What an Interracial Marriage Looks Like in a World of Racial Tensions

At first, Adaeze and Chad Brinkman wanted to write a book that let the reader be a fly on the wall as the two discussed their interracial relationship. But as they began to dig deep and into often-painful memories, they realized their project felt something more like gathering people around a fire for an intimate conversation. 

A discussion between the two, White Boy/Black Girl: What Our Differences Can Teach Us, One Honest Conversation at a Time is equal parts heartbreaking and joyful. Adaeze and Chad talk candidly about racism and choosing each other over and over again, creating a book that somehow serves as a memoir, a Christian perspective on race, and a love story all at once. 

The Brinkmans spoke with Common Good about finding comfort in discomfort, caring for someone even when you don’t understand their experience, and the beauty of God’s vision for a diverse kingdom. 

You invite readers to join you in discussions of race that journey into the messy middle —  “the middle of the discomfort. The middle of the tension. The middle of asking, How do I … ?” Why is that important? 

Adaeze: There’s such a beauty that happens in the messy middle that we would never taste if we’re so afraid of being uncomfortable. Humans don’t like to be uncomfortable. We don’t like being wrong; we don’t like having a mirror up to our insecurities. We don’t like to feel the reality of our imperfection. That’s exactly what the messy middle calls us to do.

If I never go to that messy middle, it’s probably because I’m insecure. It’s because I don’t trust that the Lord can meet me on the waves. Like Peter walking out on the water, right? He went to the messy middle with the Lord. And he had a small faith, but he at least had faith to go, right? 

We cannot love our neighbor without being messy. We’re human and we’re not gods. The messy middle will put you face to face with your insecurities, and that’s okay because we are not our mistakes. 

Chad: How do I follow up that sermon? That was beautiful! 

I’ll just put my two cents in: If we don’t enter into the middle, then we never have to confront ourselves. And I’ll shout out Judah and the Lion. I’ve been jamming out to their new album, The Process. The song “Long Dark Night” has a part that goes: “Oh, it’s the long dark night of the soul / Where you find the light / Oh, it’s six-feet deep where you got to go / To come alive to this beautiful life.”

I think the question of the messy middle alludes to that. We have to die to our own pride in order to see someone else really well. We have to die to our own vision of ourselves. Until we do that, we’re going to superimpose what we think is right onto others.

Adaeze, you wrote, “I think I speak for a lot of people of color when I say that we don’t want our white friends to feel like we’re waiting for them to attend to us. We just want them to be aware that the realities we live in are often vastly different.” How would you distinguish between those two things — attention and awareness? 

A: Attending to something is centered in a guilty obligation. Awareness that our realities are vastly different is centered in compassion — even without understanding. You don’t have to understand exactly what I went through to respect that I went through something, or that I’ve experienced things you haven’t, or at least not in the same way you have. 

I’m not saying there’s no one out there in the world that is sharing their experience with you because they want you to feel guilty. I’m not saying that doesn’t exist. But I speak for myself and a lot of my friends of color when I say that what we’re saying is simple: Just sit with me. Don’t try to fix it. Don’t try to tell me your last Google search to prove that you’re not like those people. 

Just sit with me. 

C: Back to something you said right at the beginning, which is that someone doesn’t have to understand in order to listen or have compassion. Sometimes, as white people, when we try to attend to a Black person, we claim understanding when really we have no frame of reference for that understanding. So, we try to fix something that we don’t understand — which ends up dehumanizing the other person — versus just saying, “I hear you.”

Let’s take it out of race and put it into a marriage context. Say I’m a Mr. Fix-It dude and I’ve had to learn that I can’t always fix something. If I go to fix something for Adaeze, I am, on some level, declaring that I am better than her at it. Even if I’m just saying I’m better at it than her at that moment, I’m setting myself above her … . I’m giving the impression that she is less than me.  

