WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_01]: Access Moody.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents didn't know I was dating John for a couple of years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before you judge me, let's remember this was 1997.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Pre-Instagram, pre-find my friends, pre-wire UNDC when you said you were an Amherst.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was in grad school in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John was in Washington, D.C.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had a car, I had independence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had what I thought was a flawless alibi.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'd go see him on weekends whenever possible.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'd call my parents pretending to be in Massachusetts and they were none the wiser.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then my sister delivered the line that changed my life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: color ID, a new technology that showed the phone number and location of the person calling.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Have a wish you knew in advance who was calling?
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[SPEAKER_01]: He read Arkansas, daughter's boyfriend calling again.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Ever wish you had caller ID?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Call is friendly.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Call is friendly.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Call a ID shows the number the call is coming from.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You can pick up, call back, whatever.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, I couldn't be studying late in Amherst while I was clearly in Washington, DC with a guy named John.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The landline had betrayed me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I did what every due to full Indian daughter eventually must do.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I told them I was dating a white Christian man.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And thus began months of trying to get my parents to come around.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was grueling.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was emotional, cross-foot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: between telling them about John and announcing our engagement, it was to put it mildly hell in the house.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mom upset.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Dad upset because Mom was upset.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My sister repeating like a broken record, I hope this guy's worth it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you something.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing sharpens your clarity like a sibling who keeps asking if this guy's worth it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If this guy's worth blowing up the family's peace.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mostly kept the arguments with my parents to myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John knew they were happening, but I didn't want to keep reminding him that my family didn't approve, because then he'd be upset that I was upset.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And now we've got this whole emotional domino situation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and it makes sense, looking back.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They had moved to half a world away from everything familiar and spent years decades even, pouring themselves into making sure my sister and I knew who we were, our language, our family traditions, our holidays, our religion.
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[SPEAKER_00]: family was everything to my parents, and part of their worry was whether John would understand that, whether he would value it the way we did, and whether in marrying him, they would lose me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, his parents completely fine with us, and they knew my parents weren't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They could have gotten defensive, thinking, you know, what's wrong with our son, but they
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[SPEAKER_00]: John's mother passed away in 1997 while we were still dating.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And my future father-in-law, while he was just incredible, steady, kind, no drama.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the middle of all that tension, that kind of quiet support mattered more than I can ever explain.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents eventually realized I wasn't going to change my mind.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Not after two years of sneaking around, not after grad school, not after caller ID.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Once they understood that this was not a phase, not rebellion, not confusion, but conviction, they agreed.
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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Kathy Joshee.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a scholar of race, religion, and education.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A tenure professor who has spent two decades teaching about and studying how identity actually gets formed, not just in textbooks, but in kitchens, classrooms, and car rides home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've written six books, including White Christian Privilege, the illusion of religious equality in America, teaching for diversity in social justice, and Asian Americans in Dixie.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've spoken to audiences from University Lecture Halls to the White House.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But this podcast isn't just research, it's personal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's where the scholarship and lived experience meet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This is mixed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In March of 1997, my parents agreed to meet John.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, technically, they had met him before.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Couple of polite encounters, but this was the meeting, the diplomatic negotiation, the parental review board.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents were coming to D.C. because my dad had a medical conference, and that Sunday was the big day, and then something incredible happened.
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[SPEAKER_00]: On Saturday's male delivery, John received his acceptance letter to Harvard Law School.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He looked at the letter, looked at me, and said, I'm just going to pin this to my chest tomorrow.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now your parents have to say yes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because in his mind, Harvard Law wasn't just an acceptance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was credibility my parents couldn't argue with.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to his credit, he didn't actually show up with the letter safety pin to his shirt like some Ivy League Merid badge, but the timing did not hurt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After months of arguments debates and tense moments, brunch with John was uneventful.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As we ate our fruit and waffles, my parents made conversation, we all got along.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a quiet turning point on the road to them accepting the man who I had chosen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By the time John proposed a few months later, my parents were fully on board.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John had learned something about my parents over these years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They were religious.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So when he asked my parents for permission to marry me, he didn't stop there.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a tradition of reaching out to the bride's father or parents to ask their permission.
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[SPEAKER_03]: but I had to do something a little bit different, which is not just to ask their permission, but also to ask when should I propose, because it's very important in Hinduism for things to be done and important decisions to be made on auspicious days.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So I had to do two things at once.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I had to call Kyathi's parents and ask for their permission and also say when should I propose to her to make it something that is as auspicious as possible?
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[SPEAKER_03]: So the auspicious day rolled around, and Kiyathi was visiting my home in Pennsylvania.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And that morning I remember just kind of killing time because Kiyathi's mom had told me
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[SPEAKER_03]: Not just that this was an auspicious day, but that 1030 AM was the most auspicious time of the day.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So we kind of had a slow morning and I kept looking at my watch.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then when 1030 rolled around I said, hey, let's take a walk out back.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And in the backyard of my childhood home is the pond that my father and I dug for my mother who had just recently passed at that time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: family heirloom engagement ring from my mother's side of the family and I got down on one knee and pop the question, but not until the auspicious time on the auspicious day.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then we hit decision number two, finding a venue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there we were engaged, triumphant.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We had survived the parents, the theology, the emotional Olympics.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was time to start planning the wedding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I knew we would have to navigate how to have an interfaith ceremony.
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[SPEAKER_00]: To meet everyone's needs and expectations, make both families comfortable and excited about the whole thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There were hard decisions to make, relationships to smooth out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there we were, months of back and forth designing, redesigning, negotiating scripture like the diplomats at the United Nations of Matrimoni.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Surely, booking a hotel would be the easy part.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents had always imagined one of Atlanta's elite downtown hotels for my wedding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Crystal Shandeliers, Grand Ballroom, the kind of place to accommodate 500 guests with fanfare.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We assumed we'd have options.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We began our tour.
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[SPEAKER_00]: hotel number one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents John and I sit down with the events manager.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is polite.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is about smiles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They provide brochures.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The good paper.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then we mentioned we'd like to serve Indian food.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She paused.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We did that once she says, but the dry cleaning bill for the table linens was so high afterwards that we decided not to have any more Indian weddings.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So much for Southern hospitality.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let that sink in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She actually said the quiet part out loud.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We just sat there, stunned, disbelief, mixed with that all to familiar feeling from my adolescence in Metro Atlanta that maybe I didn't quite belong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John?
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was furious and hurt because how do you reject something so beautiful over table linens?
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[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask, how can we manage the menu?
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[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask about logistics.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just, your spices make too much of a mess and result in an expensive dry cleaning bill.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Strike one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number two, Buckhead, an upscale place in the Ritzi section of Atlanta called Buckhead.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Boogie, fancy, a place of cool effluence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents are asking thoughtful questions about capacity, about parking, about room blocks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The coordinator nods and turns to John to answer, who had a confused look on his face as he didn't ask the question.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My parents ask another question.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He turns to John again, and John answers by gesturing in a way that brings my parents into the conversation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the wedding coordinator continued to disrespect my parents.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now, John is patient, but not infinitely patient.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, he said, they asked the question, you need to answer them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My father was a well-established physician, someone who had fully lived the so-called American dream.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was hosting his daughter's wedding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was asking the questions, John, at that point, was just starting out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And yet in that room, the default was to turn to John.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The room went quiet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege, live, and in person.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My brown parents were inquiring.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The white groom deemed the decision-maker, even though it was obvious who was footing the bill.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Strike two.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What you just heard that moment in the hotel, that's an example of white privilege.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that phrase can make people uncomfortable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It can feel accusatory.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It can sound like you're calling someone a bad person.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what it means.
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[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege isn't about individual intent.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about whether John is a good person.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or whether that coordinator was trying to be disrespectful, he probably wasn't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege is about patterns.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's about who gets assumed to be in charge, who gets deferred to, who gets seen as the decision maker without having to say a word.
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[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege is a product of systemic racism.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Systems and norms that have over time centered whiteness as the default.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So in that moment, even though my parents were asking the questions, even though they were clearly hosting the wedding, the instinct was to turn to the white man in the room.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's how it shows up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Quietly, automatically, without announcement,
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[SPEAKER_00]: and whether it makes us uncomfortable or not, it is there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number three.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Before we even finish explaining our plans, event planning staff with binders in their hands, taught smiles on their faces, tell us, quote, we don't allow outside catering, but don't worry, we can cook the Indian food, and quote, my mother's face horror, humiliation, rage.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There are moments when a woman channels generations, somehow manifesting the horror, shock, and revulsion of the proud women who've come before her.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As we left the staff, and had barely gotten out of the room, my mom said, no.
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[SPEAKER_00]: over my dead body.
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[SPEAKER_00]: There would be no hotel banquet chef experimenting with tumeric and garam masala, like it was a science fair project.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Strike 3.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number 4.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another upscale hotel, and here, the staff would return my parents' phone calls.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But guess what?
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[SPEAKER_00]: They returned mine immediately.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My mom and dad have beautiful distinctive Indian accents, and I sound like a southern girl who
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[SPEAKER_00]: My father looked at me and said quietly, they don't want my brown money.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That sentence has always stayed with me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because here's the thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We weren't asking for charity, not a discount.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were planning a 500 guest wedding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: 500.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Most venues would salivate over that number, but the deeper issue hadn't even surfaced yet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because beyond the food, beyond the ballroom, we had one non-negotiable.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The wedding ceremony and one particular ritual.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In a hint of wedding, there is a small contained sacred fire,
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a bonfire, it's not a backyard barbecue.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a small copper vessel with a controlled flame fueled by grains and ghee, which is clarified butter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Near it, there would be some incense, wafting throughout the room, creating a pleasant aroma.
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[SPEAKER_00]: At the hotels where we got far enough to explain this, the reaction was immediate, we can't do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask how big is it?
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[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask how long would the flame burn?
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[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't say, well, let's talk to the fire marshal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was just no.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They said the fire would set off the entire sprinkler system that the fire marshal would never allow it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't surprised they didn't know what a heaven was.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was one of the first in my community getting married like this in Atlanta.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What stayed with me was something else.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No one tried to understand.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No curiosity, no problem solving, no creativity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I kept thinking, how many of these hotels that hosted weddings with unity candles?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Candles are normal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Candles are safe.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Candles are Christian.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But a fire that isn't part of a Christian ritual suddenly is a five alarm emergency.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Society's rules were written with Christianity as the norm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The religion that never has to explain itself, in the south, the question isn't, what is your religion?
