UNC NAACP members sophomore Kristen Marion and senior Katharine Bailey helped to organize an event called Love is Not Colorblind in SASB North. The event allowed students to share their beliefs and experiences about interracial dating in what they hoped would be a safe and supportive environment.
According to its Twitter, the UNC NAACP is a student organization dedicated to “promoting political activism, advancing social and economic justice, and fostering cultural pride and campus ownership among minority students at UNC-CH.”
Students at the forum drew applause when speaking up about their own experiences and perspectives about being in an interracial relationship.
“The idea of the event was to sort of perpetuate the idea that it’s important to love the color, not necessarily to ignore it,” Marion said.
She said her goal, and that of her fellow presenters, was to communicate to people that race is something that must be recognized in relationships and in our society as a whole.
“I’ve been in a lot of situations where I feel like people sort of tiptoe around the issue, and I feel like if they understood it efficiently, they would know not to tiptoe around it,” Marion said.
First-years Rebekah Appleton and Colleen Link, both in interracial relationships, said they had been treated differently because of whom they are dating. In their daily lives at UNC, they both regularly feel the need to defend their relationships, they said.
“There are people who believe that I’m only dating my boyfriend because I want to be a social justice person or whatever,” Link said.
