Love hit different when there's a global pandemic and full-blown international civil rights movement happening at the same damn time, and for couples in interracial relationships, the struggle to find peace can be especially real, but according to Tika Sumpter, it's imperative that women know that being their partners' protector is not their responsibility.
If you have ever suffered from the side effects of systemic racism, you know that white tears are real and the fact that they are coming from someone you love doesn't make them any less problematic. In a recent Tweet, Tika shared this sentiment and had a word for couples who are afraid to have hard conversations:
"Dear Black interracial couples with a significant other who is white (raises hand), we DO NOT need to protect them."
Tika suggested that if your partner has a problem talking about race, that clearly isn't your only problem:
Dear Black interracial couples with a significant other who is white (raises hand), we DO NOT need to protect them.… https://t.co/sbEwy6DBuI— Tika Sumpter (@Tika Sumpter) 1591375929
"I promise, they will be A. OK. They need to continue to fight for us. If they get offended when you talk about racists. You have a bigger problem on your hands."
Tika is only one of the many celebrities who has been vocal about navigating interracial relationships in the midst of civil unrest.
Scroll below to see how more celebrities in interracial relationships are tackling conversations around race, privilege, and social injustice with their partners below:
Eve & Maximillion Cooper
"I am in an interracial relationship. I am having some of the most difficult and uncomfortable conversations I think I've ever had, and vice versa with my husband. But, at the same time, it's a beautiful thing, because ... I don't know his life through his eyes. He doesn't know my life through my eyes. All he can do is try to understand and try to ask the questions, and he wants to understand, and that's what the nation -- that's what the world -- has to do. It's gonna be uncomfortable. Yeah, it's going to be uncomfortable! But we have to be OK with being uncomfortable so that we can get to a solution."
Serena Williams & Alexis Ohanian
Earlier this month, Reddit co-founder and executive chairman Alexis Ohanian announced his resignation and requested that a Black candidate serve as his replacement, a major decision that Alexis says he made for this woke AF reason:
"I didn't arrive at this easily. It was absolutely a hard decision. But thinking back, especially on the position our country's been in, and then especially in the last few weeks, I realized I needed to look at myself, look in the mirror and see what I could do to help contribute some real positive change, so that I could look my daughter in the eye when she's a little bit older and she asks me what I did to help make this country and this world a little bit better for her and for a whole lot of people who look like her."
Cameron & Lauren Speed-Hamilton
"We need to start asking ourselves, well, 'What can we proactively do to make that change happen?' I think one of the first things that we can do is accept that we have white privilege. I think it's something that people white people get defensive about. You know no one wants to feel like that didn't earn something but admitting that you have white privilege doesn't mean that you don't have challenges in your life it just means that your skin color is not a factor in determining what those challenges are so that's one thing."
Featured image by Instagram/@tikasumpter.