It’s the 40th anniversary of the decision that ended one of the last slave laws – the criminalization of mixed race marriages. NPR’s John Ridley:
In 1912, Congressman Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia tried to introduce an amendment to the Constitution banning such unions. To his colleagues in Congress, he lectured:
“It is contrary and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. … No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes everywhere the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America.”
Aren’t you glad we’re living in a time when politicians don’t use relationships between consenting adults as wedge issues?
Indeed. Ridley goes on to note that this anniversary is particularly important because we may very well have our first president who is not only African American, but is the product of a marriage that, just 40 years ago, was considered criminal in many states.
TheFountainHead
Ironic that you should post something so optimistic the day after Fox News labels Michelle Obama as “Obama’s Baby Momma”. We’ve come far, but we seemed to have dragged most of our feces along with us.
El Cid
You probably should explain that you’re referring to a Supreme Court decision in which the plaintiffs’ last name (and before marriage the husband’s last name) was actually Loving, as in Mildred & Richard Loving Vs. The State of Virginia.
Eural Joiner
But homosexual marriage is different…because…well, it is….
On a serious note, I have friends who are steadfastly against the gay marriage thing but have yet to hear one real, actual detailed explanation as to exactly how such marriage would harm our society/economy/government. Like Roddenberry’s quote above it always revolves around some vague moral “reasoning” that never amounts to much in terms of the real world.
4tehlulz
TheFountainHead beat me to it. I actually agree with Josh about being surprised about being surprised at Fox’s descent into the abyss.
SGEW
Happy Loving day, y’all!
Speaking as an end result of this SCOTUS decision (in my own, ethnically/genetically diverse way), I’m once again astounded at the fact that it used to be “Constitutional” for a state to make it fucking illegal for me to marry a white person. Which means that most of the intimate relationships I’ve had in my life could have been criminalized.
Only 40 years ago . . . that’s not a very long time at all.
And people wonder if there’s still institutionalized racism in America. Fools.
[Of course, it used to be “Constitutional” for a state to make being gay illegal . . . and that was only 5 years ago. Man, we got a long way to go.]
TheFountainHead
I feel the same way. I am angry at myself for even feeling the slightest shock that they would run that as a headline. For some reason it’s as though I still see Faux News as more comparable to CNN than I do to the National Inquirer. Which makes no sense.
Punchy
I read “NPR” as “NRO”, and waited and waited and waited for some latent racist comment or some wingnut punchline about how Negros actually do smell funny or some such shit.
Pretty sad that I had to re-read it just because I didn’t find the racism I completely expected the first time thru…
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
I repeat: This is totally awesome. Five months of bedsheets flying out of the closet faster than you can say ‘uppity negro’. Ah well, live by the Southern Strategy, die by the Southern Strategy.
Andrew
The Republican outreach to the African-American community sure is going well.
RSA
Interesting: Me too. Checking anti-miscegenation laws in Wikipedia, I find that if my marriage in Texas had taken place 20 years before it actually did (in 1985), well, it wouldn’t have. . .
jake
The Lovings also set the bar for great case names. Here’s a link to the Loving Day website.
I look forward to the MUP’s statement and the ensuing huffing and puffing from the Reichtards. “No fair! He … he’s … isn’t that playing the race card? Check the rule book.”
Incertus
I’m going to put on my poetry nerd hat for a second and recommend, in honor of Loving Day (I really like that appellation, by the way), a book titled Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey. It won the Pulitzer for poetry in 2007, and a lot of the poems in there are about growing up as a mixed-race child in Mississippi in the late 60s, early 70s.
Blue Raven
Half of my nieces and nephews are a result of marriages that Loving v. Virginia ensured would be legal. The irony is, I’d bet on at least two of my siblings who were in mixed-race marriages condemning same-sex marriage to my face if I asked.
serge
It’s the fortieth anniversary of the decision, but it would also be the fiftieth year of their marriage. It’s a shame they couldn’t both have lived to celebrate it…
Thursday
If you want real fun, wander over to your bibles and read through Numbers 25: Moses and Co. are saved from yet another of the Good Lord’s pestilences because they kill a mixed race couple.
Yup, a Jew married outside the tribe, so both he and his wife get butchered, and the tribe is save from the Lord for another year. I can see why some fundies feel they don’t need science, after all.
crawdaddy
I’m not sure referring to Mr. Obama as African-American is accurate. His parents are African and American but that doesn’t make him African-American as this term is used to describe black people with roots to American slavery. American blacks have a shared history and culture that Mr. Obama was not exposed to and can not claim. The man is mulatto.
Thomas
Thanks for sharing. That was EXACTLY what I had in mind.