‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S.

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, History, Law, Media Archive, United States on 2017-06-12 20:57Z by Steven

‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S.

The New York Times
2017-06-11

Jennifer Medina, National Correspondent
Los Angeles, California


Rosina and Leon Watson last week in St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Oakland, Calif. They were married in the church in 1950, 17 years before Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case allowing interracial marriage.
Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — For their first date, in 1949, Leon Watson and Rosina Rodriquez headed to the movie theater. But each entered separately. First went Ms. Rodriquez, a fair-skinned woman who traces her roots to Mexico. Mr. Watson, who is black, waited several minutes before going in and sitting next to her.

“We always did it,” Mr. Watson said one recent afternoon. “They looked at you like you were in a zoo. We just held our heads high and kept going. If we knew there would be a problem, we stayed away from it.”

When they married in Oakland in 1950, mixed-race marriage had just become legal in California, the result of a lawsuit that reached the State Supreme Court. They are among the oldest living interracial couples legally married in the United States. It would be nearly two decades before all couples like them across the country were allowed to marry.

On Monday, they will mark the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case that overturned antimiscegenation laws nationwide. Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, had been sentenced to a year in a Virginia prison for marrying each other. The case would serve as a basis for the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage

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Loving, 50 Years Later

Posted in Articles, Biography, History, Media Archive, United States on 2017-06-12 16:10Z by Steven

Loving, 50 Years Later

The New York Times
2017-06-12


Barb and Matt Roose
Married: Medina, Ohio, July 18, 1992

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court decision that invalidated state laws restricting interracial marriage. Recently, we asked readers to share their experiences about being in a mixed-race relationship. We received more than 2,000 stories in just a few days.

Many people expressed profound ambivalence about the categories that drove antimiscegenation rules, while they described how their racial identity — or how others identified them — continued to shape their relationships and their social interactions. Some wrote about the resistance they faced from family and society, while others celebrated the particular richness of their lives. Here are some of those stories…

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TMA Founder’s Statement on Loving Day 2017

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Justice, United States on 2017-06-12 15:59Z by Steven

TMA Founder’s Statement on Loving Day 2017

The Multiracial Activist
June 12, 2017

James Landrith, Founder and Publisher

Dear Readers,

As this is Loving Day and so much has changed in the last few years, I am reposting my 2015 statement as a reminder of what we have to lose. What I said in 2015, still stands in 2017. Those pockets of hatred and individuals I mentioned in 2015 are making their presence known loudly in 2017.

Hard-won legal victories pertaining to interracial relationship marriage rights are not in any immediate danger. However, the current iteration of the GOP has repeatedly demonstrated an utter lack of a spine with regard to dealing with the long-term effects of the party’s immoral courting of bigots and racists. The effects of their collusion and apathy are evident.

This mess isn’t going away anytime soon. The right to love and marry across lines is settled. However, racism and anti-miscegenationist thought are very much alive. Now is not the time to sleep…

Read the entire article here.

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Onstage — and in life — an actress explores her racial identity

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Justice, United States on 2017-06-12 15:24Z by Steven

Onstage — and in life — an actress explores her racial identity

The Boston Globe
2017-06-12

Sally Jacobs


Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, who grew up in Cambridge and is biracial, has spent much of her life grappling with her racial identity through story and performance.

As a child, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni had a cherished birthday ritual. It wasn’t cake or a favorite pancake breakfast. It was her mother’s retelling of her birth story, intended to reassure her about the details of her origins and her parents’ marriage, about which she had nagging questions.

In a way, she still does.

“I had this belief growing up that I’m not theirs,” explained DiGiovanni, 47, who grew up in Cambridge and now lives in Los Angeles. “I always tried to make Mom prove that she actually gave birth to me. So, I always started with, ‘When did you and Dad first kiss?’ I really couldn’t imagine them being together at all. Still can’t.”…

…“One Drop,” in which she plays 16 roles, examines the ever-changing racial classifications in the US Census through the lens of her own family experience. DiGiovanni is one of two children born to Winston and Trudy Cox, who were married in 1966 in California, a year before the Loving ruling but in a state where interracial marriage was legal.

