WaPo | When Gaye Clark prayed to God to send her daughter Anna a “godly, kind” husband, she got exactly what she asked for.
Glenn
was a devout Christian who volunteered at church, mentoring kids in an
after-school program. By day, he worked as an applications developer for
Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and he was well on his way to becoming “a
great dad and a good provider,” Clark said.
Glenn was a
gentleman, too. Clark noticed that he’d hold doors open for Anna, even
at the grocery store. Her daughter seemed happy, she said.
But there was one thing the 53-year-old mother was hung up on: Glenn was a black man with dreadlocks.
Clark,
a white freelance writer and cardiac care nurse from Georgia, confessed
in a blog post Tuesday on the website the Gospel Coalition, or TGC,
that she initially struggled with the idea of her daughter marrying an
African American man. In it, she explained how she ultimately came to
embrace her daughter’s decision, and offered some advice for parents
like her to consider if they, too, are hesitant about a child’s
interracial marriage.
The post, titled “When God Sends Your White Daughter a Black Husband,” has
since been taken down from the website, but not before receiving a hail
of criticism from readers online, many of whom called it tone-deaf,
un-Christian and downright racist.
