that interracial couples are growing according to a lovetoknow statistics there is now an 8.4 percent increase in interracial couples compared to a .4 percent of couples in the 1960s. I know that it will take time for people to still find interracial couples acceptable but it is a good thing that the acceptance rate has gone up drastically since the 1960’s.