Out of Darkness: From a Family in the KKK to Marrying a Muslim Man

And finally, we meet Shyanna Rashid, a young woman who struggled with her family being in the KKK, rebelled against them, and then married a Middle Eastern Muslim man. Here’s Shyanna. Growing up, I didn’t know

my extended family from my mom’s side. Most of the information, if not all, the information that I got was from stories that she told me. And I remember from a very young age these really colorful stories of wizards and knights keeping neighborhoods safe, and it gave me a sense

of pride in what my family was. The stories that my mom was telling me were positive, and I just didn’t know better. Once I hit about age ten, I remember going through a box of belongings from my mother’s childhood,

and I remembered back to the stories, and I was really excited to get to see pictures of my mom when she was little, and we were going through it, and I saw a couple of things. I saw some Clan flags, some cups, some wooden chalices that had

KKK carved into them. Still didn’t really think anything of it. I still didn’t fully understand what the KKK was, what our connection to it was. And then, as we were looking through, I found a four-by-six photo, and it was of a man in a Clan outfit with the hood, and he was standing next to a woman that was in blackface, and she had a noose around

her neck, lightly around her neck, and he was holding it up, and I could tell the woman was smiling. And initially, just seeing the picture, first off, I felt nauseous. I knew that this picture was bad. Nothing about this picture was good. I didn’t need any context in it.

And so, hoping that it was some type of mistake, I gave it to my mom and I asked her what it was, and she smiled. And I immediately remember thinking what an odd reaction to such a disturbing photo, to smile. And then she goes on to tell me that it was her mom and dad, and they had

dressed up for a Halloween Clan meeting, and they had actually won prizes for their costume because everybody loved it so much. And that was the first time that I remember digging a little bit deeper into the stories that I heard growing up, and I asked her, “Well, so,

then what is the KKK?” Because now she’s talking about how they were in the Clan and all these meetings, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that these are the same stories that she was proud of. And she gives me a little bit of backstory about how the KKK was this group of white Protestants

who were trying to keep their race alive and to keep their race safe. She gave me an example of a black family that had moved into a house in her neighborhood, and it posed a threat to her father and the other Clan members. They were not happy that

this family had moved in, and to run them out, they spray-painted the N-word across their lawn, on their car, on their garage door. When that didn’t work, they started burning crosses on their front lawn until eventually that family moved out. And she told me that story

and kind of looked at me like that was a complete explanation. But I was still confused, and so I asked her, “Well, why is it bad for a black family to move into your neighborhood? Where’s the fear in that? Why is that bad?” And she said, “You know, there’s

black people and then there’s N-words. And once a black family moves into your neighborhood, then it’s just a matter of time before another one does, and then before you know it, your neighborhood is the new ghetto, and it’s filled with drug and crime.” And I was like,

“What does that have to do with them being black?” That’s when she went into her whole explanation of the difference between black people and N-words. And I said, “Well, then, how do you know what type of black person they were? If all they did was move in and just them

moving in was bad enough, were they N-words? Did you get to know them?” The conversation started to feel a little bit hostile. My mom was kind of shocked that I was not receiving information with joy like she

was sending it. And that was kind of the first time that I realized that I don’t think I agree with my mom on some things that I think are pretty important. And after that, the topic of race is something that I kind of avoided because it made me uncomfortable, just knowing that I disagreed so strongly. We weren’t

going to get to an agreement, and I was not in a position of any type of power to change her mind. So it was really something that I tried to avoid altogether. I avoided it for the most part,

but sometimes it would boil up and become too much to handle. I remember I was probably about fifteen years old, and there was a news report on the TV that there had been a crime, and they were looking for a suspect, and the suspect just so happened to be black, and they put up his picture, and it just was

another news story. I didn’t think anything of it, but it had ignited another conversation about race, and my mom and my stepdad were just kind of bouncing off of each other these hateful comments in regards to black people in general, and giving this specific news story as an

example as to why black people are dangerous, why black people do not hold jobs, why they do drugs, they commit crimes, and this is the proof. And it shocked me, and so I let them speak, and then I kind of raised my hand and was like, “Can I chime in?”

And I could tell immediately my mom knew I wasn’t going to chime in with anything that she was going to agree with. And I said, “All these things that you’re saying that black people do, I’ve seen white people do. So what’s the reasoning that white people commit crimes and

do drugs?” The whole atmosphere changed, and then all of a sudden, it was all eyes on me. “How dare you compare us to black people? Well, you tell me that my biological father, who is white, is a drug addict. You don’t work. So you’re saying these things, and I’m

seeing similarities in behavior between white and black people. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with skin color. Maybe it goes deeper.” Almost immediately, the conversation was shut down. I was sent to my room, I was grounded, I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. It was basically boiled

down to the fact that I was young and naive and uneducated, and that is why I was spewing these quote unquote “half-truths.” Along that same year, I was a freshman in high school. I finally started, you know, getting interest in boys, and I wanted to start dating.

