How Black and Asian Couples Are Rewriting Love’s Rules
- Jonah Batambuze
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
“Now, race has never been far from the headlines this year. From the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer, to the election of Kamala Harris as America’s first Black and Indian Vice President has forced many people to take a closer look at their relationships. For many South Asians, dating Black men or women has been a taboo — but that now too is changing.”
That’s how the BBC segment on Black and Indian couples began — the presenter’s voice setting the stage for what would follow. I was listening from my own home, where the crew had come to film my part of the conversation. Hearing “Black and Indian” linked to Harris’s background — and “Black and South Asian” tied to shifting relationship taboos — live to millions felt different from seeing those words in a headline or a post. I use both terms in my work, each carrying its own history, and now embodied in different ways by Harris.
From Lockdown Calls to Wedding Photos
As the segment aired, my mind went to the lockdown months — to the couples trying to keep love alive while navigating cultural resistance on Zoom or WhatsApp, some convinced they were about to be disowned. One called me from a parked car, voice trembling. Back then, their relationships felt as fragile as a dropped signal.
Now, many of those same couples are sending me photos of their weddings, of second babies swaddled in cloth carrying the colours of both their histories. They couldn’t see it at the time, caught in the eye of the storm, but through hundreds of conversations I saw firsthand how a taboo begins to shift into acceptance — and how the space between is where the real work of solidarity lives.
Why Words Matter
“Black and Indian” brings a certain specificity — a narrower, more pointed descriptor. But, as I learned from other couples I’ve worked with, the realities are broader: a Pakistani and Jamaican couple, a Sri Lankan and Congolese couple. In those moments, the term becomes “Black and South Asian.” For obvious reasons that distinction matters. They’re tired of everything being reduced to “Indian,” and they want their own identities recognised on their own terms.
Different words. Overlapping histories. The same negotiations of love, family, and belonging.
The Talk Before the Talk
Around that time, I began running a series of workshops to help couples prepare for the moment they would introduce their partner to their family — what I called the talk before the talk. In my interview with Psychology Today, I spoke about why this matters: for some South Asians, introducing a Black partner isn’t just a cultural hurdle, it’s a high-stakes negotiation with history, stigma, and the risk of being cut off entirely.
Couples described months of secrecy, or the heartbreak of living a double life. These aren’t just awkward moments; they can erode mental health and self-worth. The workshops became a way to rehearse those conversations in a safe space, and eventually grew into The Talk Before the Talk — a downloadable guide giving couples language, strategy, and confidence for one of the most challenging conversations they’ll ever have.
A Cinematic Parallel
I keep thinking about Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury walking across the beach in Mississippi Masala — a love story born in the shadow of the 1972 expulsion of Asians from Uganda. In another frame, the weight of exile, migration, and desire collides on a motel bedspread in Mississippi, of all places. Back then, their pairing felt like an anomaly to some, though around the world many were already living this reality.
Today, the couples I work with are living that story in real time, still negotiating the same histories, the same taboos.
When Love Meets Resistance
The difference now is the medium. During lockdown, many had to navigate their relationships at a time when meeting in person was difficult, when conversations happened through the flicker of a phone screen — love pixelated, paused by poor signal, or interrupted by the ping of a family group chat.
In these conversations, history shows up quietly:
In the way a parent invokes “what people will say” without naming the people.
In the comparisons to other couples who fit a family’s idea of acceptable.
In the silence that follows when someone challenges those ideas.
Representation isn’t the same as resolution. Seeing yourself on a screen can plant a seed. Living it in your own home — with your own family’s expectations — takes a different kind of courage.
Cycles I’ve Witnessed
Refusal. Rejection. Unresolved tension. Acceptance. Reconciliation. I’ve seen this cycle play out countless times. Parents refusing to believe their children’s intent because of what extended family back home might say — masking wider issues of anti-Blackness, casteism, and purity.
Some couples are disowned and never reconcile, even 15 years later. Others are raising kids completely apart from their immediate families. Sometimes, grandkids bring people back together. For a few, reconciliation comes slowly, through conversation. There’s no public record of these private negotiations for Black and South Asian couples — no shared archive of the strain, resilience, and compromise it takes to stay together.
Solidarity here isn’t abstract. It’s in the choice to show up for each other’s rituals, to defend each other in family disputes, to blend traditions in ways that honour both sides — even when no one is watching.
Why I Created This Guide
Over the years, I’d get emails now and then — sometimes from couples, sometimes from one partner — asking for advice on how to navigate the talk. Sometimes I’d hear back, months later, with a wedding photo or news of a reconciliation. Other times, I’d be left wondering what happened to them altogether.
I also didn’t have the capacity to speak with everyone in the way I wanted, so it felt logical to create something people could work through at their own pace. That’s how The Talk Before the Talk came to life — a survival kit for love drawn from the same workshops that have helped hundreds of Black x Brown couples since 2020.
From Broadcast to Ongoing Work
I think back to that morning in my kitchen, the BBC crew adjusting lights, the presenter’s voice carrying “Black and Indian” and “Black and South Asian” into homes across the country. In that moment, those words felt both ordinary and historic, a headline and a promise.
Since then, I’ve watched taboos bend, couples move from secrecy to celebration, families fracture and — sometimes — come back together. The arc isn’t always neat. Some stories stall in the middle, unresolved. Others take unexpected turns. All of them add to a growing record of what it means to love across these lines in our lifetime.
This is the work of the BlindianProject — not just documenting the journey, but making space for it. Whether it’s a conversation around a kitchen table, a workshop rehearsal before meeting the family, or the quiet daily choice to keep showing up for each other, we’re building an archive of possibility.
If you’re living this story — or know someone who is — share your story, join a workshop, or simply start with The Talk Before the Talk. Every photo, every conversation, every small act of defiance brings us closer to rewriting the ending.
Jonah Batambuze is a, Ugandan-American interdisciplinary artist and founder of the BlindianProject, a global platform remixing Black x Brown identity through art, history, and storytelling. His work moves across installation, film, writing, and education—challenging systems of erasure while building new cultural blueprints.
Batambuze speaks and facilitates internationally on topics including Black South Asian solidarity, caste and colonial legacies, diasporic memory, and cultural resistance.
For speaking engagements, workshops, or media inquiries, contact: jonah@blindian-project.com or visit jonahbatambuze.com/speaking
Comments