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's where do you go to church?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The Christian rituals that don't need accommodation because our social architecture already assumes them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If Christian wedding traditions require to heaven, I promise you, there isn't a hotel in the United States that wouldn't find a way to make it happen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But when it's unfamiliar, when it's brown,
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[SPEAKER_00]: When it smells like ghee instead of beeswax, the answer is no.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After weeks of this weeks, it became clear.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were not getting married at one of Atlanta's elite downtown hotels.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The dream my parents had held for years was dissolving.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That hurt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: because this wasn't just about a ballroom.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was about belonging.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And once belonging is in question, everything else follows.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the second bedrock truth I've learned, not only from my own experience, but from countless studies and interviews over the last 25 years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When you marry across race or religion, you inevitably ask yourself, what parts of me stay, what parts adapt, what parts get negotiated away without me even noticing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For someone raised in a tight knit immigrant religious community, say a Hindu family, shaped by the post-1965 migration wave, after the immigration and nationality act of 1965, marriage is never just personal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's communal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It carries centuries of continuity.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So choosing outside the fold can trigger guilt, the feeling that you're bending the arc of lineage.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John had parallel questions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: As a white American Christian, he carried inherited assumptions about normalcy, holidays that were the default, rituals that feel universal, but aren't.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He did not see how power works quietly in cultural spaces.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John All was assumed he would marry a Christian.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That was the plan, the life script, Christian wife, Christian kids, Christian holidays with predictable casseroles.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then he fell in love with an Indian-American Hindu woman, which means the scripts needed an overhaul.
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[SPEAKER_00]: John grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the town that smells like chocolate year round.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't even get their first Chinese restaurant until the 1980s.
20:02.244 --> 20:09.368
[SPEAKER_00]: Small town Americana at its finest, almost everyone worked at the chocolate factory and the downtown intersection.
20:10.160 --> 20:12.221
[SPEAKER_00]: Coco Avenue meets Chocolate Avenue.
20:12.961 --> 20:13.562
[SPEAKER_00]: Diversity?
20:13.902 --> 20:21.265
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you count the Italians who arrived in the early 20th century to work the factory and now ran the pizza reas, then sure.
20:21.845 --> 20:24.046
[SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that, not very much.
20:24.927 --> 20:25.887
[SPEAKER_00]: Religious diversity?
20:26.528 --> 20:27.408
[SPEAKER_00]: Also hard to find.
20:28.088 --> 20:33.451
[SPEAKER_00]: He was raised in the Episcopal Church, though sometimes he would find him hanging out with the Evangelical Youth Group.
20:34.365 --> 20:38.989
[SPEAKER_00]: In short, John didn't grow up with much racial or religious diversity.
20:39.829 --> 20:50.398
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet years later, he would navigate a whole world of cultures, beliefs, and traditions, usually with more grace than people who grew up surrounded by it.
20:51.158 --> 20:53.220
[SPEAKER_00]: John was adjusting to a lot.
20:54.181 --> 20:56.783
[SPEAKER_00]: From religion to what family even means.
20:57.523 --> 20:59.465
[SPEAKER_00]: And somehow, he made it look easy.
21:00.515 --> 21:03.557
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because he just accepted everything, he didn't.
21:04.298 --> 21:07.039
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked questions, he thought deeply.
21:07.560 --> 21:13.424
[SPEAKER_00]: He figured out what he actually believed, and then he moved forward with intention.
21:14.324 --> 21:15.965
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, he still does.
21:17.266 --> 21:19.588
[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number five, the turn.
21:21.032 --> 21:27.175
[SPEAKER_00]: We found a suburban hotel owned by Selim Jeta, a Muslim man of Indian ancestry.
21:28.055 --> 21:29.536
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have to explain the heaven.
21:30.076 --> 21:30.836
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't flinch.
21:31.556 --> 21:33.437
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say, we can't do that.
21:34.077 --> 21:36.178
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, we'll work with the fire marshal.
21:36.538 --> 21:37.659
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything will be fine.
21:38.339 --> 21:39.560
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like that.
21:40.520 --> 21:45.545
[SPEAKER_00]: He took us by the hand literally and figuratively and coordinated with the fire department.
21:46.045 --> 21:49.068
[SPEAKER_00]: He shut off the ballroom sprinklers for about an hour.
21:49.448 --> 21:50.289
[SPEAKER_00]: He made the calls.
21:50.670 --> 21:51.731
[SPEAKER_00]: He did the paper work.
21:52.391 --> 21:53.732
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't see a liability.
21:54.113 --> 21:55.034
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw a couple.
21:55.394 --> 21:56.515
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw families.
21:57.296 --> 21:58.517
[SPEAKER_00]: Immigration stories.
21:59.117 --> 21:59.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Traditions.
22:00.559 --> 22:01.079
[SPEAKER_00]: And love.
22:01.920 --> 22:02.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Above all else.
22:03.642 --> 22:03.962
[SPEAKER_00]: Love.
22:05.585 --> 22:07.166
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't see an inconvenience.
22:07.927 --> 22:09.608
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw an opportunity to serve.
22:10.328 --> 22:11.689
[SPEAKER_00]: And he earned our business.
22:12.389 --> 22:14.851
[SPEAKER_00]: None of the elite hotels even tried.
22:15.872 --> 22:18.033
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the part that's still lingers with me.
22:18.754 --> 22:20.135
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't about the spices.
22:20.835 --> 22:22.276
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't about the fire.
22:22.996 --> 22:24.738
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about imagination.
22:25.998 --> 22:31.162
[SPEAKER_00]: About who gets assumed into the system and who has to negotiate their way in.
22:32.326 --> 22:35.287
[SPEAKER_00]: When my father said, they don't want my brown money.
22:36.067 --> 22:37.507
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't being dramatic.
22:38.407 --> 22:40.068
[SPEAKER_00]: He was naming something real.
22:41.868 --> 22:42.868
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the irony.
22:43.788 --> 22:46.369
[SPEAKER_00]: The hotel owner that embraced us was Muslim.
22:47.009 --> 22:47.889
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't a lead.
22:48.489 --> 22:49.630
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't downtown.
22:50.670 --> 22:56.131
[SPEAKER_00]: It was owned by someone who understood what it feels like to live between worlds.
22:57.051 --> 23:00.252
[SPEAKER_00]: Our wedding ended up exactly where it needed to be.
23:01.515 --> 23:10.822
[SPEAKER_00]: Under the Mundep, with a sacred fire, in a ballroom where the sprinklers were silent, and I realized something that day.
23:11.910 --> 23:19.436
[SPEAKER_00]: In America, you can have access, you can have education, you can have 500 guests and impeccable credit.
23:20.357 --> 23:32.707
[SPEAKER_00]: And still, you may have to convince someone that your rituals and religion are sacred and full of beauty and that they are the basis of your family, history, tradition, and love.
23:34.159 --> 23:34.999
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the truth.
23:35.679 --> 23:37.900
[SPEAKER_00]: You only need one person to say yes.
23:38.600 --> 23:40.120
[SPEAKER_00]: You need a person like Selene.
23:40.881 --> 23:42.941
[SPEAKER_00]: One person willing to work the problem.
23:43.541 --> 23:45.282
[SPEAKER_00]: One person willing to understand.
23:46.002 --> 23:48.622
[SPEAKER_00]: One person who doesn't see your tradition as a threat.
23:50.083 --> 23:51.383
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how change happens.
23:52.263 --> 23:57.104
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because they'll elite open their doors, but because someone else builds a new one.
23:57.904 --> 23:59.865
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, suburban hotel,
24:01.593 --> 24:03.755
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the ballroom my parents imagined.
24:04.235 --> 24:07.858
[SPEAKER_00]: It was better because it didn't just host our wedding.
24:08.539 --> 24:10.561
[SPEAKER_00]: It made space for it.
24:13.964 --> 24:17.406
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we hit the next decision, the wedding.
24:18.728 --> 24:28.156
[SPEAKER_00]: If deciding to marry across cultures and fates is one decision, planning the wedding is about 400 micro decisions stacked on top of it.
24:29.232 --> 24:31.113
[SPEAKER_00]: We knew we wanted one ceremony.
24:31.973 --> 24:38.355
[SPEAKER_00]: One, not a hint of wedding on Saturday and a Christian wedding on Sunday like a spiritual tennis match.
24:39.456 --> 24:42.317
[SPEAKER_00]: John said something that still stays with me.
24:42.837 --> 24:49.499
[SPEAKER_00]: If we can't figure out how to do this for one ceremony, how are we gonna do it for a lifetime?
24:50.480 --> 24:51.160
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
24:51.780 --> 24:57.122
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike many weddings that are driven by the bride's vision, my wedding had a different goal.
24:58.510 --> 25:00.271
[SPEAKER_00]: make sure my parents were happy.
25:01.032 --> 25:02.552
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure John was happy.
25:03.733 --> 25:05.954
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, I already got what I wanted.
25:06.375 --> 25:07.195
[SPEAKER_00]: I got the guy.
25:08.296 --> 25:14.719
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we were blending religions and rituals, we had to include the quote necessary elements of both.
25:16.040 --> 25:20.483
[SPEAKER_00]: The necessary Hindu elements decided by my mom and the Hindu priest.
25:21.484 --> 25:26.628
[SPEAKER_00]: the necessary Christian elements, decided by John and the Christian minister.
25:27.408 --> 25:33.533
[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of ministers, the Episcopalian priest from John's childhood church would not marry us.
25:34.533 --> 25:35.734
[SPEAKER_00]: That moment's stung.
25:36.795 --> 25:43.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's be honest, there's nothing like being told politely that your love story does not fit the template.
25:45.335 --> 25:57.441
[SPEAKER_00]: Moments like this may seem minor in isolation, but taken together, they reveal a larger pattern about who is seen, who is deferred to, and who holds assumed authority.
25:58.502 --> 26:10.548
[SPEAKER_00]: After experiencing firsthand and studying interfaith marriages in the U.S., here is a clear truth, despite rising intermarriage rates in the United States.
26:11.388 --> 26:15.751
[SPEAKER_00]: mixed race and interfaith couples still encounter bias.
26:16.472 --> 26:19.274
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes overt, sometimes covert.
26:24.597 --> 26:36.505
[SPEAKER_00]: But in what can only be described as divine, comedic timing, one of my closest friends, and sorority sister, who is an ordained Christian minister, happily agreed to co-efficient
26:38.255 --> 26:47.398
[SPEAKER_00]: So there we were, months of back and forth, designing, redesigning, negotiating scripture like the diplomats at the United Nations of Metrimony.
26:48.159 --> 26:49.099
[SPEAKER_00]: John was adamant.
26:49.599 --> 26:53.961
[SPEAKER_00]: We are not doing Hindu part now, Christian part later.
26:54.461 --> 26:58.182
[SPEAKER_00]: No compartmentalizing, we wanted integration.