The differences in your perspectives made me think a lot about how I, as a white person, can be tempted to engage the topic of racism as, well, a topic — something I engage as an intellectual exercise, rather connecting it to my head and heart and recognizing that it’s an embodied, lived experience. What might it look like to pursue relationships that are committed to seeking understanding, without putting the burden of education and explanation on Black and brown people?

C: I love this question because I am so guilty of this. I’m very logical and linear; I want to understand. It’s very easy for me to flip into an intellectual sphere and start looking at everything I see there instead of what’s going on in reality. 

So, maybe I just answered the question — it’s learning to remain in the moment rather than starting to let your brain think about other things. It’s not figuring out how to answer the question that’s being asked while the person’s asking it; it’s listening to the question. On a superficial level, I think that’s the answer. Staying me-centered is how we end up in that intellectual outer space, with a 30,000-foot view where we’re trying to see the whole picture and piece the puzzle together. That’s a place where we’re still focused on our own pride, perspective, and intellect. Even if it comes from a beautiful intent of seeing the world well, it can still isolate us. 

A: We’re so married. I so agree.

We have to let someone be someone. From that, the Lord will give us the wisdom we need for, like Chad was saying, the answers we’re looking for. But we can’t get there by going around what Jesus says to do, which is love each other. We can’t skip the elementary things. We’re meant to do what Jesus did and sit with people who are not at the top of the chain.

How can Christians pursue intentional growth in interracial relationships without making perfection (e.g. becoming the perfect white person) the goal? 

A: The perfection pursuit is so dangerous. It really easily whoops the try out of us. 

I think somewhere deep down we all know we can’t be perfect, but we still try to pursue it — that’s human nature. And aiming for perfection and continually failing brings about such a defeating mindset. Who wouldn’t eventually give up and say it’s not worth it?

Usually, when we pursue perfection, we connect our identity to perfection. We wouldn’t pursue it if we didn’t think perfect is who we should be. It’s good to want to be better, but when perfection is the goal, we tie our actions to our identity immediately. It becomes a polarizing mindset because we can’t let ourselves be in the messy middle. This is, I think, part of where labels come from. I don’t want to be labeled an angry Black woman, so perfection is the only other option. If a white person doesn’t want to be seen as a stereotypical, privileged white person, they might overcompensate because they have to not be something, and perfectly — instead of just living.

Instead, knowing that we are going to fail and we’re not perfect, is actually a free thing to say. It means I can hurt you and you can accept that I did not mean it. We can have a conversation in which I know you’re not painting me as someone who meant to hurt you, and you know that I’m not painting you as someone who is just always angry.

The Lord calls us as believers to accept that we are human. Instead of perfection, the goal just becomes: I want to be more like Jesus. It doesn’t have to be shiny and polished. 

C: Perfectionism breeds inauthenticity. If I am trying to be perfectionistic within myself, then I don’t give myself the grace not to show up in a moment well, which means that I have to put on a mask. Or, if somebody is placing perfection on me, they are no longer letting me show up as myself. 

The goal is to be an image bearer of Jesus. The only reason that we are saved is because of the grace in our imperfection. So why do we aim for perfection in our relationships?

Many of Common Good’s readers are pastors or ministry leaders. What would you like to tell them?

A: Be leaders who model comfort with discomfort. Be a leader who models messing up and owning it. Leaders so often feel like they can’t mess up. Why? The church sometimes is awful about expecting perfectionism. It’s almost this culture of consumerism, where people want to be entertained and pleased because they believe church should be about their individual faith and purpose. All of us need more compassion in our imperfection, which starts with leaders modeling it and showing our churches how to actually walk in that way. 

How are we ever going to learn and grow if we are not comfortable being uncomfortable? How is God supposed to discipline his children if they never want discipline? 

So that’s something I would say to pastors and ministry leaders: You go first. It’s scary. If you can’t handle it, then, in love, don’t put yourself in that position. We have too many leaders who can’t be imperfect but still want the spotlight. When we are slaves to the spotlight, we think we can’t ever be imperfect. And it’s just not true.