And it was always a rule, “You have to ask before you’re allowed to date. There’s things that we need to talk about, go over, blah, blah, blah.” So I bring up the conversation. I say, “You know, there’s a boy I have a crush on. I would, you know, I think he might ask me to be his girlfriend, and I really want to say yes. So let’s have

this conversation.” And while I thought the conversation was going to be about safe sex and relationships, it wasn’t. My mom sat me down and said, “You cannot date a black boy.” “Well, why? What if he’s really nice? What

if he’s, you know, really handsome and really funny?” “No, you cannot bring home a black boy. If you bring home a black boy, I’ll disown you. You won’t be able to live in this house if you date a black man.” I mean, I was speechless. I wasn’t surprised,

but that’s when I knew, “Okay, so if I do want to do this, then it’s going to have to be done in secret.” So at that point, you know, my mom was kind of waiting. “Oh, I thought you had this boy that you had a crush on. I thought you were going to bring him over.” I lied. “No, he turns out he didn’t like me; he liked somebody else.”

When in reality, it was a black boy, and I had to date him in secret, and he wanted to know, “Why don’t we ever go over and hang out at your house? You know? I had like a trampoline and a pool. Why don’t we go, you know, hang out, go swimming?” And I would just—I would have to lie,

“It’s really messy, I don’t really like my house, and I’m not allowed to have anybody over.” In reality, I truly had to hide this person from my family because I was afraid of not only what they would do to me, but what they would do to him if they found out that he was black. So, at seventeen,

because of other disagreements—I disagreed on many different things with my mom—I was kicked out. I was still in high school, and I started staying with one of my best friends, and her and her family were from India. And it was the first time in my life that

I felt no anxiety about how I saw the world. I felt no fear in expressing my affection towards other people despite their color, and I quickly realized this was the best thing to happen to me. Living under a

roof that was filled with such hateful conversations was weighing on me, and I didn’t—I didn’t even realize that I could live without that experience. I didn’t realize that I could come home to a situation that didn’t make me want to vomit. And this family that I moved

in with—for I lived with them for about a year. They fully accepted me. They never, not once, made me question or feel like I was different from them or they were different from me. They allowed me into their religious worship in their temple, and they showed me their culture,

and they let me kind of take their culture as my own. And that’s when I knew, “There are other people in the world that don’t see color as a bad thing, and those are the people that I need to surround myself with because those are the people that make me feel good.” So that’s what I continued to do.

I had friends and romantic relationships of every which color, every which gender, and I felt happy. I felt normal. I didn’t have to hide anything, I wasn’t being talked down to about anything. I was finally able to surround myself with people that thought like me. That almost immediately

removed all hateful conversation from my life. In 2012, I met my husband. We worked together in a retail store, and I immediately had a crush on him. I

thought he was like Arab or Middle Eastern, and I just thought it was so exotic, and I was like, “Oh, I just have to talk to him.” And so I eventually kind of warmed up to him, and he never asked about my family in detail. I just told him, “There isn’t a family. It’s just me. That’s it.” In reality,

I was not in contact with them, and even if I was, I would not have been able to bring him home. And he did offer for me to meet his family, and I resisted. And the reason I resisted was because I was scared that the own prejudice that I grew up with in my family—I thought that

was normal, and I thought that his family was going to judge me for not being the same culture that they were, for not being the same religion. They’re from Kurdistan, which is like a little governance in Iraq, and they were Muslim, although they didn’t practice it, quote unquote. That

was their fundamental belief system, and I didn’t share that with them. I was still very active in Hinduism. I still really believed in that, and I was just kind of this like free-spirit hippie, and I didn’t think that they would accept me. I thought that they would be upset that their son was dating a white woman, and I didn’t want to ruin a good thing. So

it took me three years before I finally felt confident enough in what my husband was saying, that his family doesn’t care, and they already know I’m white. It doesn’t matter. And so I started to get to know them, and it was amazing. They never brought it up in a negative light that I was white. They only asked once

if I was interested in converting to Muslim, and that was when we were getting married, and when I said no, that was the last conversation. Never even thought to bring it up again. And they fully accepted me for who I was, despite the fact that I was different from them. And it was a shock almost because I didn’t realize