26:58.723 --> 26:59.323
[SPEAKER_00]: For example,
27:00.063 --> 27:04.565
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Hindu ceremony, there's a moment when the bride and groom garland each other.
27:04.865 --> 27:06.366
[SPEAKER_00]: It's beautiful and symbolic.
27:06.986 --> 27:11.848
[SPEAKER_00]: John found a verse in Isaiah describing the bride-room garlanding the bride.
27:12.448 --> 27:21.712
[SPEAKER_00]: So during our ceremony, my uncle, my father's youngest brother, read that passage from Isaiah while we garlanded each other.
27:22.832 --> 27:25.793
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the level of blending our ceremony had.
27:33.143 --> 27:34.345
[SPEAKER_00]: three days before the wedding.
27:35.026 --> 27:37.309
[SPEAKER_00]: Our ceremony booklet was finally printed.
27:37.630 --> 27:42.397
[SPEAKER_00]: It laid out the rituals and included the explanations so guests could follow along.
27:43.199 --> 27:45.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Christian weddings often have programs.
27:45.828 --> 27:47.428
[SPEAKER_00]: In the weddings, not so much.
27:48.129 --> 27:50.849
[SPEAKER_00]: Many guests don't fully understand what's happening.
27:51.310 --> 27:53.270
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, the bride and groom don't either.
27:53.870 --> 27:57.611
[SPEAKER_00]: And traditional weddings in India can go on for hours.
27:58.412 --> 28:03.213
[SPEAKER_00]: We were keeping ours to 90 minutes and accomplishment in itself.
28:04.253 --> 28:10.755
[SPEAKER_00]: For our non-Indian guests that felt like a marathon, for our Indian guests that felt like a teaser,
28:13.872 --> 28:16.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Then my grandfather saw the booklet.
28:17.355 --> 28:21.137
[SPEAKER_00]: He turned to my father and said, why are they doing this?
28:22.118 --> 28:24.840
[SPEAKER_00]: They should have just had a Christian wedding.
28:25.700 --> 28:26.781
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't right.
28:28.402 --> 28:29.763
[SPEAKER_00]: My father was heartbroken.
28:30.804 --> 28:32.885
[SPEAKER_00]: I was the first grandchild getting married.
28:34.026 --> 28:36.368
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole family finally agreed on John.
28:38.029 --> 28:40.030
[SPEAKER_00]: They finally agreed on the ceremony.
28:44.814 --> 28:48.217
[SPEAKER_00]: My father said quietly, everything is done.
28:49.038 --> 28:50.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just see what happens.
28:51.460 --> 28:54.342
[SPEAKER_00]: On paper, the ceremony looked very Christian.
28:54.823 --> 28:58.286
[SPEAKER_00]: In real life, it was gloriously Indian and Hindu.
28:59.067 --> 29:02.029
[SPEAKER_00]: John and I were decked out in our Indian wedding attire.
29:02.410 --> 29:05.092
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a mud up, both officials stood under it.
29:05.712 --> 29:10.517
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend and our Christian minister, thrilled, performing a wedding barefoot.
29:11.665 --> 29:23.189
[SPEAKER_00]: I proceeded down the aisle with my mamas, my maternal uncles, while a string quartet played Puckabelle's canon in D. We set our vows.
29:23.749 --> 29:26.009
[SPEAKER_00]: We did our feras around the sacred fire.
29:26.970 --> 29:28.230
[SPEAKER_00]: We exchanged rings.
29:29.130 --> 29:31.471
[SPEAKER_00]: John tied the mungles who threw around my neck.
29:32.592 --> 29:34.452
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't half and half.
29:35.552 --> 29:37.113
[SPEAKER_00]: It was whole.
29:38.730 --> 29:46.935
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, because John understands symbolism in a way that still moves me, he surprised my parents at the reception.
29:47.555 --> 29:56.340
[SPEAKER_00]: He had commissioned a six-foot ice sculpture of Ganesh, the half-human half-elephant deity who was the remover of obstacles in Hinduism.
29:57.441 --> 30:00.623
[SPEAKER_00]: Six feet, ice, Ganesh.
30:01.363 --> 30:05.465
[SPEAKER_00]: This was 1999 in Metro Atlanta, we had never seen anything like it.
30:09.456 --> 30:11.117
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I learned from our wedding.
30:12.218 --> 30:14.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Blending isn't about dilution.
30:14.920 --> 30:16.241
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about intention.
30:17.201 --> 30:21.224
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about refusing the false choice between yours and mine.
30:22.485 --> 30:25.387
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about doing the harder work of weaving something new.
30:26.447 --> 30:33.292
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's be honest, it would have been easier to choose one tradition and side step to discomfort.
30:34.033 --> 30:37.315
[SPEAKER_00]: But that wouldn't have prepared us for our life together.
30:38.548 --> 30:45.093
[SPEAKER_00]: because marriage, especially across cultures and fates, is not about alternating turns.
30:45.953 --> 30:47.855
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about building a shared language.
30:48.856 --> 30:51.237
[SPEAKER_00]: That ceremony wasn't just a wedding.
30:52.138 --> 31:00.344
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a rehearsal for a lifetime of negotiation, curiosity, compromise, humor, and deep respect.
31:01.805 --> 31:05.308
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's give a moment of silence for the fact
31:09.416 --> 31:21.169
[SPEAKER_00]: Distance forced honesty, honesty forced confrontation, confrontation forced growth, and in the end everyone was happy, including my grandfather.
31:22.491 --> 31:27.797
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, if you can win over the grandfather, you can probably handle just about anything else.
31:33.426 --> 31:35.487
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the third truth about intermarriage.
31:35.827 --> 31:38.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Family acceptance is rarely a one-time event.
31:39.309 --> 31:40.209
[SPEAKER_00]: It's iterative.
31:41.010 --> 31:43.671
[SPEAKER_00]: It's surfaces when you decide how to raise children.
31:44.251 --> 31:45.432
[SPEAKER_00]: What language to teach?
31:46.492 --> 31:50.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether there'll be a baptism, a numcutton, which is a naming ceremony.
31:51.015 --> 31:51.275
[SPEAKER_00]: Both.
31:52.133 --> 31:52.453
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither.
31:53.214 --> 31:56.897
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed couples often report what sociologists call boundary work.
31:57.317 --> 32:00.420
[SPEAKER_00]: You are constantly negotiating symbolic borders.
32:01.120 --> 32:02.521
[SPEAKER_00]: What traditions are essential?
32:02.982 --> 32:04.003
[SPEAKER_00]: What are negotiable?
32:04.483 --> 32:06.945
[SPEAKER_00]: What are performative versus deeply held?
32:08.066 --> 32:12.549
[SPEAKER_00]: If those negotiations become score-keeping, well, we did devaliate your parents
32:16.339 --> 32:25.161
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they become collaborative and meaning-making, something else happens, you create culture rather than inherited.
32:26.381 --> 32:33.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Interfaith marriages require early, honest conversations and a lot of explicit negotiation.
32:34.123 --> 32:37.244
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't get to rely on unspoken assumptions.
32:38.084 --> 32:40.245
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything has to be said out loud.
32:41.705 --> 32:51.668
[SPEAKER_00]: The strongest interfaith relationships are built when couples really take time to think through and talk through the issues, sometimes years in.
32:53.329 --> 32:55.909
[SPEAKER_00]: So the real work isn't just the conversation.
32:56.290 --> 33:00.391
[SPEAKER_00]: It's staying open to how those answers might evolve.
33:08.705 --> 33:11.586
[SPEAKER_00]: John and I have been together for more than three decades.
33:12.126 --> 33:17.288
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been studying mixed race and mixed faith relationships for almost as long as I've been in one of them.
33:17.869 --> 33:18.949
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I've learned.
33:19.629 --> 33:24.111
[SPEAKER_00]: The tough conversations at the start can make the relationships stronger over time.
33:24.851 --> 33:26.172
[SPEAKER_00]: If the couple does the work.
33:27.703 --> 33:32.526
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are five principles for communication in a mixed relationship.
33:33.227 --> 33:35.989
[SPEAKER_00]: First, radical awareness and clarity.
33:36.829 --> 33:40.031
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot outsource your identity work to your partner.
33:40.732 --> 33:45.095
[SPEAKER_00]: Each person must decide what is non-negotiable, what is symbolic.
33:45.755 --> 33:51.077
[SPEAKER_00]: Not everyone is ready to take on the challenges and compromises that come with being part of a mixed marriage.
33:51.717 --> 33:55.338
[SPEAKER_00]: Many couples fall in love in spite of race and religion.
33:55.878 --> 34:01.700
[SPEAKER_00]: At a time in their lives when their race and ethnicity or religion didn't seem that important.
34:02.360 --> 34:10.863
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to think about yourself, the beliefs you were raised with, your understanding of God and of your religion, and of what it all means to you.
34:11.990 --> 34:16.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you ready to make another religion part of your life from this day forward?
34:17.856 --> 34:24.542
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't do that work individually, you will unconsciously fight for things you don't even fully believe in.
34:30.328 --> 34:33.050
[SPEAKER_00]: Second, explicit communication.
34:34.220 --> 34:38.502
[SPEAKER_00]: Next couples who thrive do not rely on quote, we'll figure it out.
34:39.382 --> 34:45.565
[SPEAKER_00]: They talk early about children, rituals, family, holidays, and money.
34:46.005 --> 34:49.147
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels unromantic, but it is very essential.
34:50.597 --> 35:02.939
[SPEAKER_00]: Faced with sometimes overwhelming task of learning about two fades, dealing with cultural differences and realizing racial dynamics, many couples decide to just cross each bridge as they come to it.
35:03.839 --> 35:15.401
[SPEAKER_00]: This works fine for little things, but for big-life decisions such as naming the children, how important holidays are, will they be celebrated, how will they be celebrated, how your
35:19.762 --> 35:31.150
[SPEAKER_00]: Talking it through beforehand is the only way to head off heartache, resentment, or even feelings of being trapped in a marriage full of unforeseen unhappiness.
35:32.170 --> 35:38.815
[UNKNOWN]: The third principle, shared narrative.
35:43.719 --> 35:50.104
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to build a story, a life, about yourselves that is bigger than difference.
35:50.885 --> 35:53.587
[SPEAKER_00]: This is done every day, every week, every year.
35:53.607 --> 36:01.653
[SPEAKER_00]: A shared narrative is the clue that holds a mixed race or mixed faith relationship together when differences feel sharp.
36:02.454 --> 36:12.381
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the story you consciously choose about who you are as a couple, not just where you came from, but what you're building together.