As a couple, they collided head-on with racial discrimination. Winston Cox, a Jamaican, was barred from bathrooms, kicked out of restaurants, and humiliated. After he and his wife settled in Washington, D.C., their interests swiftly diverged. Winston joined the Black Panthers while his wife turned to the women’s movement. Now 80, Winston believes that race was the main reason the marriage ended.

“I couldn’t foresee the problems that would take place,” he said.

Trudy Cox, 74, who lives in an assisted-living facility in Boston, agrees race was a part of what divided them. “He just hated it that I was white,” she said. Not only did many of the Panthers’ meetings exclude white people, but Winston himself was growing increasingly uncomfortable around them…

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Key facts about race and marriage, 50 years after Loving v. Virginia

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2017-06-12 14:35Z by Steven

Key facts about race and marriage, 50 years after Loving v. Virginia

Pew Research Center
2017-06-12

Kristen Bialik

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Loving v. Virginia case that marriage across racial lines was legal throughout the country. Intermarriage has increased steadily since then: One-in-six U.S. newlyweds (17%) were married to a person of a different race or ethnicity in 2015, a more than fivefold increase from 3% in 1967. Among all married people in 2015 (not just those who recently wed), 10% are now intermarried – 11 million in total.

Here are more key findings from Pew Research Center about interracial and interethnic marriage and families on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision…

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Loving Day, And The Fluidity Of Racial Identity

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, Social Justice, United States on 2017-06-12 13:53Z by Steven

Loving Day, And The Fluidity Of Racial Identity

Cognoscenti
WBUR 90.9 FM
Boston, Massachusetts
2017-06-12

John Vercher

Today, June 12, marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage and made my existence, well, legal.

At 50 years young, the decision that allowed people like my parents — who could see past shades of melanin — to marry anyone they pleased is holding strong.

More or less.

It wasn’t until the year 2000 that 60 percent of Alabama voters finally elected to honor the Supreme Court’s decision, and remove anti-miscegenation laws from their state constitution. A whole 60 percent!

But they did it. And that’s a cause for celebration.

It’s also the perfect opportunity to take a look at privilege. Specifically, mine

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Research investigates marks of racism in “interracial families”

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science on 2017-06-09 01:33Z by Steven

Research investigates marks of racism in “interracial families”

Black Women of Brazil
Source: FAPESP
2017-05-31

José Tadeu Arantes

The final pillar of the debunked ‘racial democracy’? Post-doctorate research project exposes racism and racial hierarchies within interracial families

One hundred and twenty-nine years after the abolition of slavery, and despite the myth of racial democracy, racial prejudice continues to be widespread in Brazilian society – so widespread that it even manifests itself within “interracial families”. This was the conclusion of a study conducted by social psychologist Lia Vainer Schucman.

The study was the postdoctoral theme carried out at the University of São Paulo (USP) with support from FAPESP, a collaboration of Felipe Fachim and under the supervision of Belinda Mandelbaum, coordinator of the Laboratory of Family Studies at the Institute of Psychology at USP.

“Our objective was to verify if and how the racial hierarchies of society reproduce within families whose members self-classify differently in relation to ‘race’: as ‘brancos’ (whites), ‘negros’ (blacks) or ‘mestiços’ (persons of mixed race). And how these hierarchies coexist and interact with affections,” Schucman told FAPESP…

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Loving v. Virginia: Exploring biracial identity and reality in America 50 years after a landmark civil rights milestone

Posted in Articles, History, Law, Media Archive, United States on 2017-06-09 01:32Z by Steven

Loving v. Virginia: Exploring biracial identity and reality in America 50 years after a landmark civil rights milestone

The Conversation
2017-06-07

Caty Borum Chattoo , Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact,
American University School of Communication
American University, Washington, D.C.


Mildred and Richard Loving in 1965. AP Photo

Fifty years ago, on June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of the most important civil rights decisions in American history, Loving v. Virginia. The landmark case ended the last of the country’s state laws banning interracial marriage – prohibitions described in the case’s oral arguments as “the most odious of the segregation laws and the slavery laws.”

