Learning to love, and be loved by, the ‘other’

Hard though it is to admit, I grew up implicitly fearing black faces like his. Not because my kind and inclusive parents were consciously racist—because they and their society hadn’t yet learned how to be consciously antiracist. So I drank my portion of the poison of racism that permeates American life and defines dark faces…

Remembering Dad Mnisi

Our hearts are heavy. This week we bid an unexpected farewell to Sindiso’s father, Simon Semete Mnisi, who died on May 28, 2020 in Johannesburg. Dad Mnisi was born in 1941 in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. His family were labor tenants (sharecroppers) on “white-owned” land that had been taken from them generations earlier. His mom,…

Lovin’ “Loving Day”

It’s corny, I know: interracial couples the world over, and their friends, getting together en masse to publicly celebrate interracial relating. Yeah, it’s kind of a gimmick too. Yet, I can’t help but get excited about it every time the annual reminder shows up on my calendar. I even confess that I looked on the…

The Story Behind “You’re Beautiful”

I was walking through an airport the other day when I spotted the glossy cover. An unabashedly black Lupita Nyong’o, sporting her very own nappy black hair, cropped short, beamed on the cover of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful” issue. Another first for dark black women in American popular culture, courtesy the luminous Lupita. But for…

Black Women-Black Men: Where is the Love?

Sitting at my desk at work, not long after Dan and I got married, one of the cleaning ladies walked into my office. After the warm greeting we exchanged, she caught sight of Dan’s and my wedding photo on my computer desktop. She asked if that was my husband. I enthusiastically responded, “yes!” As she…

When “Interracial Dating Service” Is My Name

Most times, my telling people my surname is Weeks (or, more explicitly, that I’m married to a white man) yields disbelief – or, as an Indian-South African telephone agent recently (virtually) accused me of identity-theft: “that can’t be you, the registered name is Mrs SM Weeks!” Of course, there are times when it attracts flat-out…

What I don’t get to say to my black wife

One of the cool things about marriage (there are many) is that you get to say most anything you want to your spouse. Communications gurus advise that you speak what’s on your heart rather than keep it in, something I’ve found doesn’t come naturally to most of us guys, but which can be quite liberating…

Safe Spaces: Breaking the Barrier Between White and Black

In much of our reading lately, Dan and I have heard the message repeated that the best solution to racialisation and the inequality it perpetuates in society is for white and black people to be intentional about forming deep relationships across the colour line. This requires living in community with one another: shared neighbourhoods, churches,…

I love you, you’re perfect, now where’s your PhD?

Athol Fugard (b. 1932) was a man ahead of his time. The celebrated South African playwright and novelist (of Tsotsi, among many others) had the balls to take on such testy topics as institutionalized racism, township violence, and the color line in daily life–different sides of the same bitter coin in apartheid South Africa. And…

Crossing the Racial-Romantic Line

Keeping with the subject of the racialised notions of beauty that we are all socialised into discussed in Dan’s last post, I was struck the other day when, on my walk home from work, I overheard a conversation between three trendy-looking black female students, maybe aged 20 years old or so. Sistah 1: … I’ve…