MUSIC UNITES THE HEART
NOVEMBER 1996
| I am a caucasion woman of European descent. When I was 25 years old I was at a concert with some of the autistic children that I taught at the time. The concert was part of a celebration called Unity Day, the focus was to take the attention away from the KKK who were marching through my town on that particular afternoon. Up on stage was a band that was playing music about acceptance and peace. Part way through one of the songs the lead singer brought one of the students up on stage with him and gave him a tambourine to play. After the set ended the musician was trying to have a conversation with the boy he had just given the thrill of his life and was having difficulty understanding him because of his speech impairment. I went over to interpret. Seven months later I was married to that musician. He says that he knew on that day that we would be married, I guess it wasn't long after that that I knew too. | ||
| I grew up in a almost completely white upper-middle class neighborhood and so when I brought this man, a light skinned black man with dreadlocks and georgous blue/green eyes home to meet my parents and to tell them that we were going to be married, it was a bit stressful. My parents welcomed him completely and my grandmother called him her new grandson. I had the same warm and complete reception from my husband's family. Our wedding was beautiful and there were people there of just about every ethnic and racial background and 5 years later the people who attended are still talking about how much fun our wedding was. There were people who attended our wedding who would have called themselves biggots before the wedding and since then have changed some of thier beliefs. | ||
| We have now been married for almost 5 years and our families are now one family and we have never run into any blatent racism. It saddens me when I see the things that some interracial couples go through to have a life together and it reminds me how lucky I am to have the husband that I have and the family and friends that I have. I also get saddened and occasionally angry when I see the way that interracial couples are portrayed in the media, all dysfunctional and sad and ususally ending up in divorce. I know that we are not the only couple who has over come our racial differences to just love each other and have a happy and stable life together. | ||
| We were blessed a year and a half ago with a beautiful little girl who is a perfect combination of her caucasion mother and her African American/Native American/Irish father. When she is with me people say she looks just like me, when she is with her father, people say she looks just like him. When we are all together people just say how incredibly beautiful she is. I know that somewhere down the road we will have racial questions from her to address, but we will address them in a straightforward manner and hopefully she will grow up to be proud of all of her different heritages and be a strong, good, compassionate person. | ||
| We are a sucess story, but we would be even without the racial differences because we are truly in love and love our lives together. | ||