Aphra Behn has very kindly indulged my wish to be interviewed (again). I already participated in an interview with Jen of Stay-At-Home Motherdom, but it was such fun, I couldn't resist doing it again. As with that interview, I am going to turn this one into five full days of blog posts. Why kill the fun in one day by answering all the questions at once, when you can make that fun last and last? So without further ado, Question 1:

1) What unexpected emotions have come from being married to someone of a different race and raising mixed-race children?

When my husband and I became engaged, neither his family nor mine were happy about it. My father said it exactly that way, "I'm not happy about this." He and my mother seemed disappointed that, with all the wide world of white boys available to me, I had to choose someone black. It's not that they disliked Mark in particular or black people in general. They were born and came of age in the era of segregation, they witnessed the ugly struggle for civil rights, they saw how white people talked about and treated black people and how black people hated back.

The way they saw it, I was safe, I was lucky. I was born with lily white skin, blond hair and blue eyes, like a little Aryan princess. I could marry a nice white man and have nice white children, and as part of the majority, the dominant race and culture, no one would ever discriminate against me or my children. By marrying a black man, I was as good as changing races, declaring that I wanted to be black, and who would willingly accept the curse of discrimination and hatred that went with that? White people would hate me for marrying someone black, black people would hate me for marrying someone black. No one would ever sell me a house. I'd never get a good table at a restaurant. My kids would be freaks and outcasts, never accepted by either race. Or we might even end up in physical danger, with angry mobs throwing bricks through the window of the only hovel that would rent to an interracial couple.

Their fear became my fear, but I was willing to brave whatever came because I love Mark so truly and so deeply. I knew my life would be so much richer for having him in it, that it would be worth every loss I could conceive.

The surprising part has been that it hasn't mattered much at all. I can think of odd looks we've gotten from time to time, but I can't think of any outright discrimination at all, none, in the 17 years since we became friends and lovers. Maybe there has been some, but if I haven't noticed it, it certainly hasn't been up to my parents' dire predictions. We own a home. We don't have a problem in stores or restaurants. People are friendly to us. Our kids play with other kids.

I've been surprised by how comfortable and normal I feel. I've been surprised by how good and kind most of the world's population actually is. I've been surprised that my view of the world was so distorted by a small minority of crazy, hateful people. For the most part, I've been surprised by the good emotions: how happy I am, how safe I feel, how much I love my neighbors.

The one surprisingly negative emotion has come from the use of the word "black" to describe people of mixed race. It completely pisses me off to hear: "Barack Obama could be the first black president of the US... Halle Berry is the first black woman to win an Oscar..." Did you see Halle Berry's mother sitting there weeping and clapping at the Academy Award ceremony? Um, white as I am. And Barack Obama's mother? White girl from Kansas. If you were to test my kids' DNA, I guarantee you that, given their descent from slaves, they would be more white than black. Yet, just like in slave times when one drop of black blood meant you were black, they are black, totally divorced in a single word from all that I contributed to their being.

I once got into a fight with (no surprise) someone in our school district due to a state law that says black children can not be given tests for the purpose of placing them in special ed classes. This law is meant to keep districts from, as they did in the immediate wake of desegregation, re-segregating black children by giving biased tests and having them placed in special ed. As my son, Mark and I walked into a room where my son was to participate in a test to measure his language delays, the psychologist took one look at the three of us and said, "Oh, I can't give him this test, he's black." And I replied, very irritated, "Um, he's also white." After assuring her that we wouldn't sue her if she gave the test, but would if she didn't, (have to love the American legal system) she reluctantly consented, although she still clearly thought she was participating in something illegal.

In some ways, people are (beautifully and miraculously) much more ready to look at us in a new way than I thought they would be. In other ways, people are holding on to old concepts about race with surprising (and irritating) tenacity.