Asymmetrical Information

This is one thing that struck me strongly when watching US TV, as compared to the UK - hardly any portrayal of mixed-race couples. The good black role models frequently shown on TV always have black spouses. Even 'Blind Date' carefully segregates contestants here, whereas the UK version is colour-blind.
The only cases I can think of are in ER, where Benton & the English Doctor had a brief relationship, before reverting to partners of the same colour, and the Francie/Will kiss in last week's Alias, swiftly followed by Francie being killed and replaced by a double.

> I think the best hope for the future is a world full of cappucino-colored people

I'm half-Japanese. My mother tells me that there is an old Japanese saying: "If everyone woke up the same color, they'd find something else by lunch."

Two names: Spike Lee, Diane Watson (former California State Senator and Ambassador to Micronesia). They're both on record saying things about interracial marriage that would have utterly destroyed the public career of a white person who said something similar. I disapprove mightily of PC tactics, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Either it's OK to publicly disapprove of interracial marriage/adoption/whatever, or it's not.

I am not against interracial marriage. I think each couple ought to be free to make up their own minds as to what is in their best interest.

Having said that, I have warned my own children against such relationships. It is difficult enough for a marriage to be successful without burdening it with the extra obstacles that would come with an interracial marriage. My own marriage was difficult enough in the early years (we have now been married for 20 years) even though my wife and I come from very similar backgrounds. Still, we had a lot of very different ideas about what family life should be like -- little things like how to celebrate birthdays and holidays, for example. These differences made for a lot of conflicts over what now seem like trivial matters. If my wife and I had had vastly dissimilar backgrounds, we might have had too divergent a view of what our family should be like for us to have stayed together.

That does not mean such marriages cannot work. It's just harder. If my son, despite my warnings, were to fall in love with someone from another race, I would be happy for them and pray for their success.

For what it's worth, I think disapproval of interracial marriage is disgusting no matter who it comes from. I know that many blacks disapprove of it too, and I don't like it. I don't like state policies against interracial adoptions, either.

However, there's also a considerable difference between saying something as a private citizen and saying something as a government employee. High school teachers, as agents of the state, simply don't have the right to say things in a classroom that would be protected if they were saying them as private citizens. Loeffelman had been a teacher for a long time and surely knew this.

There's a big difference between saying that interracial marriages are bad and shouldn't happen and saying that they are bad because they are more difficult and lead to problems. The latter statement is probably true. Not to say that people shouldn't marry whoever they want and have children if they want, but it is a fact that interracial marriages are exposed to persecution that same-race marriages aren't and mixed race children do often have problems with being accepted by either group.

It shouldn't be wrong to state facts or opinions based on facts. If the teacher had said that mixed-race children were impure mongrels who offended God, then I would have had a problem. Merely stating that they suffer from persecution and she doesn't think it's worth it, is her opinion.

"disapproval" can have many meanings and using it like Kevin did can be misleading. She expressed her "disapproval" based on pragmatic grounds.

Now this is all assuming that she's not a racist at heart who goes around denigrating blacks or whatever and this was just the last comment. The article mentioned others coming forward with remarks she'd made in the past, but it's hard to know if the allegations are all true.

Bolie IV

When my black girl friend and I were considering marriage, we finally decided against it: neither family would support it.

We were most definitely in favor of a "Cappuccino world" but the world (ours at least) didn't seem quite so ready.

Admittedly, this was over 30 years ago. But it was in the so-called "liberal" Massachusetts, where we truly did expect better.

Here's a thought; a black teacher talking about the "plight" of cappucino-coloured children is at least speaking from experience, so they cannot be considered ignorant as well as prejudiced. Indeed, if one looks at what Spike Lee actually said about interracial couples (that he found it disturbing that black American men had bought into ideals of beauty centred on white American women), it was a good deal more nuanced than anything you'll see from white bigots, and probably precisely for that reason.

"Nuanced" bigotry is still bigotry, and I actually find bigotry that isn't based on ignorance *more* offensive. It's understandable that someone who lacks a proper education and who was brought up to despise people who are different is probably going to end up that way, as distasteful and unfortunate as that is. What excuse does someone who knows firsthand how terrible prejudice is, and who is well-educated as to the historical roots and consequences of racism, have for thinking that way? It's none of Spike Lee's damned business whether and why some black men prefer the way that white women look (and even if it was, it doesn't excuse his comment that whenever he sees a black man walk into a place with a white woman, he "stares daggers at them"--how does he know what circumstances brought them together? Bigotry, and not nuanced at all). And as for the black teacher having superior experience that excuses her attitude, what about the practical experience of white parents whose friends were involved in interracial marriages and saw their parents treating them badly and their children having a rough time of it? Why isn't that a *valid* reason for the conclusion that it's a tough road to travel? Double standard, pure and simple.