it could be like this in family dynamics, that they really could just not care who their children love as long as they treat them well. Around this time, maybe a little bit before, my stepdad had started to reach out to me again, and he held different views than my mom. He was not as strict, he didn’t have

the same harsh upbringing, he didn’t have any connection to the Clan or anything like that, and he himself had friends that were black or Puerto Rican or a different race. So I knew he was more understanding and forgiving and accepting than my mom. So he reached out, I think

with the hopes that reconnecting with him would help me reconnect with my mom. But unfortunately, our problems were just kind of far too deep, and we were both just so unwavering in our decisions and in our thoughts. We couldn’t make up. But my stepdad kind of entered my life a little bit. I kept him at an arm’s length, and everything was fine. I eventually introduced him to

my husband a little bit before we got married, and his reaction was fine. Initially, he had a little bit of hesitation, and he asked me, “You know, where’s he from? What religion is he?” And when I told him, he said, “You know, you really need to be careful. Muslim men like to control their women. He’s going to take

some of your freedoms away.” And I just stopped him right there, and I said, “You’re misunderstanding his culture, and you’re assuming that these radical beliefs are standard, and they’re not. That’s what you see on TV. His family is not like that. I have been with him for three years, three and a half years. I’m still this crazy hippie

that I just do whatever I want. I’m covered in tattoos, I have piercings. He doesn’t control me. You’re misunderstanding, and you just kind of need to take a step back and realize that people are not the way that you think that they are.” And he said, “Okay, all right, I’m sorry,” and he never brought it up again. And

he continued to see my husband, and they hung out, and they spent time together, and he really grew to have a fondness for him and all that. He treated me well and he took care of me when I needed it, when I was sick, when I had my surgeries. You know, my husband was right there by my side. So in 2016, when we were getting married, we knew we were going to have a very small, non-

denominational wedding. We held different views on religion, and we didn’t want our wedding to be about that. We wanted it to just be about us, and we knew we only wanted our immediate family there. So when I told my stepdad, he received it positively. He was very happy. He said, “You know, Z is a great guy. He

treats you really well. I’m really happy for you.” So I invited him and my sister to the wedding because I was fairly confident that it was not going to end in a racial debate. And I was right. It was great. We took everybody out to eat after our wedding, and afterwards, my stepdad actually gave me the money

back for the meal, and kind of looking back, I think he felt some guilt. He saw how close I was to my now in-laws, and I didn’t have that relationship with him and my mom, and my husband didn’t have that relationship with him and my mom, and he knew it was because of their views. He could

tell right then and there I was keeping them out at arm’s length. It wasn’t just, “Shy is a private person. Shy, he doesn’t open up and, you know, talk about things.” It was, “She’s keeping us out for a reason.” And I think he saw that that day when he saw me interacting with my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law,

and I was just hugging them and telling them I loved them and stuff, and so that really was, I think, a really big eye-opener. I assumed he had told my mom who I was marrying and what their beliefs were, but I didn’t hear anything about it until 2018, a little bit after my mom had passed.

We still had not reconnected at all, and my sister was talking about my wedding, and I just kind of asked her, I said, “You know, did Mom know? What did she think?” And she was like, “I wasn’t going to tell you because it was so rude. But Mom did say, ‘Shy needs to watch out, you know, marrying

a Muslim. The first time they get into an argument, he’s going to throw acid on her.'” I want to say I was surprised, but I wasn’t. But I was kind of hurt to have somebody say something like that about my husband when they don’t even know him. But I knew that us reconnecting would not have been an option,

and I was going to choose my beliefs and my relationship over hate. So if I wanted to love him, if I wanted to marry him and be with him, I couldn’t have reconnected with my mom. It just would not have been possible. It would not have been good for my mental health. I did not want to subject

him to that, or my stepdaughter to that. I did not want them to ever feel attacked because of somebody that I introduced them to. Eventually, as time went on and I got older, I realized if I continued to

carry this hate in my heart for the way that my family, for example, viewed the world, I was no better than them. Even if somebody holds different views than you, if you continue to spread hate, you are doing the

same harm that they are, but with different intentions, and your intentions don’t necessarily make something positive. The racial views that my mom had were very deep-seated, and I do think as she got older she may have struggled

with them a little bit more, questioning them, seeing how the world was changing. But unfortunately, some people are unable to overcome the fact that they may have been wrong in something that they felt so strongly about, and sometimes

it kind of has to be accepted. I was not able to change the way that my mom viewed the world.