36:13.162 --> 36:36.495
[SPEAKER_00]: Without that larger frame, life moments, like holidays, rituals, or family disagreements can feel like a tug of war between competing pasts, but when you define yourselves as bridge builders, pluralist, or co-creators of something new, different stops being a threat and becomes part of your shared mission and vision.
36:48.920 --> 36:53.041
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourth, community by design.
36:53.762 --> 36:59.904
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be intentional about the spaces you build around your family.
37:00.644 --> 37:05.946
[SPEAKER_00]: Interfaith, intercultural families don't just find community.
37:06.526 --> 37:08.067
[SPEAKER_00]: You must create it.
37:09.087 --> 37:15.329
[SPEAKER_00]: You look for social circles where families don't all match, where difference isn't something to explain.
37:15.909 --> 37:17.070
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just normal.
37:18.422 --> 37:23.584
[SPEAKER_00]: where your partnership isn't novel or exotic, it's simply one version of many.
37:25.025 --> 37:31.288
[SPEAKER_00]: And that can mean stretching beyond the friends you grew up with or the circles you would have naturally stayed in.
37:31.868 --> 37:39.312
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, because of your spouse, spaces that once felt easy don't quite fit the same way anymore.
37:40.152 --> 37:41.173
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a failure.
37:41.673 --> 37:45.236
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a signal, especially for children this matters.
37:45.976 --> 37:50.940
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to see other families that don't match in the same ways they don't match.
37:51.420 --> 37:55.383
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives them language, confidence, and a sense of belonging.
37:57.005 --> 38:04.270
[SPEAKER_00]: When differences normalized early, identity becomes something they inhabit, not something they have to defend.
38:05.974 --> 38:10.924
[SPEAKER_00]: isolation, amplifies stress, belonging stabilizes it.
38:11.746 --> 38:14.612
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, there's humility.
38:16.083 --> 38:19.364
[SPEAKER_00]: You will get it wrong sometimes, you will misjudge tone.
38:19.784 --> 38:23.345
[SPEAKER_00]: The couples who endure are not the ones who avoid mistakes.
38:23.905 --> 38:26.026
[SPEAKER_00]: They are the ones who repair quickly.
38:27.086 --> 38:36.409
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized our conversations, our struggles, our story, falling in love across race and faith mapped onto something larger.
38:37.915 --> 38:42.217
[SPEAKER_00]: Our story has been part of a broader social transformation.
38:43.058 --> 38:56.505
[SPEAKER_00]: We are living in a moment where identities are less siloed than ever, where children grow up with multiple identities, where pluralism is not theoretical, it's lived at the dinner table, it's lived in our home.
38:57.889 --> 39:01.012
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixtracin mixed faith couples are not anomalies.
39:01.412 --> 39:03.555
[SPEAKER_00]: We are what America is becoming.
39:04.275 --> 39:10.942
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like the challenges our larger American society faces across difference, our marriage is no different.
39:11.622 --> 39:19.550
[SPEAKER_00]: In our case, love, when paired with intentionality, has allowed us to transform challenges into something generative.
39:22.233 --> 39:32.221
[SPEAKER_00]: The couples who succeed don't erase difference, they metabolize it, they turn friction into depth, they build a home that does not require shrinking.
39:33.181 --> 39:44.210
[SPEAKER_00]: And in doing so, they model something our divided world desperately needs, intimacy across difference that doesn't demand surrender, only understanding.
39:47.367 --> 39:48.968
[SPEAKER_00]: Our story is not unique.
39:49.368 --> 39:50.329
[SPEAKER_00]: It is American.
39:50.649 --> 39:53.952
[SPEAKER_00]: The children of 1965 immigrants are now adults.
39:54.792 --> 39:58.275
[SPEAKER_00]: The project of survival has collided with the promise of freedom.
39:58.875 --> 40:01.317
[SPEAKER_00]: We are living pluralism at the dinner table.
40:01.918 --> 40:05.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed race and mixed faith couples are not anomalies.
40:06.201 --> 40:08.342
[SPEAKER_00]: We are what America is becoming.
40:09.103 --> 40:11.504
[SPEAKER_00]: Love alone, though is not enough.
40:12.285 --> 40:14.587
[SPEAKER_00]: But love paired with intentionality?
40:15.327 --> 40:18.269
[SPEAKER_00]: that transforms friction into depth.
40:22.211 --> 40:24.812
[SPEAKER_00]: Under Jerusalem's golden light, I fell in love.
40:25.492 --> 40:28.554
[SPEAKER_00]: In Atlanta's shadow of history, I fought to keep it.
40:29.435 --> 40:34.757
[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere between preservation and possibility, we built something new.
40:35.818 --> 40:41.481
[SPEAKER_00]: After a long journey, it felt right, almost easy, until it didn't.
40:51.557 --> 40:53.075
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
41:22.839 --> 41:24.820
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it for this episode of Mixed.
41:25.180 --> 41:26.561
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for listening.
41:27.042 --> 41:36.767
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed was created by me, Dr. Kathy Joshee, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media and Civic Engagement, and Access Mundi Media.
41:37.528 --> 41:44.432
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed was produced by Andrew Gill and Bradley O'Neill Sheet, and the original music and engineering by Scott O'Kamoto.
41:45.113 --> 41:47.714
[SPEAKER_00]: Cari O'Neill Sheet provided production assistance.
41:48.374 --> 41:50.336
[SPEAKER_00]: Our story editor is Lee Epang.
41:51.036 --> 42:00.718
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed was made possible through generous funding from the Henry loose foundation and is made in collaboration with a party and the Under God's project.
00:07.205 --> 00:13.548
[SPEAKER_01]: Access Moody.
00:15.009 --> 00:18.551
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents didn't know I was dating John for a couple of years.
00:20.052 --> 00:23.734
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, before you judge me, let's remember this was 1997.
00:24.134 --> 00:30.598
[SPEAKER_00]: Pre-Instagram, pre-find my friends, pre-wire UNDC when you said you were an Amherst.
00:31.735 --> 00:34.336
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in grad school in Amherst, Massachusetts.
00:34.956 --> 00:36.537
[SPEAKER_00]: John was in Washington, D.C.
00:37.057 --> 00:39.158
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a car, I had independence.
00:39.898 --> 00:42.759
[SPEAKER_00]: I had what I thought was a flawless alibi.
00:43.299 --> 00:45.680
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd go see him on weekends whenever possible.
00:46.220 --> 00:50.681
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd call my parents pretending to be in Massachusetts and they were none the wiser.
00:51.582 --> 00:54.763
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my sister delivered the line that changed my life.
01:00.109 --> 01:07.077
[SPEAKER_00]: color ID, a new technology that showed the phone number and location of the person calling.
01:07.878 --> 01:09.841
[SPEAKER_02]: Have a wish you knew in advance who was calling?
01:11.064 --> 01:14.026
[SPEAKER_01]: He read Arkansas, daughter's boyfriend calling again.
01:14.266 --> 01:15.767
[SPEAKER_02]: Ever wish you had caller ID?
01:16.087 --> 01:17.168
[SPEAKER_01]: Call is friendly.
01:17.228 --> 01:18.648
[SPEAKER_01]: Call is friendly.
01:18.848 --> 01:21.090
[SPEAKER_02]: Call a ID shows the number the call is coming from.
01:21.310 --> 01:23.171
[SPEAKER_02]: You can pick up, call back, whatever.
01:23.511 --> 01:30.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, I couldn't be studying late in Amherst while I was clearly in Washington, DC with a guy named John.
01:31.356 --> 01:33.357
[SPEAKER_00]: The landline had betrayed me.
01:35.030 --> 01:38.233
[SPEAKER_00]: So I did what every due to full Indian daughter eventually must do.
01:38.253 --> 01:40.955
[SPEAKER_00]: I told them I was dating a white Christian man.
01:41.595 --> 01:45.438
[SPEAKER_00]: And thus began months of trying to get my parents to come around.
01:46.099 --> 01:47.179
[SPEAKER_00]: It was grueling.
01:47.820 --> 01:49.781
[SPEAKER_00]: It was emotional, cross-foot.
01:50.722 --> 01:57.645
[SPEAKER_00]: between telling them about John and announcing our engagement, it was to put it mildly hell in the house.
01:58.365 --> 01:59.205
[SPEAKER_00]: Mom upset.
01:59.845 --> 02:01.766
[SPEAKER_00]: Dad upset because Mom was upset.
02:02.166 --> 02:05.487
[SPEAKER_00]: My sister repeating like a broken record, I hope this guy's worth it.
02:06.288 --> 02:07.328
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you something.
02:07.648 --> 02:12.130
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing sharpens your clarity like a sibling who keeps asking if this guy's worth it.
02:12.350 --> 02:15.351
[SPEAKER_00]: If this guy's worth blowing up the family's peace.
02:17.133 --> 02:20.357
[SPEAKER_00]: I mostly kept the arguments with my parents to myself.
02:20.837 --> 02:29.007
[SPEAKER_00]: John knew they were happening, but I didn't want to keep reminding him that my family didn't approve, because then he'd be upset that I was upset.
02:29.928 --> 02:32.791
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we've got this whole emotional domino situation.
02:33.632 --> 02:35.753
[SPEAKER_00]: and it makes sense, looking back.
02:36.393 --> 02:51.018
[SPEAKER_00]: They had moved to half a world away from everything familiar and spent years decades even, pouring themselves into making sure my sister and I knew who we were, our language, our family traditions, our holidays, our religion.
02:52.038 --> 03:04.004
[SPEAKER_00]: family was everything to my parents, and part of their worry was whether John would understand that, whether he would value it the way we did, and whether in marrying him, they would lose me.
03:04.865 --> 03:10.448
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, his parents completely fine with us, and they knew my parents weren't.
03:10.968 --> 03:15.751
[SPEAKER_00]: They could have gotten defensive, thinking, you know, what's wrong with our son, but they
03:20.867 --> 03:24.848
[SPEAKER_00]: John's mother passed away in 1997 while we were still dating.
03:25.588 --> 03:32.210
[SPEAKER_00]: And my future father-in-law, while he was just incredible, steady, kind, no drama.
03:33.150 --> 03:39.572
[SPEAKER_00]: In the middle of all that tension, that kind of quiet support mattered more than I can ever explain.
03:40.745 --> 03:44.607
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents eventually realized I wasn't going to change my mind.
03:45.408 --> 03:51.031
[SPEAKER_00]: Not after two years of sneaking around, not after grad school, not after caller ID.
03:52.432 --> 04:00.117
[SPEAKER_00]: Once they understood that this was not a phase, not rebellion, not confusion, but conviction, they agreed.
04:10.895 --> 04:11.199
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
04:39.820 --> 04:41.241
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Dr. Kathy Joshee.
