For someone who is the byproduct of an interracial marriage and who is currently in her own interracial relationship, my mind is not as open as I like to think it is. I astonished myself today when I was slightly amazed that a publisher for several of our major publications is in an interracial marriage and has a gorgeous mixed daughter.
It's not that I am at all shocked that a successful White woman would be married to a Black man. Quite the opposite actually. But have you ever just assumed that certain women or men - whether White, Black or otherwise - just would not be involved with a member of a different race? And it's not even really a conscious assumption. You've just never thought to associate or disassociate someone in particular with an interracial relationship. And when you learn that he or she is ... you are slightly amazed. And depending on your perspective or personal experience, you may be either pleasantly surprised or genuinely annoyed.
I was neither pleasantly surprised nor genuinely annoyed this afternoon as I peered at the family photos in the publisher's office, but I did recognize and eradicate a stereotype of my own.
Or I was just in the South for too long ... like this one time [at band camp] ...
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