Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (28 page)

The idea was readily accepted by the magazine’s editor, Mary Rearden, and I began my research.

What I discovered startled me: Mixed couples were hard to locate. Of the handful I found, most refused to be interviewed. Others agreed to be interviewed but wanted to remain anonymous for various reasons: fear of losing their jobs, fear of losing respect, fear of disappointing members of their family who do not yet know about the relationship, and even fear of losing their lives. One white guidance counselor at a Forsyth County high school spoke of death threats from his black girlfriend’s former black boyfriend.

There were courageous exceptions. When Madelyn Ashley, a white clinical nurse specialist who works at Bowman Gray School of Medicine in WinstonSalem, married her husband Richard, a black graphic artist, she was hesitant to tell her boss.

“I didn’t want to hide anything, yet I wondered how my boss would react. I didn’t really fear losing my job. Richard was more important to me than my job. I don’t tell my patients that my husband is black.

When they make racist remarks I have to bite my tongue and change the subject. I don’t understand racists. My grandmother encouraged me to be a nurse but told me, you don’t want to take care of Negroes. They have a special disease, you’ll catch it if you touch them.” But I don’t care what others say or think. I’m proud of Richard. I get angry at myself for feeling the need to hide him from some people.”

When Madelyn finally told her boss, he reacted not only with congratulations but he drove all the way to Chapel Hill to attend the wedding. But Madelyn was one of the lucky few. Most of the mixed couples I interviewed for the article lived in fear that their superiors at work would discover that they had fallen in love across racial lines and fire them. Thus loving human relationships are transformed into “dirty little secrets.”

Jane, a slim young woman with blue eyes and waist-length blond hair, applied for a job as an exercise instructor for the elderly at an exclusive North Carolina country club. During the interview, the employer quizzed Jane on her private life, and even asked who her boyfriend was and where he worked. Her black boyfriend, Hal, is a member of the top forty band called The Society. She was not offered the job.

“To this day I wonder if I didn’t get the job because Hal is black,” Jane said. “All they had to do was find out that The Society is a black band.”

Paula, a black teacher who is in love with a white man named

Rudy, feels uncomfortable going out in public in WinstonSalem where she may run into coworkers or people from the black community who know her, out of fear that word may get back to a former black boyfriend who has threatened Rudy’s life. They began dating in 1986 and broke up for a year because of the enormous pressure Paula was feeling. During the breakup Paula nearly married a black doctor, but returned to Rudy instead.

“I’m still very aware that Rudy’s white, but I thought that in time I’d get over it,” Paula said. “It’s getting better. I’m not as afraid to go out with him as I used to be. But I’ve gotten criticism from black males. They say, There are a lot of black guys out there who are dying to be with you. Why do you stay with that white gny?” I explain that I’m with Rudy not because he’s white but because he’s a really nice gny. They just can’t accept that as a reason.”

I met another mixed couple, whom we’ll call “Nat” and “Kate,” at the Dixie Classic Fair who let me interview them only if I kept their names secret. Neither of them took off their dark sunglasses throughout the interview. Kate, who is white, is afraid her parents in New Jersey will somehow find out about the relationship.

“Nat visits me a lot,” Kate said over the din of screaming children and game vendors shouting for customers. “He once answered the phone when my mother called. She asked, Who was that?” I told her it was a neighbor who didn’t have cable who came over to watch a ball game. A lot of excuses have been made. A lot. I hate lying to my parents but my mother would go nuts if she knew. When I was one year old my parents bought me a black baby doll so I wouldn’t be prejudiced against black people. But as far as dating and marriage go, I’m sure that’s out of the question. I don’t want to hurt them, and what they don’t know can’t hurt them.”

Nat, who had been shooting baskets in an attempt to win a huge fluorescent stuffed animal for Kate, joined our conversation.

