Utah: the land of acceptance?

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As you should know by now, I have a lot of African and African-American friends. It has been brought to my attention lately, that racism still is relevant in Utah- just maybe not how most people would think. I have dated a couple of men who are black and they have really given me an inside look on how they feel about how they are viewed.

Racism in the typical sense would be referred to as someone looking down on another race, but I’ve seen the focus to be more on just treating someone differently- even more positively.

Every time my boyfriend (who is black) and I would go somewhere we would always seem to get some kind of reaction. People would tell us how cute we were together and sometimes make comments later to me about how we should get married because we would have beautiful children. These are all nice things to say but still not something that is as commonly said to me when I am dating a person who is white. My boyfriend would complain that he didn’t want to go to parties where he didn’t know anyone, not because no one would like him but, because everyone would look at him and wonder who he was and where he came from and then make it a point to go talk to him. I laughed when I saw this actually happen (at a party where I knew no one either). I walked away from him for one second, and turned around to see a crowd of people literally surrounding him.

I can see how this attention can be annoying but I know most people are just curious because, lets face it, Utah is not very diverse.