by Diane Farr
“So, how old were you when you were told you weren’t allowed to date ‘the blacks’?”
That won’t do, either. Lisa may not be interviewed regularly, but I know from Seung and me that you learn to couch your family’s shortcomings into the tidiest version of the problem. Maybe I can bond with Lisa over our mothers’ shared shortcoming?
“Hey, I’m Diane and my mother also told me to stay away from black guys!”
Just not gonna work. Should I just tell Lisa the truth and address the point that we have in common as couples? What do I have to lose on a perfect stranger?
“I need some advice because my husband’s family is not thrilled about him falling in love with someone of my race and I know that your family didn’t want you to be with ...”
But this is her family I’m asking about, not her husband’s, so there is no “in-law bashing” to be shared. And more to the point, Lisa and I are not having the same exact experience. I’m in love with an Asian guy. That’s a little interesting. At worst, maybe it’s off-putting to some older Asian people (in addition to Seung’s family). It does not carry the taboo that still exists in a variety of social circles for a white woman and a black man. If I’m attempting to have a forthright discussion about race in America, I think I should be as truthful as possible, at least with myself. Looking at Seung and me and wondering how we are a couple might make me think you’re a dummy. But looking at a black man and a white woman in love and being horrified is a slap this girl has felt. And that slap was from her mother, so I’m guessing it has left a mark.
Now I’m really scared. What right do I have to ask this woman anything? And if I take her psyche apart while digging around for the truth about bringing someone unwanted into a family, don’t I have a responsibility to put her back together? I don’t know how to do that, either! Oh God. And now if I blow this off, I’m the chick who was too cool to even call when Lisa agreed to tell all her deepest secrets to a total stranger for the benefit of love. My $25 phone-recording device does not have directions on how to be an investigative journalist!
IN THE END, LISA MAY THINK I am the most narcissistic person in the world because when I failed to find a way in, I came clean and simply blurted out everything about my relationship and myself. Yes, I was that savvy actress and published author said to be working on an important subject—who started crying during my second sentence on the phone with my first interviewee. And then I couldn’t stop crying.
I was confused by my own display of emotion. Was I just shocked to say this out loud to someone? That my boyfriend’s family didn’t like me because I am a different race than him? Was I having flashbacks of junior high school, where one day you were cool and the next day you were out—with no understandable reason or remedy within grasp? Was I just now realizing that this relationship could fail over this? Or was I just plain old sad that I had to confide in a total stranger?
I still don’t know. All I can say for sure is that I shocked myself by how much insecurity and fear were underlying my intention to have an intellectual and fact-finding phone call about interracial dating in America when one family does not approve. But Lisa was not shocked. Lisa seemed to know exactly what I was feeling just as I was only first becoming conscious of this little pinhole in my heart, which without proper attention could grow into a gully.
Somewhere amidst the waterworks, mostly due to my embarrassment of turning this into telephonic therapy, I invited Lisa to jump in with her own story. She began with how she and Dave met.
CHAPTER 2.
WHITE FRESHMAN LOVES BLACK SENIOR IN PENNSYLVANIA
“My mother had this horrible reaction. She said something like, ‘This is disgusting.’ At the time, I wondered what she was thinking. And assumed she would just kind of get it, eventually. But she didn’t.”
—LISA TYLER
LISA AND DAVE were in college. They started dating her junior year, when Dave was living in the apartment below her. Lisa described the scene as a “collegiate Melrose Place.” She was dating someone else and immediately dumped him when she met Dave. His humor and big heart won Lisa over right away. She was a little surprised, however, when her roommates reacted to Dave with, “Why?”
“It wasn’t that they were specifically negative, but many didn’t see the appeal.” The appeal of a black man to a white woman, that is, says Lisa, with as much grace as that statement could possibly have. Lisa didn’t have any hesitations, though. As students, she and Dave weren’t very different. Dave was in an all-white fraternity. He was a senior but on a “six-year plan,” so he and Lisa would graduate together. “We spent all of our time together and became boyfriend and girlfriend right away.”
Friends came around quickly, but Lisa and Dave left their families out of their time together. Her parents did meet Dave briefly once, at a parents’ weekend. They thought the coupling was “funny,” Lisa says flatly. “They thought it was a phase. And continued to think this ... until the day I got married.”
NOW I HAVE TO ASK the hard question, because this is the part I don’t exactly understand. But since I just finished bawling to Lisa, I’m also not feeling exactly confident to pretend to be a professional and probe her with questions. But Lisa seems kind, so I cross my fingers, close my eyes, and use a soft voice as I say, “Do you remember why you knew your mother wouldn’t approve?”
“Well, my younger sister went to a dance with a black kid when she was young. My mom had a really hard time with this and told us so.”
This answer feels rehearsed. I am about to ask another soft-voiced question when Lisa digs deeper herself. “But even earlier was the situation with my father’s sisters.”
Lisa’s dad has two sisters, who both married black men. Lisa remembers meeting her aunts and their families when she was in middle school. After a terrific day with her cousins, Lisa was waving goodbye from her family’s car, when her mother went off. “My mother had this horrible reaction. She said something like, ‘This is disgusting.’ At the time I wondered what she was thinking. And I assumed she would just kind of get it, eventually. But she didn’t.”
