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A letter from the editor: my white boyfriend and the Black Lives Matter movement

A+letter+from+the+editor%3A+my+white+boyfriend+and+the+Black+Lives+Matter+movement

Trinity Velazquez

Editor in Chief

My boyfriend, Cody, is white. There is no way to ease into that, so I won’t try. He’s a six foot something white guy who loves anything related to basketball, eating hibachi and politics.  

I don’t know why it seems awkward for me to say, and as I write this I feel ashamed that I’m not dating someone my own race. But color is not a defining factor in any relationship I have been in, and it certainly won’t be for this one now that I’ve admitted it.  

On our first date at Chili’s, Cody and I talked about abortion. We didn’t mean to get that deep, but we did. Almost a year later, we still talk about difficult issues not because we want to but because we need to.  

We’ve been together for almost all of 2020, and that is huge.  

We are surviving through a world-wide pandemic (we didn’t see each other for six months), everything regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and now the scariest issue of them all: the upcoming presidential election. 

He leans toward the conservative side, and I lean more towards the liberal side. It’s a miracle that we can decide on a place to eat dinner, because we don’t agree too much on anything.  

When the death of George Floyd sparked a huge resurgence in protests and violence, we didn’t talk about it for weeks. I tried bringing it up, but I knew my emotions would take over the logical part of my brain and I wouldn’t have strong arguments.  

I have never wanted him to agree with me on race relations just because I’m black. I have never used the color of my skin to automatically win any debate we’ve had (although I have been tempted to).  

Cody didn’t want to talk about it either. He’s a lot better in debates than I am, but he was scared that this topic would start something that we couldn’t recover from.  

The topic of the Black Lives Matter movement and race relations in the country has been the hardest conversation we’ve had yet.  

I tried telling him that being young and black was terrifying, not just during the summer, but it always has been. I told him that I was tired of crying from seeing so many black people killed by police.  He told tell me that just because someone is a republican didn’t mean that they were racist nor agree with all the conservative policies.  

We talked about media bias and whether the protests were causing rioting and looting or if that was something unrelated to the protests.  

I told him I feared being black in this country, he told me he was sorry and that he hated that I felt that way.  

Our relationship is not perfect. No relationship is perfect.  

The whole point of this column is not to brag on my relationship that seems to be filled with political debates but to talk to your loved ones about things that may be difficult to discuss. 

 The common phrase “opposites attract” is true for us, but how opposite can two people be before their differences end up tearing them apart? 

 I don’t know the answer and I don’t want to. This year has been hard on so many people and we are lucky that we’ve survived and are still going strong.  

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