“I just wish everyone would accept us,” Nat said. “My family knows we’re dating, but as long as I’m happy they’re happy. They used to think one-dimensionally, you know, blacks gotta be with blacks and whites gotta be with whites. But once they got over the Initial shock that I was dating a white woman, they accepted it. The people I work with feel the same way I do: It doesn’t matter if the person you love is black or white or tan or purple. My friends accept it because I pick friends who aren’t prejudiced. They wouldn’t be my friends if they didn’t accept it.”

Many interracial relationships in the South don’t survive the pressure exerted on them by society. Both Nat and Richard had previously had relationships with white women that failed.

“They just don’t want to take it,” Nat said. “The relationship usually ends mutually. I don’t know which side gives in faster, black or white. They’re just not willing to make the effort to make it work.”

“It takes a very strong-willed, independent person to be part of a mixed couple,” Richard told me. “One has to be confldent in one’s self and one’s feelings. You have to have the firm conviction that what you are doing is right and that anything against that is their’ problem.

I don’t think a lot of people have the individual strength it requlres to be part of a mixed couple. To be an individual in America is very difflcult.”

My completed article appeared in the January/February 1080 issue of WinstonSalem Mogaune beside a large black-and-white photograph of Mark, Bianca, and I under the heading “Color-Blind Love.” The phone at the magazine started ringing off the hook, and letters came pouring in.

“We find this sort of thing disgraceful,” one caller told my editor.

She introduced herself as a representative of a group of thirteen female senior citizens who were upset by the article. “And that photograph-why, it looks like an advertisement for that sort of thing!

Just what exactly are you trying to promote?”

My editor, Mary Rearden, was asked why she printed an article by someone as “brazen” as I, was grilled about my credentials as a writer, and was told she lacked good judgment in running the piece.

“Don’t you read the Bible?” another caller asked Mary. “It states right there in the good book that God doesn’t want any race mixing.”

“Who’s your publisher? Is he from South Africa?” another asked.

“No, he’s Italian,” Mary replied.

“Oh, I guess he would be a foreigner.”

From call to call Mary held firm and, after the controversy had blown over, told me she was glad she had run the piece and shaken the dust off some old beliefs. She even had long conversations with some of the callers, listening patiently to their arguments and then refuting them point by point.

For my part, I received numerous letters from the sisters, mothers, and friends of mixed couples as well as some from mixed coupies themselves thanking me for writing the article. Those letters in themselves were enough to negate all the ridiculous criticism the article provoked and convinced me that we mixed couples, if we ever want to be fully understood, accepted, and respected by society, have to be willing to tell our human stories in order to combat stereotypes about us; we have to speak out against bigotry, black and white, wherever we may live.

MARK’S VIEW I have written at some length about external events that happened to Gail and me, but much more occurs internally, inside each partner in a mixed couple as they adjust to life together. At first, once I entered the limelight, I had difficulty reconciling the private life I shared with Gail with my public persona as a writer increasingly considered by people as a spokesperson for the antiapartheid struggle.

This conflict reached a peak following my family’s August 27, 1987, appearance on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” A few weeks after the show aired nationwide, the Boy reached number three on The New York flmes bestseller list and number one on the Washington Post list. Suddenly I was catapulted into the limelight. People felt justified in intruding on my private life. They expected me to behave in a certain way and say things that confirmed their perceptions of me as some sort of black leader. I have never claimed to be such a person. Everything I have written and said on the issues of apartheid and racial justice have been at the prompting of my conscience.

Scores of letters began arriving at my High Point apartment each week from readers across the country. Dozens of other readers wanted more immediate contact than letter writing afforded, so they started calling at any hour of the day or night, often bubbling with emotion.

I was deeply touched by this show of support. It strengthened my belief that when political issues are presented to the American people in human terms, many of them really do care and seek to do something.

At first I responded to each caller, sometimes spending hours speaking to total strangers about my life, the situation in South Africa, the importance of education to young blacks, and how concerned Americans could help the struggle against apartheid by sending books and educational supplies to South African ghettos.

