“We had to learn to pay no mind to other people,” Mandy Connor said.

“If they have a problem with it, it can remain their problem not ours.” The Connors have been together since 1998 and married for 10 years.

Ed and Naiah Holsey walked into her sister’s engagement party, hoping no one would make a scene about them being hand-in-hand. “That was two years ago, which means we were married for 10 years when that happened,” Naiah Holsey said. National race issues create stress Naiah Holsey, 52, and Ed Holsey, 58, said any relationship can have stress, but an interracial marriage adds pressure.

I guess it was kind of different for him because he grew up in Charlotte, which use to be KKK central and I would say my dad was affected by those views,” Lea said.

“And they still couldn’t accept that I married a black man.” Interracial, opposite-sex married couple households grew from 7 percent in 2000 to 10 percent in 2010, according to the U. The couple lives in Detroit, where she works as an Allstate insurance agent and he owns a Jet’s Pizza in Southfield.

“When incidents happen where an officer kills an unarmed black man or even when there aren’t Amber Alerts put out on black children, it’s a huge deal to me because it hits home,” Ed Holsey said.

“My wife definitely gets bothered by things like this too, but her take on it is that police officers shouldn’t carry guns or every missing child should get an Amber Alert.

I feel like she tries not to make anything about race, when race plays a role in the problem.” Laura Alimayu, 29, and Husani Alimayu, 30, from Townsend, Massachusetts, have been together for seven years and married for almost five. Husani Alimayu said race-based events are troubling to him and his wife, but their relationship isn’t negatively affected by it.