What’s Love Got to Do with It?

“For a dollar,” the White man said to me, “I’ll testify that he was assaulting you.”

My husband William was walking me into the public library where I frequently go to write. Newlyweds in our early 70s, we walked hand-in-hand as the automatic doors opened to let us in. We always walk hand-in-hand, because — why not? We love each other.

I met William in the fall of 1969. He elected under “Freedom of Choice” to transfer as a sophomore to the predominantly White high school in Wake Forest, North Carolina. In the fall, we were both juniors. We became friends. We never dated, although he did ask me to dance once in the school cafeteria.

He was one of six classmates, both White and Black, who came to my party twelve days before Christmas in December of 1969. An hour into the party, buckshot pierced the wall beside us, and we dropped to the floor. Lying there in darkness with our friends, William and I gripped each other’s hand. Waiting for the sheriff to show up.

In 2021 I returned to Wake Forest, because I had begun writing a book about what happened to my family and friends when we were targeted by White supremacist violence. For the first time in fifty years, William and I met face-to-face. We fell in love and were married nine months later.

As we entered the library, a White man was exiting. He looked pointedly at our hands. “Oh, no. Holding hands?” he said. “That’s a no-no.” Half-smiling as though his words were friendly and funny.

We simply looked at him. Then he turned to me.

“For a dollar, I’ll testify that he was assaulting you.”

I stood there stunned and silent. Trying to make sense out of what he was saying.

One of the oldest tropes in the racist handbook is the White woman being “violated” by a Black man. Or a White woman who comes on to Black men, but cries “Rape!” when something doesn’t go the way she planned. Enter the White man, eager to “protect the virtue of Southern White womanhood.” He springs into action, and the Black man finds himself in the crosshairs of a lynch mob. From D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” to Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” to Melvin van Peebles’ “Watermelon Man.” The relation between a White woman and a Black man, even marriage, is inescapably burdened by the unequal power relations set up by White supremacy.

And in the context of unequal power, there is no place for love. Even in the 21st century.

When neither of us said anything, the man switched lanes. “And for two dollars,” he said to William, “I’ll say that she was assaulting you.”

I looked over at my husband. William was silent, but I could see the churning behind his eyes. When I turned back to the White man, he was gone. Neither of us saw him leave, he just disappeared.

“He knew he had fucked up,” William said. “And the only reason I didn’t say something, was because I knew where it would lead, from verbal to physical. And I would be the one who ended up in prison. Because, once again, it would be the White man’s word against mine.”

The ground itself on which this nation was built is racism and genocide.

America was founded on racism and genocide. It is not just that racism is as difficult to get rid of as an invasive plant, like English ivy. The ground itself on which this nation was built is racism and genocide. The evil runs deep and at the same time close to the surface. All it takes is a single White supremacist demagogue to rip up the top soil, and lay bare the White supremacism that feeds and poisons the roots of every plant that grows.

Our marriage ain’t easy. Not only because of racism and White supremacy out there, but because racism and White supremacy are in me. Their insidious infiltration began the moment a doctor entered the word White on my birth certificate. My marriage to William is an in-depth crash course — yes, both crash and in-depth — in the ways Whiteness has formed and shaped me. And warped me.

The process can be downright brutal. First, I must clearly see my present orientation for what it is, rooted in Whiteness. Then comes the queazy season of disorientation, when everything I thought was solid and true and trustworthy turns out to be poisoned.

It occurs to me that the time of disorientation is when most White people retreat, isn’t it. We want to dissolve into tears, dig our roots deeper into “certainties” that we’ve come to know are false and poisonous. And will one day kill us.

But when I surrender to the disorientation of an honest look at all that has grounded me till now, I find at last a reorientation that moves me at least one step away from the White supremacist thinking and perceiving I absorbed through my roots. Before I had a voice or a choice.

I want this marriage to survive. I love this man. And he loves me. So, I choose to keep going round and round through the waltz steps of this process. Orientation, disorientation, reorientation. Again and again. And again. Because Love cannot grow in poisoned ground.

I can’t draw all the poison out of the ground of this country, but I can work on this plot. This patch of ground is where I stand beside the man I love, the man who loves me. White supremacy be damned.