04:41.601 --> 04:44.002
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a scholar of race, religion, and education.
04:44.382 --> 04:55.426
[SPEAKER_00]: A tenure professor who has spent two decades teaching about and studying how identity actually gets formed, not just in textbooks, but in kitchens, classrooms, and car rides home.
04:56.246 --> 05:06.970
[SPEAKER_00]: I've written six books, including White Christian Privilege, the illusion of religious equality in America, teaching for diversity in social justice, and Asian Americans in Dixie.
05:07.610 --> 05:11.075
[SPEAKER_00]: I've spoken to audiences from University Lecture Halls to the White House.
05:11.776 --> 05:14.960
[SPEAKER_00]: But this podcast isn't just research, it's personal.
05:15.621 --> 05:18.965
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where the scholarship and lived experience meet.
05:19.786 --> 05:20.868
[SPEAKER_00]: This is mixed.
05:34.455 --> 05:37.318
[SPEAKER_00]: In March of 1997, my parents agreed to meet John.
05:37.658 --> 05:39.720
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, technically, they had met him before.
05:40.020 --> 05:49.748
[SPEAKER_00]: Couple of polite encounters, but this was the meeting, the diplomatic negotiation, the parental review board.
05:50.769 --> 05:59.052
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents were coming to D.C. because my dad had a medical conference, and that Sunday was the big day, and then something incredible happened.
05:59.872 --> 06:04.794
[SPEAKER_00]: On Saturday's male delivery, John received his acceptance letter to Harvard Law School.
06:05.454 --> 06:11.656
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked at the letter, looked at me, and said, I'm just going to pin this to my chest tomorrow.
06:12.136 --> 06:14.277
[SPEAKER_00]: Now your parents have to say yes.
06:15.300 --> 06:18.950
[SPEAKER_00]: Because in his mind, Harvard Law wasn't just an acceptance.
06:19.211 --> 06:22.180
[SPEAKER_00]: It was credibility my parents couldn't argue with.
06:22.988 --> 06:31.510
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to his credit, he didn't actually show up with the letter safety pin to his shirt like some Ivy League Merid badge, but the timing did not hurt.
06:32.230 --> 06:37.751
[SPEAKER_00]: After months of arguments debates and tense moments, brunch with John was uneventful.
06:38.551 --> 06:43.272
[SPEAKER_00]: As we ate our fruit and waffles, my parents made conversation, we all got along.
06:43.912 --> 06:48.933
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a quiet turning point on the road to them accepting the man who I had chosen.
06:49.673 --> 06:54.097
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time John proposed a few months later, my parents were fully on board.
06:54.877 --> 06:57.880
[SPEAKER_00]: John had learned something about my parents over these years.
06:58.681 --> 06:59.802
[SPEAKER_00]: They were religious.
07:00.522 --> 07:04.886
[SPEAKER_00]: So when he asked my parents for permission to marry me, he didn't stop there.
07:08.689 --> 07:14.214
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a tradition of reaching out to the bride's father or parents to ask their permission.
07:15.021 --> 07:30.693
[SPEAKER_03]: but I had to do something a little bit different, which is not just to ask their permission, but also to ask when should I propose, because it's very important in Hinduism for things to be done and important decisions to be made on auspicious days.
07:31.614 --> 07:33.215
[SPEAKER_03]: So I had to do two things at once.
07:33.315 --> 07:43.103
[SPEAKER_03]: I had to call Kyathi's parents and ask for their permission and also say when should I propose to her to make it something that is as auspicious as possible?
07:44.170 --> 07:49.718
[SPEAKER_03]: So the auspicious day rolled around, and Kiyathi was visiting my home in Pennsylvania.
07:50.940 --> 07:58.470
[SPEAKER_03]: And that morning I remember just kind of killing time because Kiyathi's mom had told me
07:59.577 --> 08:05.678
[SPEAKER_03]: Not just that this was an auspicious day, but that 1030 AM was the most auspicious time of the day.
08:06.398 --> 08:10.479
[SPEAKER_03]: So we kind of had a slow morning and I kept looking at my watch.
08:11.399 --> 08:15.200
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when 1030 rolled around I said, hey, let's take a walk out back.
08:16.120 --> 08:25.281
[SPEAKER_03]: And in the backyard of my childhood home is the pond that my father and I dug for my mother who had just recently passed at that time.
08:30.110 --> 08:42.757
[SPEAKER_03]: family heirloom engagement ring from my mother's side of the family and I got down on one knee and pop the question, but not until the auspicious time on the auspicious day.
08:45.119 --> 08:48.701
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we hit decision number two, finding a venue.
08:52.193 --> 08:54.795
[SPEAKER_00]: So there we were engaged, triumphant.
08:55.315 --> 08:59.879
[SPEAKER_00]: We had survived the parents, the theology, the emotional Olympics.
09:00.559 --> 09:02.280
[SPEAKER_00]: It was time to start planning the wedding.
09:02.781 --> 09:05.943
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew we would have to navigate how to have an interfaith ceremony.
09:06.443 --> 09:12.307
[SPEAKER_00]: To meet everyone's needs and expectations, make both families comfortable and excited about the whole thing.
09:13.148 --> 09:16.872
[SPEAKER_00]: There were hard decisions to make, relationships to smooth out.
09:17.612 --> 09:26.601
[SPEAKER_00]: So there we were, months of back and forth designing, redesigning, negotiating scripture like the diplomats at the United Nations of Matrimoni.
09:27.181 --> 09:30.724
[SPEAKER_00]: Surely, booking a hotel would be the easy part.
09:31.565 --> 09:36.550
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents had always imagined one of Atlanta's elite downtown hotels for my wedding.
09:37.330 --> 09:44.397
[SPEAKER_00]: Crystal Shandeliers, Grand Ballroom, the kind of place to accommodate 500 guests with fanfare.
09:45.358 --> 09:46.799
[SPEAKER_00]: We assumed we'd have options.
09:47.940 --> 09:48.701
[SPEAKER_00]: We were wrong.
09:49.461 --> 09:50.462
[SPEAKER_00]: We began our tour.
09:51.600 --> 09:52.400
[SPEAKER_00]: hotel number one.
09:52.900 --> 09:55.901
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents John and I sit down with the events manager.
09:56.881 --> 09:57.842
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is polite.
09:58.682 --> 10:00.002
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is about smiles.
10:00.482 --> 10:01.763
[SPEAKER_00]: They provide brochures.
10:02.403 --> 10:03.163
[SPEAKER_00]: The good paper.
10:03.903 --> 10:06.444
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we mentioned we'd like to serve Indian food.
10:07.344 --> 10:08.004
[SPEAKER_00]: She paused.
10:09.365 --> 10:17.187
[SPEAKER_00]: We did that once she says, but the dry cleaning bill for the table linens was so high afterwards that we decided not to have any more Indian weddings.
10:18.408 --> 10:20.069
[SPEAKER_00]: So much for Southern hospitality.
10:20.629 --> 10:22.209
[SPEAKER_00]: Let that sink in.
10:23.570 --> 10:26.191
[SPEAKER_00]: She actually said the quiet part out loud.
10:26.711 --> 10:38.374
[SPEAKER_00]: We just sat there, stunned, disbelief, mixed with that all to familiar feeling from my adolescence in Metro Atlanta that maybe I didn't quite belong.
10:39.275 --> 10:39.575
[SPEAKER_00]: John?
10:40.531 --> 10:46.917
[SPEAKER_00]: He was furious and hurt because how do you reject something so beautiful over table linens?
10:47.798 --> 10:50.460
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask, how can we manage the menu?
10:51.301 --> 10:53.043
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask about logistics.
10:54.804 --> 11:00.369
[SPEAKER_00]: Just, your spices make too much of a mess and result in an expensive dry cleaning bill.
11:00.970 --> 11:01.490
[SPEAKER_00]: Strike one.
11:02.418 --> 11:07.999
[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number two, Buckhead, an upscale place in the Ritzi section of Atlanta called Buckhead.
11:08.699 --> 11:11.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Boogie, fancy, a place of cool effluence.
11:12.700 --> 11:18.422
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents are asking thoughtful questions about capacity, about parking, about room blocks.
11:19.262 --> 11:25.983
[SPEAKER_00]: The coordinator nods and turns to John to answer, who had a confused look on his face as he didn't ask the question.
11:27.043 --> 11:28.644
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents ask another question.
11:29.617 --> 11:35.399
[SPEAKER_00]: He turns to John again, and John answers by gesturing in a way that brings my parents into the conversation.
11:36.339 --> 11:39.580
[SPEAKER_00]: But the wedding coordinator continued to disrespect my parents.
11:40.340 --> 11:43.141
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, John is patient, but not infinitely patient.
11:43.641 --> 11:48.383
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, he said, they asked the question, you need to answer them.
11:49.663 --> 11:55.467
[SPEAKER_00]: My father was a well-established physician, someone who had fully lived the so-called American dream.
11:55.987 --> 11:58.088
[SPEAKER_00]: He was hosting his daughter's wedding.
11:58.809 --> 12:03.291
[SPEAKER_00]: He was asking the questions, John, at that point, was just starting out.
12:03.671 --> 12:07.934
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet in that room, the default was to turn to John.
12:08.894 --> 12:10.055
[SPEAKER_00]: The room went quiet.
12:10.795 --> 12:13.277
[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege, live, and in person.
12:14.575 --> 12:17.136
[SPEAKER_00]: My brown parents were inquiring.
12:17.837 --> 12:23.940
[SPEAKER_00]: The white groom deemed the decision-maker, even though it was obvious who was footing the bill.
12:25.441 --> 12:26.101
[SPEAKER_00]: Strike two.
12:26.981 --> 12:31.544
[SPEAKER_00]: What you just heard that moment in the hotel, that's an example of white privilege.
12:32.224 --> 12:34.665
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that phrase can make people uncomfortable.
12:34.925 --> 12:36.306
[SPEAKER_00]: It can feel accusatory.
12:36.806 --> 12:39.208
[SPEAKER_00]: It can sound like you're calling someone a bad person.
12:39.888 --> 12:41.149
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what it means.
12:42.050 --> 12:45.052
[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege isn't about individual intent.
12:45.872 --> 12:48.314
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about whether John is a good person.
12:48.674 --> 12:49.115
[SPEAKER_00]: He is.
12:49.875 --> 12:54.278
[SPEAKER_00]: Or whether that coordinator was trying to be disrespectful, he probably wasn't.
12:55.299 --> 12:57.040
[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege is about patterns.
12:57.641 --> 13:05.687
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about who gets assumed to be in charge, who gets deferred to, who gets seen as the decision maker without having to say a word.
