Interracial Ignorance (?)

Yeah, I know I'm on overkill with our trip to New York City, but it was a cool trip. But, now that you've gotten a detailed glimpse on the previous three posts, I wanted to put the trip to bed with an issue we had with the city.

Rachel's recent blog post is a good indication of some issues we dealt with in New York as an interracial couple. It's not often we focus on this personally, but it was so blatantly obvious that we were getting glares and stares. I didn't see whites, Latinos, or even purple people giving us look daggers; it was exclusively black people. It didn't matter what subway we traveled, we got angry stares from various black people.

I recently heard people use the phrase, "This is 2009!" Well, I agree. It is 2009, New York black people who stared at us — notice I'm not saying all black people glared at us. Why, in New York City, which is thought of as a progressive city, would people have an issue with a white man married to a black woman? Oh, what, you want us to go get divorced so we can appease your ignorant issues?

Unfortunately, we dealt with the same problem when we visited Chicago in March. Again, a city I would assume is a progressive-thinking city, we faced similar funky looks from some of its black citizens.

St. Louis, on the other hand, which is thought of as having more of a Midwestern mind (I'm not quite sure what the means exactly), didn't give us problems when we lived there. In fact, we both felt as though we were treated like two normal people — which is exactly what we are. We weren't asked if we were paying separately (like we do in Springfield); it always seemed evident to everyone (of all races) that we were together in St. Louis.

Maybe someone can enlighten me on this topic.