From Loving into the future
June 12 is Loving Day, celebrating the 1967 Loving v. Virgina ruling by the Supreme Court which struck down laws against interracial marriage throughout the United States.
Recently the Pew Research Center released a study on marriage in the US which tells us a great deal about how the country will look in the future. In 1980, 3.2% of married couples were interracial; today, 8% are. And of new marriages, 14.6% are now interracial, a figure which has been climbing steadily for decades and is now rising faster than ever before.
Obviously this trend doesn't indicate a political or ideological preference for interracial marriage; no one chooses a marriage partner for such reasons. It can only mean that growing numbers of people simply no longer consider race a significant factor in their choice of whom to marry. This is not only healthy but natural -- look at any place in the world where populations of different races have lived among each other on the same territory for several generations, and in most cases you'll see a sizable mixed population there too.
The marriage trend tells us that racially-mixed people will make up a fast-growing percentage of the population of this country in the future (and recall that even the current President is a person of racially-mixed origin). We are still plagued by the antiquated mentality that wants to classify people into neat, distinct racial and ethnic categories -- X% of Americans are white, X% are black, X% are Hispanic, Asian, etc. That mentality will soon become so obviously unrealistic as to be untenable. Race-consciousness is doomed. Time and human nature are its ineluctable enemies.
Recently the Pew Research Center released a study on marriage in the US which tells us a great deal about how the country will look in the future. In 1980, 3.2% of married couples were interracial; today, 8% are. And of new marriages, 14.6% are now interracial, a figure which has been climbing steadily for decades and is now rising faster than ever before.
Obviously this trend doesn't indicate a political or ideological preference for interracial marriage; no one chooses a marriage partner for such reasons. It can only mean that growing numbers of people simply no longer consider race a significant factor in their choice of whom to marry. This is not only healthy but natural -- look at any place in the world where populations of different races have lived among each other on the same territory for several generations, and in most cases you'll see a sizable mixed population there too.
The marriage trend tells us that racially-mixed people will make up a fast-growing percentage of the population of this country in the future (and recall that even the current President is a person of racially-mixed origin). We are still plagued by the antiquated mentality that wants to classify people into neat, distinct racial and ethnic categories -- X% of Americans are white, X% are black, X% are Hispanic, Asian, etc. That mentality will soon become so obviously unrealistic as to be untenable. Race-consciousness is doomed. Time and human nature are its ineluctable enemies.
posted by Infidel753 at 9:09 AM
10 Comments:
Wow! But what or who are the Conservatives going to hate if we all look alike.
Thing is, we won't all look alike. There will be more variety in looks than ever with more and more mixed-race people in the population. But the racial categories won't be sharply bounded any more, they'll all blur into each other -- sort of like this.
As for the conservatives, they'll hate the same people they've always mainly hated -- non-Christians.
Hey Guy! .... Thanx for the lil lesson/ info. I only found out a few year's ago that interacial marriage was illegal at a time, I actually weirdly never knew that. My familia is already like the f'n U.N. man .... were so mixed up .... we dont even know what the fuck to put as race on form's. I remember my daughter in grade school being listed as asain, white, and hispanic, and most folk's had no idea what she was. My mom's familia is italiano/ danish, my dad's was english/ jewish, and I ended up a Texas redneck, yet I live like a mexicano, weird man, heh? Oh well .... that's life in the big tittie! :)
RC: I remember my daughter in grade school being listed as asain, white, and hispanic, and most folk's had no idea what she was. My mom's familia is italiano/ danish, my dad's was english/ jewish, and I ended up a Texas redneck, yet I live like a mexicano, weird man, heh?
Sounds very American.
Damn I love this f'n country! :)
"As for the conservatives, they'll hate the same people they've always mainly hated -- non-Christians."
Except that they hate Blacks and Hispanics and every other minority even though they might be Christian. Frankly, I think conservatives just HATE, period.
Why has a child in school to be listed as belonging to a race? When I was a boy my country was under a fascist dictatorship and my ID listed my race as "white". Now it is a democracy and the government is forbidden from asking or listing the ethnicity of the citizens. My ID has no field for race.
Authoritarians like labeling and classifying people, I think. Putting everyone into neatly-delineated categories just suits their mind-set.
You posted this in 2010, and it's definitely still relevant. Race has never mattered to me, but how I'm treated matters a lot. Great post! Hugs...
Thanks! The more we move away from classifying people into immutable categories, the better off we'll be.
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