Tineka
My husband and I met on a journalism master’s course in London eight years ago. It was an international course that lasted one year and brought together a fascinating cast of characters from all over the world. After a month or so of being on the course, I bumped into Alex on campus. We had seen each other in lectures but hadn’t really chatted. Alex came up to me and said, “Hello … Tameka, right?” I politely but abruptly corrected him — “It’s Tineka” — and went on my way.
My husband’s recollection of that encounter involves plenty more tension and attitude. I don’t think it was that dramatic, but I do remember at the time being annoyed that so many people in Britain couldn’t pronounce my name. It’s pronounced TAH-NEE-KA, not TAN-E-KA — and certainly not TAM-E-KA. I’m not very good at hiding my emotions, so perhaps I was a bit rude on that day.
Alex later told me he was shocked by my direct manner towards a stranger and, in fact, was offended by our first meeting. However, after he showed up to my birthday party with a mutual friend and I greeted him with open arms — I’d had a few glasses of wine by then — he thought I was an all-right person …
Alex
The fact that we had different skin colour was never an issue or a topic of conversation when we first started dating. Yes, Tineka was the first black person I dated, but her skin colour was just one of her many features and was not why I wanted to be with her.
But many difficult lessons have been learnt as I have watched my wife experience racial aggressions. Not long ago, in Switzerland, Tineka and I entered a well-known clothing store in downtown Geneva. It was a fancy outlet with leather jackets on display next to ripped jeans and vintage handbags. Tineka and I went to different parts of the store, and we had been casually browsing for only a few minutes before Tineka appeared next to me. “We’re leaving,” she hissed into my ear.
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She stormed out of the store giving the shop assistants a harsh stare, and then told me what had happened. The two white female shop assistants had followed her as she browsed the shelves. “Isn’t that their job?” I had naively asked. “I wish shop assistants would assume you are the thief for once,” Tineka replied, clearly upset.
As I watched her walk off, I was frozen at the store entrance, hoping that I would somehow find the courage to go and confront the shop assistants. I wanted them to understand what they had done and recognise the very real consequences. But I also knew that I didn’t want to be that white man who spent his day mansplaining how to act in a racially sensitive way. As Tineka looked back and saw me hesitating, she gestured to me, telling me to let it go. I am not pleased to admit that I felt relieved.
Tineka
Before Alex and I got engaged, I went back home to Alabama to visit my grandma. After standing around in the kitchen for some time, dodging various questions about my love life, I finally confessed that I was dating someone in the UK.
“What is he?” my grandma asked.
“He’s British,” I said.
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“OK. What is he?” she asked again.
“He’s British,” I said again.
“But what is he?” she asked a third time.
“He’s British,” I replied a third time.
Finally my grandma asked outright: “Is he white?”
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“Yes,” I said.
She paused a bit, nodding her head in slow motion and replied, “OK,” her poker face giving nothing away.
Alex
At Christmas we headed into my wife’s grandparents’ house for a little gathering of family and close friends who were very excited to see Tineka and hear about her life in Europe. I had never been to their house before, and many of the people there were relatives I was meeting for the first time. We got to chatting and I was trying to concentrate and answer questions, but I could really only focus on one thing. Hanging on the main wall was a very large framed photo. It was the only decoration on the entire wall: a photograph of Barack and Michelle Obama.
I was gobsmacked. I wanted to talk about it and ask my in-laws about it, but I was also very aware that I was the only white person in the room. I grew up surrounded by photos of family members, not politicians. The 2008 presidential election happened before I met Tineka, and I remember watching the events unfold fairly casually with my mum and dad. In reality we didn’t have much skin in the game. But for my wife’s family, it was so momentous that they wanted a photo in their living room — something that was a daily reminder that things have changed.
Tineka
Fortunately, my family was much more interested in Alex being British than him being white. They fell for him hook, line and sinker. With my family, the colour of his skin never came up in conversation — although that wasn’t true elsewhere.
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Some of my friends didn’t hide the fact that they weren’t thrilled about me dating a white man. These friends were often men of colour, and it sometimes caused me to question my friendships with them. What really bothered me was the need for them to lecture me on dating men outside of my race. I would awkwardly dodge the questions or sheepishly shake my head and laugh them off. “How come I have never seen you date black men?” one of them asked during a conversation with a group of friends. “Because they never ask me out,” I replied. This was, of course, after my friends had discovered I had started dating the man who would become my husband. “How did this happen?” some of them asked. “Were you drunk?”
Alex
“Don’t act like you are all woke now, Alex. Just because you’re married to me doesn’t mean you’re entitled to get all upset when your black colleagues say something you think is racially wrong.”
When those words came rushing out of Tineka’s mouth one evening, they hurt. The words were a warning, but it felt like I was being scolded. It wasn’t what I had wanted to hear or expected to hear from the person I trust the most in the world. Was I not able to perceive racism and other social issues as well as I thought I could? Was I not woke? I was left speechless.
It somehow hit at everything I was going through internally. I know Tineka has been treated differently from her white colleagues. I had seen how much that had hurt her. I have heard her stories and sympathised, but this jolting experience made me begin to question myself and whether I had ever really taken her perspective seriously before.
Tineka
When Alex and I were married, I was not prepared for the disconnect between us when it came to race. I hadn’t expected that it would be hard for him to understand me. I didn’t want to give Alex a history lesson and lecture about black people living in a world where we are (however subtly) conditioned to think that white is better. We see it in magazines, movies and books. White women are portrayed as prettier, nicer, smarter and more passive. Black women are often portrayed as angry, strong, difficult and not intelligent. I am not always in the mood to educate or explain race to white people.
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Alex
When, hopefully, my wife and I form a family, I want them to feel loved. I want to provide for them in both the material and the emotional sense. But will I be ready? Our half-black, half-white children will navigate the world differently, and I worry about what happens when I need to provide answers to questions I have myself never had to ask. I am constantly searching for answers, for rules and for a method to build my awareness. Sometimes I make progress; other days it is back to square one, and that is tough.
Tineka
Being in an interracial relationship during the largest civil rights movement in history is almost advocacy in and of itself. It is hard for me to be strong all the time. There have been days I have gone home crying to Alex about the treatment I receive. Sometimes even Alex unintentionally makes assumptions about me that he might not think if my skin colour was different. I know that because I am in an interracial relationship, my husband and I will never truly understand each other; not because we were born different, but because of society. It has taken me some time, but I’ve come to realise that not fully understanding each other is OK.
Extracted from Mixed Up: Confessions of an Interracial Couple by Tineka Smith and Alex Court, which is published by Headline on April 22 at £9.99
© Tineka Smith and Alex Court 2021