This wasn’t simply the dramatic end to longstanding policy justified with biblical assertions about the separation of the races. In the most intimate human terms, the court’s decision marked the end of a difficult journey for Mildred and Richard Loving, the interracial couple at the heart of the case. In the years leading up to the Supreme Court decision, for the crime of being married as a woman of color and a white man, the Lovings faced harassment, a police invasion of their home and even jail time.

The Loving decision has both political and personal meaning to me, the mother of two biracial children and a documentary filmmaker and scholar whose work is grounded in social justice…

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The NFL’s War Against Colin Kaepernick

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Justice, United States on 2017-06-09 01:19Z by Steven

The NFL’s War Against Colin Kaepernick

The Nation
2017-06-08

Dave Zirin


San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick after a victory against the Rams in Los Angeles, California, on December 24, 2016. (Robert Hanashiro, USA Today via Reuters)

Leading media members are carrying on a disinformation campaign against the greatest political lightning rod in sports.

We have heard a farcical parade of excuses by NFL owners and executives for why free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick remains unemployed. “He’s not 100 percent committed.” “He’s more concerned with activism.” “He’s a distraction.” “He will only sign with a team if he starts.” “He wants too much money.” Even, “I am concerned about his conditioning now that he is now a vegetarian” (Real NFL players, if you haven’t heard, floss their teeth with steak gristle and drink testosterone shakes drained fresh from a bull’s balls.)

Their foot-massagers in the media—especially much of the team at Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback page at Sports Illustrated—have dutifully repeated these assertions with metronomic regularity.

Yet as each of these claims has been debunked by journalists actually communicating with Kaepernick and his people, they all continue to be reiterated. In other words, what is happening is a cycle of disinformation, carried out by media members who might as well wear the NFL brand tattooed on the small of their backs…

…The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. This makes the league’s right-wing billionaire owners’ silk boxers bunch up…

…Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better toe the line. The owners are again sending the message—just like when they tried to “influence” research on the effects of brain injuries in the sport—that the lives of players simply do not matter to the National Football League

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“We Are Not Used to People Thinking We Are Beautiful”

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Arts, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Mexico on 2017-06-08 00:49Z by Steven

“We Are Not Used to People Thinking We Are Beautiful”

The New Yorker
2017-06-02

Jonathan Blitzer


Photograph by Cécile Smetana Baudier

It was a toothache that brought the Franco-Danish photographer Cécile Smetana Baudier to Costa Chica, on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. She was in Oaxaca at the time, for a project on women’s fashion, when she visited a dentist with a special reputation among cash-strapped local photographers. He accepted payment in the form of photographs. His waiting room, in Oaxaca City, was like a gallery, with framed images along the walls and piles of art books cascading over tables. There, just before getting a molar pulled, Baudier came across a series of photos of reedy men with fishing rods and nets, lolling in boats and along the banks of lagoons. She was surprised, given the fact that the men were black, to learn that the photographs had been taken in Mexico, in the remote southern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. It was the first time she had ever seen images of Afro-Mexicans, and she decided to try to contribute some of her own. A few weeks later, she set out for El Azufre—a secluded coastal fishing village with a large Afro-Mexican population—where she spent five weeks living in a tent pitched on the front yard of an acquaintance’s house.

The African presence in Mexico dates back to the early sixteenth century, when Spanish conquistadors and colonialists arrived; with them came the slave trade. As many as two hundred and fifty thousand African slaves were transported Mexico, according to academic estimates*. At the turn of the nineteenth century, ten per cent of the population had African origins, but Mexican independence ignited a new national dialogue that downplayed race and elevated, instead, the idea of common citizenship. Even though some of the country’s most iconic freedom fighters and early politicians had African roots, their accomplishments fed a celebration of the broader mestizo culture. The history of Afro-Mexicans ever since has been one of erasure and marginalization. Today, there are 1.4 million citizens of African descent in Mexico, but the government did not recognize them officially until a 2015 census count…

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