Love isn’t all you need in interracial relationships

The film Get Out has provoked discussion of issues about race and relationships that often remain too sensitive or uncomfortable to explore

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 US Supreme Court decision in the Loving vs Virginia case which declared any state law banning interracial marriages as unconstitutional. Jeff Nichols’ recent film, Loving, tells the story of the interracial couple at the heart of the case, which set a precedent for the “freedom to marry”, paving the way also for the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

Loving isn’t the only recent film featuring an interracial relationship. A United Kingdom is based on the true story of an African prince who arrived in London in 1947 to train as a lawyer, then met and fell in love with a white, British woman. The film tells the tale of love overcoming adversity, but I wonder whether these films are missing something.

I can understand how, at the moment, with the backdrop of rising intolerance in Europe and the United States, it’s tempting to curl up in front of a triumphant story of love conquering all, but I grew up in an interracial household and I know that it’s not as simple as that.

My mother is British and my father is Algerian. On my mother’s side of the family, I recognised at a pretty young age that some of my relatives were pretty intolerant of Islam and foreigners and that our existence in the family served to justify some of their opinions. “I’m not racist,” they could say, “my cousin is an Arab.”

The truth is dating, marrying or even having a child with someone of a different race doesn’t mean that you automatically understand their experience or even that you’re less likely to have prejudices. In fact, when these kinds of relationships are based on fetishisation of the “other”, we find ourselves in a particularly complicated place. While the taboo of interracial relationships has slowly been eroded — at least in the UK — it feels as though the issues that are unique to them remain too sensitive to really explore.

Navigating the differences that come from mixed relationships can be uncomfortable, but it’s necessary if we’re going to progress in challenging racism. That’s why I appreciated Jordan Peele’s recent film Get Out so much. It’s about a young African American who goes to meet his Caucasian girlfriend’s “liberal” parents. I’ve seen those parents before. In the film, the father says he “would have voted for Obama a third time”. In the UK, he would have been a remainer who voted for Sadiq Khan to become mayor of London. In France, he would be voting for Emmanuel Macron and apologising for colonisation. These people are not racist. They “get it”.

But Peele successfully challenges the way the parents and their friends pride themselves on not being racist, while also objectifying the young man both physically and sexually. Examples of this are often discussed between minorities, or on Black Twitter, but rarely in the mainstream, which is perhaps why the film has been frequently referred to in reviews as “uncomfortable to watch”.

New York magazine focused on the experience of interracial couples watching the film together. “I just kept thinking about what other people [in the cinema] were thinking about me and him and our relationship, and I felt uncomfortable,” said Morgan, a 19-year-old white woman in a relationship with a black man. “Not bad uncomfortable — more the type of uncomfortable that pushes you to recognise your privilege and to try and reconcile the past.”

Provoking discussion on both sides of the Atlantic

It’s fair to say that the film has successfully provoked a lot of discussion about race, relationships and identity on both sides of the Atlantic. One such debate came after Samuel L. Jackson said British-born Daniel Kaluuya was perhaps not right to play the role of Christ because he had grown up in a country “where they’ve been interracial dating for 100 years”, implying that in the UK racial integration has been solved and there is nothing left to deal with. That’s clearly not the case.

While interracial relationships are more common in the UK, where 9 per cent of relationships are mixed compared with 6.3 per cent in the US, racism is still an issue, from the disproportionate number of stop and searches conducted against black men to the underrepresentation of minorities in the media, politics and other positions of power. These inequalities do not simply go away when people start dating people from other races.

It’s not that I think an interracial relationship is a bad thing. Whoever I date, I’m inevitably going to be in one myself — it’s unlikely that I’m going to date another Algerian Brit as we’re pretty rare. Dating outside your racial identity presents you with an opportunity to engage with and learn about difference. That’s great.

But these kinds of relationships shouldn’t be idolised. Racism isn’t only about personal relationships, it’s about systems of power and oppression. Love, unfortunately, isn’t all you need.

Iman Amrani is an Algerian British video journalist living in London. She has a special interest in minority issues, culture and immigration.