Kamala Harris' marriage could challenge a racial taboo

(CNN)Nikki Buskirk was watching vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff wave to supporters at an Election Night celebration in November when the future second gentleman did something that made Buskirk glow with admiration.

The couple had just taken the stage in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, when red, white, and blue fireworks suddenly exploded in the evening sky. Buskirk says she watched as Emhoff instinctively stepped toward Harris to protect her.

That gesture touched Buskirk because her marriage had set off some fireworks of its own. She's a proud Black woman and Black Lives Matter activist who had violated an unwritten rule in the Black community -- thou shalt not date or marry White men.

The Ohio woman had been told all her life she was supposed to marry a strong Black man and build a strong Black family. But then she met Tyler Buskirk, a self-assured White man who shared her love of "The Phantom of the Opera" and Dungeons & Dragons. Their marriage shocked some members of both of their families, and Buskirk says she's gotten plenty of icy, "how-could-you?" stares from Black women and men in public.

Seeing Emhoff rush to protect Harris, though, reminded her not of what she's endured but what she's gained -- a man who is ready to defend her, no matter what comes their way.

Nikki and Tyler Buskirk of Columbus, Ohio, with their three sons: Sawyer, 10; Oliver, 7; and Silas, 3.

"He's my rock to come home to after fighting the world, my shield when it becomes too much, and my crusader when I can't get through," says Buskirk, 37. The pair live in Columbus, Ohio, where she works in a ministry at a local United Methodist Church.

"When I see Vice President Harris and her husband, I see us."

Will more Black women begin to see the same potential for romantic love with White men? Harris' next four years in the White House could help provide an answer.

The power of Harris' example

Harris is the first female, Black and South Asian vice president of the United States, but she could also become another type of pioneer. She could inspire some Black women to reexamine a racial taboo that has shaped many of their private lives.

Harris has so far shared few private details about her marriage to Emhoff, a lawyer. They were set up on a blind date in 2013, when Harris was California's attorney general, and married a year later.

Harris did briefly respond to criticism of her marriage to a White man in a 2019 radio interview.

"Look, I love my husband, and he happened to be the one that I chose to marry, because I love him -- and that was that moment in time, and that's it," Harris said. "And he loves me."

As President Barack Obama's mere presence in the White House provoked discussions on biracial identity and Black marriage, Harris' marriage could lead more Black women to talk openly about this taboo, one scholar says.

Then-Sen. Kamala Harris and husband Douglas Emhoff wave during the SF Pride Parade on June 30, 2019, in San Francisco.

"I think there is potential, but it depends on how public or private she is about her marriage," says Dianne M. Stewart, author of "Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage."

"If she decides to talk about this aspect of her life and enters conversations about it or allows the broader public to have information about her own journey, it could influence Black women's thinking," says Stewart, an associate professor of religion and African American studies at Emory University in Atlanta.

She could even change long-held views in the Black community. One White House predecessor might even serve as a role model. Obama helped shift support for same-sex marriage among African Americans when he became the first President to say same-sex couples should be allowed to get married.

Why some Black women won't marry White men

Many Black women have traditionally shunned White men for a variety of reasons. Some say they can't be with a White man because he wouldn't understand what it's like to experience racism. Others say they owe it to their race to marry Black men and build healthy Black families.

Yet other Black women cite more personal reasons for staying away from White men. They say being with a White man evokes memories of how White plantation owners and others sexually abused Black women during slavery and colonization. They're afraid of being treated as hypersexualized caricatures. (Some Asian women are wary of being with White men for some of the same reasons as Black women.)

Serena Williams and her husband Alexis Ohanian arrive for the wedding ceremony of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on May 19, 2018, in Windsor, England.

"I haven't completely reached the point where I can confidently order an Oreo ice cream swirl without some White guy telling me it 'looks like us,' but regardless of the number of 'I love the color of your skin' and 'cream to your coffee' messages that flood my DMs, determining whether a man is fetishizing me or not is not up to the discretion of White people," Kendall Tiarra wrote in a recent essay titled, "Am I a Fetish or Just the Prettiest Girl in the Room?"

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Some Black women reduce their reluctance to dating White men to one thought -- it's too much work. For example, they don't want to expend energy teaching White men about racism or dealing with derogatory comments from friends, family and others.

Shamontiel L. Vaughn, a writer and editor, says she's open to dating White men, but 90% of the men she has dated are Black. She published an essay last year, "Dating Black women: interracial dating gone right and wrong," in which she explained why so many Black women shun dating White men.

Vaughn described what she and other Black women experienced on interracial dates: non-Black men who fetishized their bodies, raised the topic of race when it wasn't necessary, or tried too hard "to copy every single element of Black men" because they "watched too much BET."

When Vaughn dates White men, she chooses those who have dated Black women before. She cites one White man she dated who "was just cool."

Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, have faced intense scrutiny over their marriage.

"By the time he met me, he had dated a bunch of Black women. It wasn't new to him -- like me putting a hair wrap on my head was no big deal," she says. "He didn't ask what it was. He didn't ask why I oiled my hair. He had already been broken in."

Nikki Buskirk is familiar with many of these arguments. She once believed some of them. She says some in her family raised her with the expectation that she would marry a Black man because such unions helped build strong Black families and strengthened their race.

Some of them objected to her dating Tyler and thought she was going through a phase. She experienced some nagging guilt at the time but overcame it.

They've now been married for 17 years and have three sons, ages 10, 7 and 3.

"He treats me like a queen," she says. "I can't let guilt ruin the love we have and the love we built."