Then and now, Lisa’s mom argued that a biracial relationship would be unfair to a child. This is something I also heard my parents espouse, many years ago during my childhood, and I can’t ask Lisa fast enough if she feels her mom truly believes this or if she might have been looking for a way to couch her own prejudice, in a seemingly intellectual way. Lisa says she believes that her mother was worried about her. “And the way people would treat me if I was in a relationship with a black person ... and how they would treat her.”
Lisa’s mother was also quick to let her daughter know that her grandparents would never approve, either. Lisa’s grandfather stated, “Black people and white people together are like squirrels and raccoons mixing.” For further clarification he added, “It’s just not biologically right.” With these statements said out loud at home, I’m not sure how Lisa even had the confidence to leave her Melrose Place apartment during college, with the pending threat of a rabid coed approaching her on the wild streets of Philadelphia.
Yet, despite all these discussions, Lisa pursued her relationship. Two years later, she and Dave finished college together and were each moving back to their parents’ homes. They both grew up in northern Virginia—which isn’t quite the South but isn’t far from it. Their mothers’ houses were only forty minutes apart, but were in many ways worlds away.
For example, Dave is the youngest of six kids. Such a large family is always defining, but having brothers and sisters who attended public school during the 1950s and ’60s—in Virginia—is a radically different set of experiences within one family. My first thought as Lisa started to give me some background was that some of Dave’s siblings must have attended segregated schools.
Dave’s brothers and sisters were bused to class, across the county in fact, even though there was a school at the end of their street. During this time, one bus would travel to five or more towns retrieving a
ll the black kids. The classroom these children were exiled to was often an hour away from where they lived. On top of a two-hour journey every day, even for a six-year-old, this also meant there was no way for these children to play with their school friends. And there was little chance they would be cavorting with the white kids on their block because they were clearly being told not to when they were separated every morning.
After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, a Virginian senator then organized the Massive Resistance movement, which included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them. The Tyler family lived through both of these benchmarks, as well as many more education fashions that are now, thankfully, obsolete. Eventually Dave, being the youngest of his large family, got to begin his education at that school right on his street. And because of it, Dave ended up socializing at the other extreme, as his class was almost entirely white. Which also seems to have left scars.
Lisa feels that Dave has regrets about the circles he chose to run in as a kid. They might best be described as self-doubts that Dave may have “copped out” by not aligning enough with his race. But by college, Dave’s social wiring was set. Thus the all-white fraternity and Lisa, who was not the first white woman Dave dated. After Dave graduated and headed home, though, his family was one place where he was immersed in black culture—as was Lisa.
Lisa spent weekends at Dave’s parents’ house for two years following college. “I had never experienced being the only white person in a large crowd before the Tyler family. And it took time to get used to.” Dave’s family was happy to give Lisa whatever she needed to get comfortable, though, because they believed Dave might have been a “college frat guy” forever, had it not been for her. And perhaps, having lived through thirty-plus years of child rearing, Dave’s parents knew that many of the things student life gave Lisa and Dave in common were about to end.
It took Dave a solid year to find a job after college. Lisa worked full-time and began her MBA. When Dave finally landed work, it was in New Jersey—which put four hours between them. Yet the distance only inspired them to commit further. “I eventually quit a really good job so I could finish school full-time and move in with Dave.”
While living together in New Jersey, talk of engagement came up, which finally prompted Lisa’s mom to address the phase, which had now lasted seven years. “My mom finally said she didn’t support the union. She quoted her parents, saying, ‘We live in our town and the blacks live in theirs and that’s all fine, but you’re not supposed to stray.’”
AFTER ONLY MY FIRST phone call with Lisa it is glaringly obvious that she will do anything to avoid confrontation. Yet she is not a doormat, nor does she blow smoke to distract from the conversation at hand. I am already admiring her technique of dodging a fight, and preventing one between her family and the person she loves ... but I can’t quite figure out how she is doing it.
“I cared, but I didn’t feel like I had to jump up or down. I’m very independent-minded and I knew I was going to be with Dave. I did downplay the relationship a bit, but that was also because Dave had a lot of anger and I didn’t want to egg him on. I didn’t want to cause super-bad behavior in anyone.”
What was that about Dave’s anger?
“Dave’s dealt with a lot of prejudice from all the women he’s dated. I mean, from all their families. Way worse than my family.” Lisa’s calmness is catching, and I’m finding my way to asking her all the questions that may yield me an understanding of how to navigate this love versus race battlefield—but I’m also seeing my own picture now of a very brave and pioneering, younger woman in Lisa. At this point in their relationship, Lisa is twenty-five years old. She loves Dave but knows the “white girl’s” family has hurt him before and that her family may hurt Dave again. And without a lot of real-life experience under her belt, Lisa is trying to keep all the people she loves from hurting each other. So if my intent is to make a game plan, I should ask Lisa what she did next at this juncture.
“Find allies.”
