White Christmas in On loves.

According to the top trendsetters, racism in 2016 is subtle. Not flashy, not too in-your-face. These days, it’s timeless.

It’s Christmas morning in San Francisco, my first without my family, and boyfriend and I are snuggled up with two dogs we’re dog sitting. We’re about to open presents, so I FaceTime my mom to tell her. My parents have neither met nor spoken to my boyfriend before, but have been hearing me go on and on and on about him for over a year: how he’s so funny, and so sweet, and so smart, and so good to and for me.

She and my dad answer and we talk for a minute or two, say we’ll send pictures of the presents we open and Merry Christmas. My mom says bye and hangs up.

Or, rather, thinks she hangs up. The screen is black but we can still hear what they’re saying.

“Well, that was awkward,” my mom says, presumably to her friend who is there. “That was our first time seeing [my boyfriend.]”

“And he didn’t even speak Spanish!” my dad says.

“John!” my mom says. “We can NEVER say anything about him being a Mexican.”

I hang up.

I never thought my parents were racist, but then again, I never thought that I was either. To be honest, I thought that racism was a problem that died with segregation. I was of the ilk that bitched that BET was reverse racism. That people who were offended by racist jokes were uptight. If you weren’t wearing white bedsheets and calling people the n-word to their face, you weren’t racist. If it wasn’t overt, it wasn’t racism.

I’ve learned a lot in recent years and a lot more in this last year of dating someone who is 1/2 Norwegian and 1/2 Hispanic.

When he first explained the racism he’s encountered, my unspoken knee jerk response was, “But, babe, you look white.”

But, babe, you look normal.

My blonde cousin married a guy from Uganda. My mother says of them, “He’s BLACK, but he’s actually sooooo nice.” My childhood best friend, and daughter of my mother’s best friend, married a Hispanic guy. When my mother speaks of them, they are “Molly and The Mexican.”* Mom, I’ve said to her, you can’t say that. * Why not? she’s responded, that’s what he is. He’s a Mexican.

But, babe, once they get to know you, it’ll stop being “Alice and her Mexican Boyfriend,” and instead will be, “Alice and her boyfriend, who is Mexican, but actually a really great guy.”

But, babe, you just need to prove yourself to them and then they’ll see that you’re more than your race.

I’ve told my parents so much about him, so many stories about how wonderful he is, how he grew up in Missouri, how he’s smart as fuck and funny and cute and pretty much The Best. And the very first thing my dad says after their first interaction with him is a comment about his race?? I mean, really?

“Yeah…I never want to meet your dad,” my boyfriend says.

And good for him. Because, fuck that.

Last updated December 27, 2015