{"id":14168,"date":"2011-06-13T05:05:23","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T05:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=14168"},"modified":"2013-06-11T21:56:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T21:56:23","slug":"giving-loving-day-its-due","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=14168","title":{"rendered":"Giving Loving Day Its Due"},"content":{"rendered":"

Giving Loving Day Its Due<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Truthdig<\/a>
\n2011-06-11<\/p>\n

Marcia Alesan Dawkins<\/a><\/strong>, Visiting Scholar
\nBrown University<\/em><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re reading this, then you\u2019ve probably been invited to commemorate or at least think about Loving Day this year. And with good reason. In 1958, newlyweds Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving<\/a> were indicted on charges of violating Virginia\u2019s ban on interracial marriages<\/a> and were banished from their home state. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law in 1967<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many multiracial individuals and interracial couples celebrate the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia<\/em> decision, June 12, as Loving Day. While celebrating this important civil rights milestone, we should remember that increased visibility of interracial couples and offspring does not promise increased racial harmony. Let\u2019s face facts. It\u2019s very sexy to congratulate ourselves based on reports that today\u2019s interracial families can live harmoniously in the former Confederacy<\/a>. We\u2019re entertained as we watch Khloe and Lamar\u2019s relationship work out. It makes us feel good to think that we have overcome, that we have reached a state of racial harmony and that we are all finally equal\u2014and becoming equally beige and beautiful.<\/p>\n

But a desire to congratulate ourselves doesn\u2019t erase the fact that racial mixing has been occurring in our nation and hemisphere for more than 500 years.<\/strong> Colonists and indigenous people married and engaged in extramarital sexual relations. White indentured servants mixed with African indentured servants and then with African slaves. And there\u2019s a long history of black freedmen and freedwomen intermarrying with Native Americans, as well as white males (often forcibly) having sex with black females. There are the interracial children fathered by U.S. soldiers and born to foreign lovers and \u201ccomfort women\u201d in war-torn Asian and Middle Eastern nations. Add this to centuries\u2019 worth of Asian and Hispanic immigration and 40 years\u2019 worth of official interracial marriage patterns and you have what many might call the recipe for a melting pot where race doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

Sadly, this isn\u2019t the case…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Giving Loving Day Its Due Truthdig 2011-06-11 Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar Brown University If you\u2019re reading this, then you\u2019ve probably been invited to commemorate or at least think about Loving Day this year. And with good reason. In 1958, newlyweds Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were indicted on charges of violating Virginia\u2019s ban on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,8,394,20],"tags":[70,3083,2408,2406,4274],"class_list":["post-14168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-loving-v-virginia","tag-marcia-a-dawkins","tag-marcia-alesan-dawkins","tag-marcia-dawkins","tag-truthdig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}