Lisa’s sister unilaterally supported her relationship with Dave. Together these two daughters had an even bigger issue with their mother, as their parents were divorcing after twenty-five years at this time. Both sisters felt their mom was in no position to judge. Lisa’s father also supported her and Dave. His only advice was to make sure they had things in common, as he felt it would be important later on. Lisa took refuge in the fact that her mother (and father, in fact) didn’t know any black people. There was no way they could know more about Dave than she did, or the life she might have with him, based solely on his race.
Dave was aware that Lisa’s mother had complaints about them as a couple, but he also knew his girlfriend was ready for the next phase. He forged ahead and managed to surprise her with a marriage proposal, hoping to show her that the two of them were what mattered most. And Lisa was ecstatic. Dave called his parents immediately to share his excitement, but Lisa called no one. “I wanted twenty-four hours to enjoy this for myself.” The next day Lisa called her mother, who said nothing “specifically” negative. “But it was not the reaction you’re hoping for when you plan to get married.”
Lisa and her mom had been speaking three times a day up until this point. Lisa’s next disappointment came when she didn’t hear from her mother the rest of the day. Or the next day. Or the day after that. “Then we just stopped talking entirely.”
* MOCKING HERSELF, LISA SAYS, “DAVE AND I STARTED dating when I was nineteen and got married at twenty-six. Looking back, I don’t know why I was in such a hurry, but at the time, I was really ready.”
I feel nervous now as Lisa speaks. The feelings that I’m guessing she is about to share with me are what may happen to Seung if we move forward. Alienation, judgment, and self-doubt—of whether it’s okay to ever tell your parents, “You’re wrong and I’m going to go my own way”—are what I imagine. I want Lisa to hurry up and tell me, and I also don’t want to hear it at all.
ONE WEEK AFTER LISA’S resounding “Yes!” to Dave’s proposal, she began to make her arrangements. Although she had no idea how her wedding could happen while her mother wasn’t speaking to her, Lisa tried. Wedding dress shopping seems to have been the most uncomfortable.
Her visits to the bridal suites come up often in my conversation with Lisa. I don’t believe this is because Lisa is a mad shopper or defines herself by marriage, but rather because the first image of herself in the white dress was upstaged by the empty space beside her in the dressing room. It seems what Lisa felt most, when she first saw herself dressed for her wedding, was lonely. This remains indelible fifteen years later as we talk on the phone tonight. But at least her mother eventually called.
“After almost a month my mom came and said this wasn’t worth ruining our relationship over. She acted like she was doing me this huge favor so it wouldn’t affect us. Which, of course, it already had.” Mother and daughter picked up their dialogue again, but the foundation for the immediate future was already set.
“She had nothing to do with my wedding other than showing up. She and my dad gave a financial contribution and little else.” Lisa openly says she wished her mother had been more involved.
“Our parents met for the first time at our rehearsal dinner. It was the most stressful dinner of my life,” says our bride. There were fifty people in attendance, and thankfully everyone was cordial. Not only did Dave’s parents get to meet the mom who thought their son might not be good enough because he was black, but they also met Mom’s raccoon- and squirrel-fearing parents. Lisa’s mom also got to meet her ex-husband’s new wife for the first time. All at the same meal!
The wedding moved smoothly and the reception was everything Lisa and Dave hoped—barring one incident by Lisa’s grandfather, who came despite the fact that he was “against” the marriage. Lisa says, “Dave’s father was his best man. His dad saved a bottle of onehundred-year-old scotch for his youngest son’s wedding. And there was my grandfather, who refused to toast w
ith him.” Lisa sadly confesses this major moment still comes up because her grandfather made it into such a point of contention.
There was no mention of Lisa’s mom eliciting any disappointing behavior this day, or ever after. I don’t get the sense Lisa and her mom are a mushy pair. But since Mom represented the largest hurdle for Lisa with Dave, no comment feels like a good start. Without that jockeying and fighting to attend to, more space was created for Lisa and Dave to focus on each other. Tonight is my second call with Lisa in as many days, and all our discussions about her mother from this point onward are reparative.
The biggest milestone came one year after their wedding. Lisa’s mom came forward and told her daughter she really loved Dave. Mom quoted the exact thing that Lisa had always felt: that she just never knew any black people. “She had this idea, this prejudice of what this race is like, and then once you get to know someone of that race you’re like, ‘Wow! They’re just like us.’” Lisa’s mom also sent Dave a heartfelt card. Both Lisa and Dave were moved by the sentiment in this letter addressed to her son.
* OUR MUTUAL FRIEND MENTIONED LISA TO ME only partially because her mom was upset when she married Dave. My friend had a different clincher in mind, as she saucily said, “You must talk to them! They have twin boys. One came out white and the other is black.”
Lisa and Dave named their sons Justin and Nathan. They are three years old at the time of this interview. “Everyone wondered what our kids would look like. Nathan has dark wavy hair. He can pass for many things—most easily Latino, I think. Justin is pale like me, and he’s kind of the more difficult one who doesn’t warm up to people easily. I can just imagine the comments Dave’s family makes,” laughs Lisa.