One of the most cherished items in my wardrobe is a shirt scribbled with messages from my hen’s night. The advice from the women in my life span from the suggestive to the downright adorable, and I love them all – but to me, one stands out in particular: "You’ll make hot babies."
This isn’t an uncommon thing for me and my husband to hear. Now, don’t get me wrong – who doesn’t like to be told that you and your spouse make an attractive couple? And yet. For all of the garden variety of my in-laws, my siblings don’t seem to get the same comments we do.
Don’t worry. I know why, and I won’t keep you in suspense. None of my siblings' spouses are white.
Being in an interracial relationship has its own share of challenges. I admit to wondering if white supremacy in Australia played a strong role in encouraging my attraction to my husband – a half-white, half-Lebanese man with brown hair and green eyes.
Whiteness was not something I dealt with on a regular basis – but I knew it was something good. It was summer, skin and short skirts. It was something totally divorced from me.
I am a visibly Muslim Asian woman who grew up in a sex-segregated Islamic school smack-bang in the middle of south-western Sydney. The only white people I interacted with on a personal level were my PDHPE teachers.
Whiteness was not something I dealt with on a regular basis – but I knew it was something good. It was summer, skin and short skirts. It was something totally divorced from me.
And so I was enthralled when I met my husband. He just looked so damn white.
I struggled to accept this – the thought that something as evil as racism could intrude on a love I hold so dear to my heart. It was terrifying. It filled me with shame and a deep fear that my marriage was now defunct: that the future of my marriage was doomed if it did not begin with the pure, unblemished foundation I was taught was possible.
Perhaps one of my biggest blocks to accepting this is the idea that racism is evil at all – that only bad people struggle with them, and only bad people can be prejudiced and judgmental and ignorant. But I know that this cannot be true. Because I most certainly struggle with it, and it is a struggle that has shaped how I view myself and my husband.
I envied how my husband was invisible in his whiteness.
For women of colour, internalising the message that we are inherently inferior and uglier can happen explicitly and it can happen insidiously and it can happen just by repeated exclusion. It can happen when you read a book where all the characters are white, unless explicitly told otherwise. It can happen when your husband calls you cute when you are upset, and you hope it isn’t because you are Asian.
It can happen when an acquaintance bemoans the lack of Muslims at her university, saying to you, ‘There were just so many Asians!’ – as if Asian-ness and Muslim-ness cannot coexist. It can happen when the cashier asks you what your name is, and for a split second, you consider giving a fake one. And it can happen when your cousin flies down from Singapore to see white people working behind retail counters and whispers to you, shocked: ‘Ang-mohs work here?’
This is how white supremacy works. It exists and flourishes in a world that teaches us that white people are smarter, more desirable, and more successful. And so too did it teach that in my relationship, where I envied how my husband was invisible in his whiteness. Where I felt like being by his side was the entry point into a culture I had always felt inferior to. Where I felt like I had a white man to finally tell me my worth, to tell me I was desirable. But it was also in my relationship that I realised how much I had been lied to, and just how destructive white supremacy is – for the both of us.
I envied how my husband was invisible in his whiteness. Where I felt like being by his side was the entry point into a culture I had always felt inferior to.
Race politics and the intersection of relationships is so much more nuanced than people like to admit. I have come across intelligent and articulate people whose opinions range from rejecting interracial relationships altogether, to outright denying that romantic preferences are influenced by race at all. I take the middle ground. I have no doubt that were my husband not the kind, generous and God-conscious man he is, I would have not wanted to stay married to him. But I cannot deny the beliefs a society built on imperialism has inculcated me with, and I cannot deny that I am always, always a work in progress.
I believe strongly in the power of honesty in relationships. Love grows beautifully and tenderly in honesty’s wake, and love turns strong and solid in the justice it brings. Acknowledging that attraction and love and marriage are, to an extent, affected by imperialism and white supremacy does not deny your relationship legitimacy – rather, it provides a foundation of vulnerability that can only make your relationship stronger. We cannot live in a world that devalues people of colour at every turn and condemn them for longing for the immediate security and validation that comes with whiteness. Similarly, we cannot shame people who aspire to be associated, romantically or not, with this same security and validation. Differences and division will always exist between you and your spouse – but to make them ones of respect and acceptance rather than fear or shame is something worth fighting for.
We cannot live in a world that devalues people of colour at every turn and condemn them for longing for the immediate security and validation that comes with whiteness.
A moment I look back on fondly was in a politics class my husband and I shared. This was the first time he had worn a kufi* to university for an entire semester, and at the end of the class my tutor asked him if he was an international student. My husband paused, then smiled – a funny, sardonic lilt of his lips. "Wow," he said. "That’s the first time anyone has ever asked me that."
We looked at each other and understanding swelled between us. I loved him intensely in that space – because for all of our lived experiences, here was a moment we shared. A moment where he knew that his experience was not universal, and a moment where I knew that mine didn’t have to be so alone.
Aisyah Shah Idil is a Sydney-based writer. She is the author of the experimental poetry book The Naming (Subbed In, 2017).