13:06.932 --> 13:09.674
[SPEAKER_00]: White privilege is a product of systemic racism.
13:10.374 --> 13:15.358
[SPEAKER_00]: Systems and norms that have over time centered whiteness as the default.
13:15.958 --> 13:26.345
[SPEAKER_00]: So in that moment, even though my parents were asking the questions, even though they were clearly hosting the wedding, the instinct was to turn to the white man in the room.
13:27.125 --> 13:28.306
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how it shows up.
13:28.926 --> 13:32.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Quietly, automatically, without announcement,
13:33.938 --> 13:38.400
[SPEAKER_00]: and whether it makes us uncomfortable or not, it is there.
13:39.360 --> 13:40.140
[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number three.
13:41.180 --> 14:03.208
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we even finish explaining our plans, event planning staff with binders in their hands, taught smiles on their faces, tell us, quote, we don't allow outside catering, but don't worry, we can cook the Indian food, and quote, my mother's face horror, humiliation, rage.
14:04.965 --> 14:16.311
[SPEAKER_00]: There are moments when a woman channels generations, somehow manifesting the horror, shock, and revulsion of the proud women who've come before her.
14:16.872 --> 14:22.214
[SPEAKER_00]: As we left the staff, and had barely gotten out of the room, my mom said, no.
14:24.283 --> 14:25.564
[SPEAKER_00]: over my dead body.
14:26.304 --> 14:33.768
[SPEAKER_00]: There would be no hotel banquet chef experimenting with tumeric and garam masala, like it was a science fair project.
14:34.668 --> 14:35.269
[SPEAKER_00]: Strike 3.
14:36.049 --> 14:36.949
[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number 4.
14:37.610 --> 14:42.452
[SPEAKER_00]: Another upscale hotel, and here, the staff would return my parents' phone calls.
14:42.772 --> 14:43.533
[SPEAKER_00]: But guess what?
14:43.933 --> 14:45.534
[SPEAKER_00]: They returned mine immediately.
14:46.134 --> 14:51.637
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom and dad have beautiful distinctive Indian accents, and I sound like a southern girl who
14:53.958 --> 14:58.940
[SPEAKER_00]: My father looked at me and said quietly, they don't want my brown money.
14:58.960 --> 15:02.942
[SPEAKER_00]: That sentence has always stayed with me.
15:04.123 --> 15:05.143
[SPEAKER_00]: Because here's the thing.
15:05.624 --> 15:08.285
[SPEAKER_00]: We weren't asking for charity, not a discount.
15:08.805 --> 15:11.226
[SPEAKER_00]: We were planning a 500 guest wedding.
15:13.748 --> 15:14.889
[SPEAKER_00]: 500.
15:15.829 --> 15:22.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Most venues would salivate over that number, but the deeper issue hadn't even surfaced yet.
15:23.232 --> 15:28.035
[SPEAKER_00]: Because beyond the food, beyond the ballroom, we had one non-negotiable.
15:28.935 --> 15:32.096
[SPEAKER_00]: The wedding ceremony and one particular ritual.
15:33.937 --> 15:37.239
[SPEAKER_00]: In a hint of wedding, there is a small contained sacred fire,
15:43.373 --> 15:46.435
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a bonfire, it's not a backyard barbecue.
15:46.855 --> 15:53.619
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a small copper vessel with a controlled flame fueled by grains and ghee, which is clarified butter.
15:55.420 --> 16:01.503
[SPEAKER_00]: Near it, there would be some incense, wafting throughout the room, creating a pleasant aroma.
16:02.263 --> 16:08.927
[SPEAKER_00]: At the hotels where we got far enough to explain this, the reaction was immediate, we can't do that.
16:10.667 --> 16:12.871
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask how big is it?
16:13.772 --> 16:16.417
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't ask how long would the flame burn?
16:17.539 --> 16:20.824
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't say, well, let's talk to the fire marshal.
16:22.267 --> 16:23.990
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just no.
16:25.534 --> 16:32.339
[SPEAKER_00]: They said the fire would set off the entire sprinkler system that the fire marshal would never allow it.
16:33.299 --> 16:36.201
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't surprised they didn't know what a heaven was.
16:37.162 --> 16:40.824
[SPEAKER_00]: I was one of the first in my community getting married like this in Atlanta.
16:41.845 --> 16:43.907
[SPEAKER_00]: What stayed with me was something else.
16:44.667 --> 16:47.149
[SPEAKER_00]: No one tried to understand.
16:48.430 --> 16:53.013
[SPEAKER_00]: No curiosity, no problem solving, no creativity.
16:54.295 --> 16:58.778
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept thinking, how many of these hotels that hosted weddings with unity candles?
16:59.219 --> 17:00.279
[SPEAKER_00]: Candles are normal.
17:00.900 --> 17:02.041
[SPEAKER_00]: Candles are safe.
17:02.521 --> 17:04.643
[SPEAKER_00]: Candles are Christian.
17:05.643 --> 17:10.427
[SPEAKER_00]: But a fire that isn't part of a Christian ritual suddenly is a five alarm emergency.
17:11.568 --> 17:15.510
[SPEAKER_00]: Society's rules were written with Christianity as the norm.
17:16.533 --> 17:22.756
[SPEAKER_00]: The religion that never has to explain itself, in the south, the question isn't, what is your religion?
17:23.036 --> 17:24.236
[SPEAKER_00]: It's where do you go to church?
17:24.977 --> 17:31.260
[SPEAKER_00]: The Christian rituals that don't need accommodation because our social architecture already assumes them.
17:32.060 --> 17:40.204
[SPEAKER_00]: If Christian wedding traditions require to heaven, I promise you, there isn't a hotel in the United States that wouldn't find a way to make it happen.
17:41.084 --> 17:44.666
[SPEAKER_00]: But when it's unfamiliar, when it's brown,
17:45.726 --> 17:51.247
[SPEAKER_00]: When it smells like ghee instead of beeswax, the answer is no.
17:53.488 --> 17:58.449
[SPEAKER_00]: After weeks of this weeks, it became clear.
17:59.329 --> 18:03.570
[SPEAKER_00]: We were not getting married at one of Atlanta's elite downtown hotels.
18:04.290 --> 18:08.951
[SPEAKER_00]: The dream my parents had held for years was dissolving.
18:10.112 --> 18:10.912
[SPEAKER_00]: That hurt.
18:12.103 --> 18:14.069
[SPEAKER_00]: because this wasn't just about a ballroom.
18:14.491 --> 18:15.775
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about belonging.
18:17.368 --> 18:20.931
[SPEAKER_00]: And once belonging is in question, everything else follows.
18:21.732 --> 18:29.398
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the second bedrock truth I've learned, not only from my own experience, but from countless studies and interviews over the last 25 years.
18:30.259 --> 18:42.689
[SPEAKER_00]: When you marry across race or religion, you inevitably ask yourself, what parts of me stay, what parts adapt, what parts get negotiated away without me even noticing.
18:43.630 --> 18:59.194
[SPEAKER_00]: For someone raised in a tight knit immigrant religious community, say a Hindu family, shaped by the post-1965 migration wave, after the immigration and nationality act of 1965, marriage is never just personal.
19:00.054 --> 19:01.154
[SPEAKER_00]: It's communal.
19:01.974 --> 19:04.275
[SPEAKER_00]: It carries centuries of continuity.
19:05.150 --> 19:11.653
[SPEAKER_00]: So choosing outside the fold can trigger guilt, the feeling that you're bending the arc of lineage.
19:12.093 --> 19:13.753
[SPEAKER_00]: John had parallel questions.
19:14.274 --> 19:25.138
[SPEAKER_00]: As a white American Christian, he carried inherited assumptions about normalcy, holidays that were the default, rituals that feel universal, but aren't.
19:25.698 --> 19:30.560
[SPEAKER_00]: He did not see how power works quietly in cultural spaces.
19:31.665 --> 19:33.787
[SPEAKER_00]: John All was assumed he would marry a Christian.
19:34.007 --> 19:41.272
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the plan, the life script, Christian wife, Christian kids, Christian holidays with predictable casseroles.
19:42.413 --> 19:49.899
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he fell in love with an Indian-American Hindu woman, which means the scripts needed an overhaul.
19:52.678 --> 19:54.279
[SPEAKER_00]: John grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
19:54.539 --> 19:57.641
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the town that smells like chocolate year round.
19:58.241 --> 20:01.583
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't even get their first Chinese restaurant until the 1980s.
20:02.244 --> 20:09.368
[SPEAKER_00]: Small town Americana at its finest, almost everyone worked at the chocolate factory and the downtown intersection.
20:10.160 --> 20:12.221
[SPEAKER_00]: Coco Avenue meets Chocolate Avenue.
20:12.961 --> 20:13.562
[SPEAKER_00]: Diversity?
20:13.902 --> 20:21.265
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you count the Italians who arrived in the early 20th century to work the factory and now ran the pizza reas, then sure.
20:21.845 --> 20:24.046
[SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that, not very much.
20:24.927 --> 20:25.887
[SPEAKER_00]: Religious diversity?
20:26.528 --> 20:27.408
[SPEAKER_00]: Also hard to find.
20:28.088 --> 20:33.451
[SPEAKER_00]: He was raised in the Episcopal Church, though sometimes he would find him hanging out with the Evangelical Youth Group.
20:34.365 --> 20:38.989
[SPEAKER_00]: In short, John didn't grow up with much racial or religious diversity.
20:39.829 --> 20:50.398
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet years later, he would navigate a whole world of cultures, beliefs, and traditions, usually with more grace than people who grew up surrounded by it.
20:51.158 --> 20:53.220
[SPEAKER_00]: John was adjusting to a lot.
20:54.181 --> 20:56.783
[SPEAKER_00]: From religion to what family even means.
20:57.523 --> 20:59.465
[SPEAKER_00]: And somehow, he made it look easy.
21:00.515 --> 21:03.557
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because he just accepted everything, he didn't.
21:04.298 --> 21:07.039
[SPEAKER_00]: He asked questions, he thought deeply.
21:07.560 --> 21:13.424
[SPEAKER_00]: He figured out what he actually believed, and then he moved forward with intention.
21:14.324 --> 21:15.965
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, he still does.
21:17.266 --> 21:19.588
[SPEAKER_00]: Hotel number five, the turn.
21:21.032 --> 21:27.175
[SPEAKER_00]: We found a suburban hotel owned by Selim Jeta, a Muslim man of Indian ancestry.
21:28.055 --> 21:29.536
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't have to explain the heaven.
21:30.076 --> 21:30.836
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't flinch.
21:31.556 --> 21:33.437
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say, we can't do that.
21:34.077 --> 21:36.178
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, we'll work with the fire marshal.
