Danielle T. Pointdujour writes at Ebony that she hopes her family can open their minds and share in her love, but if they can't, that's OK.
… Since I wasn't allowed to date until I was 16, I had a secret boyfriend in the months leading up to that milestone birthday. Mike was the best beau a teen girl could have — tall, handsome, funny and happy to carry my books and hold my hand. He reminded me a lot of my father, the way he played with me and did 'man' things like pulling out my chair and holding all the doors. He was great, so naturally I thought nothing of bringing him home for my parents to meet right after I turned 16. I thought nothing of the fact that he's White.
I'll never forget the look on my parents' faces when Mike walked through the door: confusion mixed with horror. When he left — after an hour of awkward silence interrupted by short bursts of conversation — the drama began. My parents forbade me from seeing my honey again and told me that boys "like him" are only interested in me for sex and that I should "stick to my own kind." They tried to scare me with stories of violent racism and visions of children addicted to drugs because of their struggle with identity.
For the rest of our high school years we dated in secret and by the time college came, the boy that held my hand became the man who held my heart. Still, I had to have Black male friends pretend to take me on dates to throw my parents …
Read Danielle T. Pointdujour's entire piece at Ebony.
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