But soon the calls became too many and disrupted my family life and writing schedule. I was in the process of writing the Boy in America and was facing a deadline. Gail offered to start screening the calls.

Most came from black women desperate to speak to me.

“Is this where Mark Mathabane lives?” one young woman asked Gail one afternoon.

“Yes, it is,” Gail replied.

“Oh, my God! Really? Is he home? I’ve just got to speak to him. I just finished reading the Boy. I couldn’t put it down. I feel like I know him.”

“He’s not here right now,” Gail said.

The caller was deeply disappointed. “I saw him on Oprah’s show and ran right down to the store to buy his book.” She talked excitedly about the Boy for several minutes, then said, “Who’s this? His secretary?”

“No, his wife.”

“Wile?” the caller exclaimed. “I didn’t know he was married’” after a short silence, in which she was apparently recovering from her shock, she said, “Well, you sure are one lucky woman.”

Many of the calls ran along these lines, and it was hard to tell whether Gail was flattered or annoyed by them. The most bothersome calls were the ones that interrupted our sleep at about two or three in the morning. Some came from women who had met me briefly at a lecture, whose names and faces I could not recall, and who attempted to get me on the phone by telling Gail they were good friends of mine or had recently visited Alexandra and had important information regarding my family.

It soon became clear that in the minds of many readers of the 0 I iA

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In the Limelight: Am I Betraying My Race? 1193 they had left me on the last page of the book. Part of my appeal, I believed, was that many female fans assumed I was still single. I knew the appeal would fade when they learned I was married and might eventually turn to disappointment and even scorn when they learned I had fallen in love with and married a white woman.

Some black male friends who knew of my relationship with Gail and were eager to see my career as a writer blossom, bluntly told me that my credibility as a black spokesperson would be seriously undermined if it were known that I was married to a white woman.

“The careers of many black leaders have been ruined by such relationships,” a black friend said one afternoon.

“But I’m not a leader,” I responded. “And Gail is my wife. I married her because I love her. Surely people will understand that.”

“Not in America,” my friend said. “Especially not in the black community. Your relationship with Gail, especially given what you and other black South Africans have suffered under apartheid at the hands of whites, will be seen as the ultimate betrayal of your blackness. I know the origin of your relationship with Gail, but many people don’t.

They’ll simply conclude that you’re another black man who, on becoming successful, marries white.”

“But Gail fell in love with me when I was dirt poor, unknown, and repeatedly rejected by all the compatible black women with whom I sought to have serious relationships.” My friend knew of the rejections. “Don’t I have a right to wonder what is now so attractive about me-my success or my own person? I think it would be foolish to abandon, in the name of racial solidarity, friends who stood by my side during hard times.”

“I understand and sympathize with your position,” my friend said. “But I’m advising you as a friend, as someone who knows the black community.

Gail will prove a liability.”

Unsure how to take my friend’s advice, I decided to play it safe until I could reconcile the demands of my private and public life. At times I subtly discouraged Gail from attending my lectures, especially before black audiences. Whenever she was present, I asked her to sit in the back of the auditorium and be as inconspicuous as possible.

Aware of my confusion about how to best present our relationship to the public, and not wanting to make me or herself uncomfortable, she complied.

Virginia, attended by a predominantly black audience, I was angry with her, though I had invited her. She was the only white at the table of black students who treated me to dinner after the lecture.

Their faces did not conceal their shock on hearing me introduce her as my wife. There were awkward silences, gaps in the conversation and I could tell many of the students were ofiended and wondered how she could possibly relate to the issues of race they were discussing.

Our drive from Virginia to North Carolina was miserable. I was defensive of my base actions all the way home. I insincerely accused Gail of a gross lack of knowledge of African-American history, of an inability to truly understand what it is like to be discriminated against all your life just because of the color of your skin. I told her that I stIll had doubts whether it was right for me to marry a white woman, given the black community’s expectations of me. Aware that such remarks wounded Gail deeply, and ashamed of my actions, I tearfully apologized to her. But the tug of war between my public and private life continued.