21:36.538 --> 21:37.659
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything will be fine.
21:38.339 --> 21:39.560
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like that.
21:40.520 --> 21:45.545
[SPEAKER_00]: He took us by the hand literally and figuratively and coordinated with the fire department.
21:46.045 --> 21:49.068
[SPEAKER_00]: He shut off the ballroom sprinklers for about an hour.
21:49.448 --> 21:50.289
[SPEAKER_00]: He made the calls.
21:50.670 --> 21:51.731
[SPEAKER_00]: He did the paper work.
21:52.391 --> 21:53.732
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't see a liability.
21:54.113 --> 21:55.034
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw a couple.
21:55.394 --> 21:56.515
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw families.
21:57.296 --> 21:58.517
[SPEAKER_00]: Immigration stories.
21:59.117 --> 21:59.818
[SPEAKER_00]: Traditions.
22:00.559 --> 22:01.079
[SPEAKER_00]: And love.
22:01.920 --> 22:02.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Above all else.
22:03.642 --> 22:03.962
[SPEAKER_00]: Love.
22:05.585 --> 22:07.166
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't see an inconvenience.
22:07.927 --> 22:09.608
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw an opportunity to serve.
22:10.328 --> 22:11.689
[SPEAKER_00]: And he earned our business.
22:12.389 --> 22:14.851
[SPEAKER_00]: None of the elite hotels even tried.
22:15.872 --> 22:18.033
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the part that's still lingers with me.
22:18.754 --> 22:20.135
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't about the spices.
22:20.835 --> 22:22.276
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't about the fire.
22:22.996 --> 22:24.738
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about imagination.
22:25.998 --> 22:31.162
[SPEAKER_00]: About who gets assumed into the system and who has to negotiate their way in.
22:32.326 --> 22:35.287
[SPEAKER_00]: When my father said, they don't want my brown money.
22:36.067 --> 22:37.507
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't being dramatic.
22:38.407 --> 22:40.068
[SPEAKER_00]: He was naming something real.
22:41.868 --> 22:42.868
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the irony.
22:43.788 --> 22:46.369
[SPEAKER_00]: The hotel owner that embraced us was Muslim.
22:47.009 --> 22:47.889
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't a lead.
22:48.489 --> 22:49.630
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't downtown.
22:50.670 --> 22:56.131
[SPEAKER_00]: It was owned by someone who understood what it feels like to live between worlds.
22:57.051 --> 23:00.252
[SPEAKER_00]: Our wedding ended up exactly where it needed to be.
23:01.515 --> 23:10.822
[SPEAKER_00]: Under the Mundep, with a sacred fire, in a ballroom where the sprinklers were silent, and I realized something that day.
23:11.910 --> 23:19.436
[SPEAKER_00]: In America, you can have access, you can have education, you can have 500 guests and impeccable credit.
23:20.357 --> 23:32.707
[SPEAKER_00]: And still, you may have to convince someone that your rituals and religion are sacred and full of beauty and that they are the basis of your family, history, tradition, and love.
23:34.159 --> 23:34.999
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the truth.
23:35.679 --> 23:37.900
[SPEAKER_00]: You only need one person to say yes.
23:38.600 --> 23:40.120
[SPEAKER_00]: You need a person like Selene.
23:40.881 --> 23:42.941
[SPEAKER_00]: One person willing to work the problem.
23:43.541 --> 23:45.282
[SPEAKER_00]: One person willing to understand.
23:46.002 --> 23:48.622
[SPEAKER_00]: One person who doesn't see your tradition as a threat.
23:50.083 --> 23:51.383
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how change happens.
23:52.263 --> 23:57.104
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because they'll elite open their doors, but because someone else builds a new one.
23:57.904 --> 23:59.865
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, suburban hotel,
24:01.593 --> 24:03.755
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the ballroom my parents imagined.
24:04.235 --> 24:07.858
[SPEAKER_00]: It was better because it didn't just host our wedding.
24:08.539 --> 24:10.561
[SPEAKER_00]: It made space for it.
24:13.964 --> 24:17.406
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we hit the next decision, the wedding.
24:18.728 --> 24:28.156
[SPEAKER_00]: If deciding to marry across cultures and fates is one decision, planning the wedding is about 400 micro decisions stacked on top of it.
24:29.232 --> 24:31.113
[SPEAKER_00]: We knew we wanted one ceremony.
24:31.973 --> 24:38.355
[SPEAKER_00]: One, not a hint of wedding on Saturday and a Christian wedding on Sunday like a spiritual tennis match.
24:39.456 --> 24:42.317
[SPEAKER_00]: John said something that still stays with me.
24:42.837 --> 24:49.499
[SPEAKER_00]: If we can't figure out how to do this for one ceremony, how are we gonna do it for a lifetime?
24:50.480 --> 24:51.160
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
24:51.780 --> 24:57.122
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike many weddings that are driven by the bride's vision, my wedding had a different goal.
24:58.510 --> 25:00.271
[SPEAKER_00]: make sure my parents were happy.
25:01.032 --> 25:02.552
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure John was happy.
25:03.733 --> 25:05.954
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, I already got what I wanted.
25:06.375 --> 25:07.195
[SPEAKER_00]: I got the guy.
25:08.296 --> 25:14.719
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we were blending religions and rituals, we had to include the quote necessary elements of both.
25:16.040 --> 25:20.483
[SPEAKER_00]: The necessary Hindu elements decided by my mom and the Hindu priest.
25:21.484 --> 25:26.628
[SPEAKER_00]: the necessary Christian elements, decided by John and the Christian minister.
25:27.408 --> 25:33.533
[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of ministers, the Episcopalian priest from John's childhood church would not marry us.
25:34.533 --> 25:35.734
[SPEAKER_00]: That moment's stung.
25:36.795 --> 25:43.620
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's be honest, there's nothing like being told politely that your love story does not fit the template.
25:45.335 --> 25:57.441
[SPEAKER_00]: Moments like this may seem minor in isolation, but taken together, they reveal a larger pattern about who is seen, who is deferred to, and who holds assumed authority.
25:58.502 --> 26:10.548
[SPEAKER_00]: After experiencing firsthand and studying interfaith marriages in the U.S., here is a clear truth, despite rising intermarriage rates in the United States.
26:11.388 --> 26:15.751
[SPEAKER_00]: mixed race and interfaith couples still encounter bias.
26:16.472 --> 26:19.274
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes overt, sometimes covert.
26:24.597 --> 26:36.505
[SPEAKER_00]: But in what can only be described as divine, comedic timing, one of my closest friends, and sorority sister, who is an ordained Christian minister, happily agreed to co-efficient
26:38.255 --> 26:47.398
[SPEAKER_00]: So there we were, months of back and forth, designing, redesigning, negotiating scripture like the diplomats at the United Nations of Metrimony.
26:48.159 --> 26:49.099
[SPEAKER_00]: John was adamant.
26:49.599 --> 26:53.961
[SPEAKER_00]: We are not doing Hindu part now, Christian part later.
26:54.461 --> 26:58.182
[SPEAKER_00]: No compartmentalizing, we wanted integration.
26:58.723 --> 26:59.323
[SPEAKER_00]: For example,
27:00.063 --> 27:04.565
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Hindu ceremony, there's a moment when the bride and groom garland each other.
27:04.865 --> 27:06.366
[SPEAKER_00]: It's beautiful and symbolic.
27:06.986 --> 27:11.848
[SPEAKER_00]: John found a verse in Isaiah describing the bride-room garlanding the bride.
27:12.448 --> 27:21.712
[SPEAKER_00]: So during our ceremony, my uncle, my father's youngest brother, read that passage from Isaiah while we garlanded each other.
27:22.832 --> 27:25.793
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the level of blending our ceremony had.
27:33.143 --> 27:34.345
[SPEAKER_00]: three days before the wedding.
27:35.026 --> 27:37.309
[SPEAKER_00]: Our ceremony booklet was finally printed.
27:37.630 --> 27:42.397
[SPEAKER_00]: It laid out the rituals and included the explanations so guests could follow along.
27:43.199 --> 27:45.262
[SPEAKER_00]: Christian weddings often have programs.
27:45.828 --> 27:47.428
[SPEAKER_00]: In the weddings, not so much.
27:48.129 --> 27:50.849
[SPEAKER_00]: Many guests don't fully understand what's happening.
27:51.310 --> 27:53.270
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, the bride and groom don't either.
27:53.870 --> 27:57.611
[SPEAKER_00]: And traditional weddings in India can go on for hours.
27:58.412 --> 28:03.213
[SPEAKER_00]: We were keeping ours to 90 minutes and accomplishment in itself.
28:04.253 --> 28:10.755
[SPEAKER_00]: For our non-Indian guests that felt like a marathon, for our Indian guests that felt like a teaser,
28:13.872 --> 28:16.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Then my grandfather saw the booklet.
28:17.355 --> 28:21.137
[SPEAKER_00]: He turned to my father and said, why are they doing this?
28:22.118 --> 28:24.840
[SPEAKER_00]: They should have just had a Christian wedding.
28:25.700 --> 28:26.781
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't right.
28:28.402 --> 28:29.763
[SPEAKER_00]: My father was heartbroken.
28:30.804 --> 28:32.885
[SPEAKER_00]: I was the first grandchild getting married.
28:34.026 --> 28:36.368
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole family finally agreed on John.
28:38.029 --> 28:40.030
[SPEAKER_00]: They finally agreed on the ceremony.
28:44.814 --> 28:48.217
[SPEAKER_00]: My father said quietly, everything is done.
28:49.038 --> 28:50.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just see what happens.
28:51.460 --> 28:54.342
[SPEAKER_00]: On paper, the ceremony looked very Christian.
28:54.823 --> 28:58.286
[SPEAKER_00]: In real life, it was gloriously Indian and Hindu.
28:59.067 --> 29:02.029
[SPEAKER_00]: John and I were decked out in our Indian wedding attire.
29:02.410 --> 29:05.092
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a mud up, both officials stood under it.
29:05.712 --> 29:10.517
[SPEAKER_00]: My friend and our Christian minister, thrilled, performing a wedding barefoot.
29:11.665 --> 29:23.189
[SPEAKER_00]: I proceeded down the aisle with my mamas, my maternal uncles, while a string quartet played Puckabelle's canon in D. We set our vows.
29:23.749 --> 29:26.009
[SPEAKER_00]: We did our feras around the sacred fire.
29:26.970 --> 29:28.230
[SPEAKER_00]: We exchanged rings.
29:29.130 --> 29:31.471
[SPEAKER_00]: John tied the mungles who threw around my neck.
29:32.592 --> 29:34.452
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't half and half.
