Flesh of my flesh

My wife and I are not an interracial couple. Our marriage isn’t a union between two individuals of different races. We do not have an interracial marriage—just a marriage.

In marriage, one plus one equals one. The Bible says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

The Bible says Adam and Eve became one flesh because they have the same flesh. Eve was made from Adam’s flesh.

In other words, Adam and Eve became one because they share the same identity. That identity is the same race—the same humanity.

We don’t know what Adam and Eve looked like. They may have had different types of hair, different shapes of eyes, or different shades of skin. But whatever their difference, they shared the same race.

That’s also true for their descendants—all humanity. No matter our differences, we share the same flesh and the same race.

Though I’m black and my wife is white, we are one race—we are one. There is only one race in our marriage, not two. Our marriage isn’t interracial; there’s no such thing. 

In a sense, there were no “interracial marriages” before the Atlantic slave trade. The modern concept of “race” wasn’t developed until the so-called Enlightenment in the 17th century. The definition of “race” today comes from pseudoscientific theories from what is called scientific racism.

Before the 17th century, “race” was mostly used to describe a person’s nationality or religion, not physical characteristics. Through scientific racism, however, European scientists constructed a new meaning of “race” to justify white supremacy, slavery, and colonialism.

They divided people into multiple races based strictly on physical characteristics, especially skin color. They reasoned that just as humans have dominion over animals, the “white” race has dominion over less developed races, especially the “black” race.

Scientists today do not believe there is a scientific justification for racism. However, through the prevailing definition of “race” and the concept of “interracial marriage,” scientific racism’s un-Biblical and unscientific conclusions persist.

My wife’s race isn’t white, and my race isn’t black. My race—her race—is human. We share the same race. And therefore, when we have children one day, they won’t be mixed-race or bi-racial. They’ll have the same race as their father and mother: human.

This understanding of race is crucial for our marriage. If my wife and I believed we were two different races, it would create segregation in our marriage.

We would blame our differences on our races. Like white supremacists or critical race theorists, we would believe we are incompatible. It would create barriers to unity in our marriage. Since race is an unchangeable identity, we would have no hope for change or compromise in our marriage.

However, since we understand that we’re in an intercultural marriage instead of an interracial marriage—we have a healthy marriage. This is because although race is an unmalleable identity, culture is malleable.

In other words, we can’t change our race. But we can change our culture. My differences with my wife are differences in culture, not race. Therefore, we’re confident we’ll overcome our cultural differences through compromise.

I’m learning how to compromise some of my Ghanaian Canadian culture for her sake, and she’s learning how to compromise some of her Midwest American culture for my sake.

Nevertheless, though we do not share the same culture, we share the same race. Though we do not share the same ethnicity, we share the same ancestry in Adam and Eve. And more than that, our skin color doesn’t shape our race—it’s shaped by the image of our Creator.

God made Adam and Eve in His image, and He made Eve from Adam’s flesh. So, what Adam said about Eve is what I say about my wife: “She is flesh of my flesh.” My wife and I share the same race.

This isn’t an interracial marriage.