By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer
Black love is beautiful and transcends attempts to limit it and fit it into nice, neat boxes only to be brought out on special occasions. Black love is a special occasion all its own.
With Valentine’s Day gone and Black History Month just ended, The OBSERVER highlights DeAngelo Mack and Dr. Shani Buggs, the last of four area couples it sat down with to talk about the power of Black love and modeling healthy relationships for their families and the wider community.
Quality Time
DeAngelo Mack was the first person Dr. Shani Buggs got to know upon arriving in Sacramento in 2018. After he impressed her mother, the two have built a relationship on communication, transparency and defining their own thing.
“He was a kind, caring individual from the start,” Dr. Buggs recalls.
“When I met her, I was like, ‘Man, this woman is brilliant,’” Mack says of his now partner., who holds a Ph.D. and MPH and specializes in public health and epidemiology.
“We became fast friends and we hung out a lot and got to know each other as friends and really built a solid friendship,” Dr. Buggs says.
They both work in intervention and prevention of gun violence. She’s a UC Davis researcher and he’s director of equity justice for Public Health Advocates.
“I just thought she was one of those folks who led with her heart, thought about community first and people first,” Mack says. “That’s something that’s dear to me as well, someone who cares for others and kind of puts others before themselves. She embodied all of those things, and of course, she was beautiful.”
The two stay busy, but consciously make time for themselves.
“DeAngelo was intentional about that, more so than I was,” Dr. Buggs says. “My career here in Sacramento has the potential to pull me in and keep me stretched and preoccupied with the work. So we have date night once a week. That is an intentional time where we make time for each other.
“We have to be deliberate about not letting the work consume us,” she continues. “We also have to be intentional about taking vacations and getting in mini getaways. … When we do that, we do our best to not take our computers or be connected to work while we’re there.”
Mack loves the mountains and Dr. Buggs is fond of bodies of water.
“We take trips to the ocean, trips to the woods, so that we can get away and connect with each other. It’s always great when we do that because we’re able to reenergize the relationship,” she says.
The two also use lessons from previous relationships to strengthen their bond. While Dr. Buggs has never been married and has no children, Mack has two ex-wives and four daughters.
“I got married when I was very young,” he says. “I hadn’t even turned 21 yet. I was a baby trying to understand what marriage meant and what love meant. Then I was married again at 35. I think the lessons that come from marriage and divorce are knowing what you need and what you want.”
As a self-proclaimed “people person,” Mack says he tends to put other people before himself.
“This relationship has got me to learn to look at what I need and what I desire,” he says. “Shani does a really good job of allowing me to be me, which is much different than all my other relationships. … That’s one of the reasons why marriage didn’t work for me then, because I was young and I didn’t understand how to articulate my needs and the things that could move me into a place where I was satisfied in those relationships.”
He was jaded and she was cautious. She didn’t run, however, when Mack said he’d been married twice.
“I have been in relationships where there’s dishonesty, where you’re either hiding information or omitting information, because one person is not sure of how the other person will take the information that is being hidden or lied about,” she says.
“I was tired of all of that. The idea that you can’t tell your partner where you’ve been or who you’ve been with, or that you’re not interested in monogamy, or whatever the case may be, the fact that people aren’t honest and don’t give the other partner agency and autonomy to make the choice that works best for them was something that I was over.”
They had that conversation very early on.
“This is a choice,” Dr. Buggs says. “I don’t have to be here. You don’t have to be here, so we can continue to have that conversation and check in and say, ‘Is this working for you? Is it working for me? What’s not working?’ Our friendship was foundational to our relationship, so when we have those conversations, we can have them honestly, because it really is out of care and love for the human that the other person is.”
Mutual respect and a commitment to honesty has been critical to the couple’s vibe. And as long as they’re on the same page, they don’t feel the pressure to put labels on their situation, move in together or get married on other people’s timetables.
“Our decision right now to be in a relationship with each other, to be partners without concerns about, ‘Well, are we going to get married? When are we going to get married? What’s coming next?’ is really about living in the moment and being honest about what’s working for us. Right now, this is absolutely working for us,” Dr. Buggs says.
Now You’re Speaking My Language
Dr. Buggs and Mack recognize each other’s love language.
“Some of my friends would differ with me on this,” she says. “They say that ‘words of affirmation’ is my love language. But I think, really, it’s about ‘quality time’. I think DeAngelo’s is similar. He’s a Cancer. I’m a Virgo, whatever that means to anybody. But one of the things that I think we both complement each other on well is that we like to please the other person. We like to spend time with each other, we like to make the other person happy. We’re committed to that, so the quality of acts of service, both of those are our ways that we show up for each other.”
“Quality time is probably the biggest reciprocal type of love language that we have,” Mack says. “I think we also understand that quality time doesn’t necessarily mean to be together. Quality time also means, ‘When can we be apart so that we can rejuvenate, or whatnot?’ We like our alone time as well because in that alone time, you can hear yourself, you can hear your thoughts. When I’m with Shani, I’m dedicated to Shani. I want to make sure she’s good and happy, so having some time by myself to re-equip my tool belt or figure out what I need at the moment is important and I know that’s something that’s important for her as well.”
Dr. Buggs echoes Mack’s sentiment.
“A lot of my job is working with other people, talking to other people, I’m in a lot of meetings, I spend a lot of time engaging other people, so replenishing my cup means being quiet and alone a lot of times and we can do that together. It’s beautiful that we can spend time together and be quiet and physically be near each other, doing whatever we need to do for ourselves to replenish our own cups.”
Dr. Buggs and Mack shared what Black love means to them.
“Black love is enveloping, healing; it’s protective,” she says. “It’s a reflection of our ancestors.”
“Black love is vibranium to the world and for me it means so much,” he says. “Shani loving me as a Black woman, it is a special, powerful gift. There are things that I’m able to go to her and share that she just understands because she’s a Black woman and vice versa.
“Black love in general is so transformative,” Mack continued. “I honestly think that’s why we’re the most oppressed people because our love can transform this very world if it’s allowed to be unleashed. That’s how I feel about Shani. She lavishes me and unleashes her love on me.”
This is the fourth and final installment of our “Relationship Goals” mini-series highlighting local Black couples and their love stories. For the previous couples and bonus content on those featured in “Relationship Goals,” visit SacObserver.com for special video presentations by OBSERVER Visuals Editor Louis Bryant III.