29:35.552 --> 29:37.113
[SPEAKER_00]: It was whole.
29:38.730 --> 29:46.935
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, because John understands symbolism in a way that still moves me, he surprised my parents at the reception.
29:47.555 --> 29:56.340
[SPEAKER_00]: He had commissioned a six-foot ice sculpture of Ganesh, the half-human half-elephant deity who was the remover of obstacles in Hinduism.
29:57.441 --> 30:00.623
[SPEAKER_00]: Six feet, ice, Ganesh.
30:01.363 --> 30:05.465
[SPEAKER_00]: This was 1999 in Metro Atlanta, we had never seen anything like it.
30:09.456 --> 30:11.117
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I learned from our wedding.
30:12.218 --> 30:14.319
[SPEAKER_00]: Blending isn't about dilution.
30:14.920 --> 30:16.241
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about intention.
30:17.201 --> 30:21.224
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about refusing the false choice between yours and mine.
30:22.485 --> 30:25.387
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about doing the harder work of weaving something new.
30:26.447 --> 30:33.292
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's be honest, it would have been easier to choose one tradition and side step to discomfort.
30:34.033 --> 30:37.315
[SPEAKER_00]: But that wouldn't have prepared us for our life together.
30:38.548 --> 30:45.093
[SPEAKER_00]: because marriage, especially across cultures and fates, is not about alternating turns.
30:45.953 --> 30:47.855
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about building a shared language.
30:48.856 --> 30:51.237
[SPEAKER_00]: That ceremony wasn't just a wedding.
30:52.138 --> 31:00.344
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a rehearsal for a lifetime of negotiation, curiosity, compromise, humor, and deep respect.
31:01.805 --> 31:05.308
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's give a moment of silence for the fact
31:09.416 --> 31:21.169
[SPEAKER_00]: Distance forced honesty, honesty forced confrontation, confrontation forced growth, and in the end everyone was happy, including my grandfather.
31:22.491 --> 31:27.797
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, if you can win over the grandfather, you can probably handle just about anything else.
31:33.426 --> 31:35.487
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the third truth about intermarriage.
31:35.827 --> 31:38.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Family acceptance is rarely a one-time event.
31:39.309 --> 31:40.209
[SPEAKER_00]: It's iterative.
31:41.010 --> 31:43.671
[SPEAKER_00]: It's surfaces when you decide how to raise children.
31:44.251 --> 31:45.432
[SPEAKER_00]: What language to teach?
31:46.492 --> 31:50.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether there'll be a baptism, a numcutton, which is a naming ceremony.
31:51.015 --> 31:51.275
[SPEAKER_00]: Both.
31:52.133 --> 31:52.453
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither.
31:53.214 --> 31:56.897
[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed couples often report what sociologists call boundary work.
31:57.317 --> 32:00.420
[SPEAKER_00]: You are constantly negotiating symbolic borders.
32:01.120 --> 32:02.521
[SPEAKER_00]: What traditions are essential?
32:02.982 --> 32:04.003
[SPEAKER_00]: What are negotiable?
32:04.483 --> 32:06.945
[SPEAKER_00]: What are performative versus deeply held?
32:08.066 --> 32:12.549
[SPEAKER_00]: If those negotiations become score-keeping, well, we did devaliate your parents
32:16.339 --> 32:25.161
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they become collaborative and meaning-making, something else happens, you create culture rather than inherited.
32:26.381 --> 32:33.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Interfaith marriages require early, honest conversations and a lot of explicit negotiation.
32:34.123 --> 32:37.244
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't get to rely on unspoken assumptions.
32:38.084 --> 32:40.245
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything has to be said out loud.
32:41.705 --> 32:51.668
[SPEAKER_00]: The strongest interfaith relationships are built when couples really take time to think through and talk through the issues, sometimes years in.
32:53.329 --> 32:55.909
[SPEAKER_00]: So the real work isn't just the conversation.
32:56.290 --> 33:00.391
[SPEAKER_00]: It's staying open to how those answers might evolve.
33:08.705 --> 33:11.586
[SPEAKER_00]: John and I have been together for more than three decades.
33:12.126 --> 33:17.288
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been studying mixed race and mixed faith relationships for almost as long as I've been in one of them.
33:17.869 --> 33:18.949
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what I've learned.
33:19.629 --> 33:24.111
[SPEAKER_00]: The tough conversations at the start can make the relationships stronger over time.
33:24.851 --> 33:26.172
[SPEAKER_00]: If the couple does the work.
33:27.703 --> 33:32.526
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are five principles for communication in a mixed relationship.
33:33.227 --> 33:35.989
[SPEAKER_00]: First, radical awareness and clarity.
33:36.829 --> 33:40.031
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot outsource your identity work to your partner.
33:40.732 --> 33:45.095
[SPEAKER_00]: Each person must decide what is non-negotiable, what is symbolic.
33:45.755 --> 33:51.077
[SPEAKER_00]: Not everyone is ready to take on the challenges and compromises that come with being part of a mixed marriage.
33:51.717 --> 33:55.338
[SPEAKER_00]: Many couples fall in love in spite of race and religion.
33:55.878 --> 34:01.700
[SPEAKER_00]: At a time in their lives when their race and ethnicity or religion didn't seem that important.
34:02.360 --> 34:10.863
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to think about yourself, the beliefs you were raised with, your understanding of God and of your religion, and of what it all means to you.
34:11.990 --> 34:16.534
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you ready to make another religion part of your life from this day forward?
34:17.856 --> 34:24.542
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't do that work individually, you will unconsciously fight for things you don't even fully believe in.
34:30.328 --> 34:33.050
[SPEAKER_00]: Second, explicit communication.
34:34.220 --> 34:38.502
[SPEAKER_00]: Next couples who thrive do not rely on quote, we'll figure it out.
34:39.382 --> 34:45.565
[SPEAKER_00]: They talk early about children, rituals, family, holidays, and money.
34:46.005 --> 34:49.147
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels unromantic, but it is very essential.
34:50.597 --> 35:02.939
[SPEAKER_00]: Faced with sometimes overwhelming task of learning about two fades, dealing with cultural differences and realizing racial dynamics, many couples decide to just cross each bridge as they come to it.
35:03.839 --> 35:15.401
[SPEAKER_00]: This works fine for little things, but for big-life decisions such as naming the children, how important holidays are, will they be celebrated, how will they be celebrated, how your
35:19.762 --> 35:31.150
[SPEAKER_00]: Talking it through beforehand is the only way to head off heartache, resentment, or even feelings of being trapped in a marriage full of unforeseen unhappiness.
35:32.170 --> 35:38.815
[UNKNOWN]: The third principle, shared narrative.
35:43.719 --> 35:50.104
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to build a story, a life, about yourselves that is bigger than difference.
35:50.885 --> 35:53.587
[SPEAKER_00]: This is done every day, every week, every year.
35:53.607 --> 36:01.653
[SPEAKER_00]: A shared narrative is the clue that holds a mixed race or mixed faith relationship together when differences feel sharp.
36:02.454 --> 36:12.381
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the story you consciously choose about who you are as a couple, not just where you came from, but what you're building together.
36:13.162 --> 36:36.495
[SPEAKER_00]: Without that larger frame, life moments, like holidays, rituals, or family disagreements can feel like a tug of war between competing pasts, but when you define yourselves as bridge builders, pluralist, or co-creators of something new, different stops being a threat and becomes part of your shared mission and vision.
36:48.920 --> 36:53.041
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourth, community by design.
36:53.762 --> 36:59.904
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to be intentional about the spaces you build around your family.
37:00.644 --> 37:05.946
[SPEAKER_00]: Interfaith, intercultural families don't just find community.
37:06.526 --> 37:08.067
[SPEAKER_00]: You must create it.
37:09.087 --> 37:15.329
[SPEAKER_00]: You look for social circles where families don't all match, where difference isn't something to explain.
37:15.909 --> 37:17.070
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just normal.
37:18.422 --> 37:23.584
[SPEAKER_00]: where your partnership isn't novel or exotic, it's simply one version of many.
37:25.025 --> 37:31.288
[SPEAKER_00]: And that can mean stretching beyond the friends you grew up with or the circles you would have naturally stayed in.
37:31.868 --> 37:39.312
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, because of your spouse, spaces that once felt easy don't quite fit the same way anymore.
37:40.152 --> 37:41.173
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a failure.
37:41.673 --> 37:45.236
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a signal, especially for children this matters.
37:45.976 --> 37:50.940
[SPEAKER_00]: They need to see other families that don't match in the same ways they don't match.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It gives them language, confidence, and a sense of belonging.
37:57.005 --> 38:04.270
[SPEAKER_00]: When differences normalized early, identity becomes something they inhabit, not something they have to defend.
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[SPEAKER_00]: isolation, amplifies stress, belonging stabilizes it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, there's humility.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You will get it wrong sometimes, you will misjudge tone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The couples who endure are not the ones who avoid mistakes.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They are the ones who repair quickly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I realized our conversations, our struggles, our story, falling in love across race and faith mapped onto something larger.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our story has been part of a broader social transformation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We are living in a moment where identities are less siloed than ever, where children grow up with multiple identities, where pluralism is not theoretical, it's lived at the dinner table, it's lived in our home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mixtracin mixed faith couples are not anomalies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We are what America is becoming.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Just like the challenges our larger American society faces across difference, our marriage is no different.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In our case, love, when paired with intentionality, has allowed us to transform challenges into something generative.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The couples who succeed don't erase difference, they metabolize it, they turn friction into depth, they build a home that does not require shrinking.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in doing so, they model something our divided world desperately needs, intimacy across difference that doesn't demand surrender, only understanding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our story is not unique.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It is American.
39:50.649 --> 39:53.952
[SPEAKER_00]: The children of 1965 immigrants are now adults.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The project of survival has collided with the promise of freedom.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We are living pluralism at the dinner table.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed race and mixed faith couples are not anomalies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We are what America is becoming.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Love alone, though is not enough.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But love paired with intentionality?
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[SPEAKER_00]: that transforms friction into depth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Under Jerusalem's golden light, I fell in love.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In Atlanta's shadow of history, I fought to keep it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And somewhere between preservation and possibility, we built something new.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After a long journey, it felt right, almost easy, until it didn't.
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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's it for this episode of Mixed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for listening.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed was created by me, Dr. Kathy Joshee, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media and Civic Engagement, and Access Mundi Media.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed was produced by Andrew Gill and Bradley O'Neill Sheet, and the original music and engineering by Scott O'Kamoto.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Cari O'Neill Sheet provided production assistance.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Our story editor is Lee Epang.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Mixed was made possible through generous funding from the Henry loose foundation and is made in collaboration with a party and the Under God's project.