Here's a thought; a black teacher talking about the "plight" of cappucino-coloured children is at least speaking from experience

No, a cappucino-coloured teacher would be speaking from experience. A black teacher is just talking out of her ass. The only people who can speak "from experience" are the children of mixed-race marriages, and even they would be well-advised not to generalize their own experience into some sort of universal rule.

Lee's remarks were simply ignorant. 85% of the United States is non-black; the fact that fewer than 85% of the women black men date or marry are white demonstrates that black men are biased AGAINST dating white women, not in favor of them. If black men followed a race-blind dating policy, one would expect 85% of their dates to be non-black. See, Lee is arguing from the world-view that he personally holds, which is that black people should stick to black people. But the fact of the matter is that black men who only date black women are opting to ignore five-sixths of the available women in the country. That's not something a man with a fully-functional Y chromosone is going to want to do.

Actually, Kevin, you're incorrect; other than in strictly defined circumstances, the First Amendment right extends into the classroom, as O'Connor blogged.

Nor do I think the black teacher has any more idea what it's like to be a mixed-race child than a white teacher. The white teacher wasn't saying "it's hard to be darker-skinned"; she was saying that children of mixed races faced uniquely difficult challenges. Which is, apparently, true. Now, maybe deep down she's a bigot. But black public figures say things which are publicly much more bigoted: "They shouldn't intermarry because they should stick to their own kind". I'm pretty sure that by the time this goes to trial, the lawyer will have dug up instances in which black teachers said as much, and then where will we be?

There are black supremacists who are just as stupid and ignorant as white supremacists.

I love the notion that somehow, black people have special knowledge white people can't fathom when it comes to these things. Bah.

Megan's right.

Just out of curiosity: Where do Asians fit in?

If an Asian dates a white person, is that interracial? How about if they date a black person?

Do Asians get to comment on the positives and negatives of interracial marriage, and discrimination and minority life in general? Or do they simply get lumped in (and w/ whom)?

> I think the best hope for the future is a world full of cappucino-colored people

Although clearly not intended to be, the above quote is racist. I think what you really mean is a world where everyone is the same color and that race-mixing is the best way to get there. But by selecting a color your quote elevates the status of one color group above all other groups.

Brian, I'm not sure if you meant the above comment tongue in cheek or not, but IMO it illustrates a big reason that the debate over racial issues generates far more heat than light, and incidentally why the meaning of the term "racism" has degraded in value faster than the 1924 Deutschmark. When someone can make an innocent (and well-known as far as meaning and origin) comment like saying that things would be better if we were all the same color (by implication through widespread intermarriage, since observation suggests that cappucino or beige is about where we'd all end up assuming widespread intermarriage and a few centuries), only to be called racist, it tends to make people throw up their hands and say "Fine then, I'm racist. Buzz off." I was in college during the days when divestment from South African investments of was the order of the day, and I remember being intensely put off by students who insisted that drinking Coca-Cola made me a racist. Sadly, things in this area have gotten less rational, not more, as time has gone on. "Racism" is more or less meaningless noise now thanks to this kind of linguistic abuse, and the world is worse for the loss of meaning in the word.

M.Scott.Eiland. I agree with you and apologize if you thought I was calling the author of the quote a racist. I did not mean to suggest that. My point was similar to the one you just made. Anyone who makes a comment regarding race, even one that is innocent, well founded, and well argued, subjects themselves to a (often silly) charge of racism. I don't think the teacher should have been fired for what she said, especially given her pragmatic reasoning. I'm a little bothered that she didn't realize that making such a public statement would be controversial, or at least offensive to some of her students. That leads me to question her overall judgment ability.

" I think the best hope for the future is a world full of cappucino-colored people."

Holy crap. I thought I was the only one that thought only when everyone actually has the same skin tone will we finally be a color-blind society. Hurrah for mixed marriages!

Brian, I thought that was probably what you meant, which is why I prefaced my comment the way I did--sorry if it came off like I was slamming you. As for judgment, we all have blind spots, and I believe the teacher was probably genuinely trying to pass on concerns that a lot of people who have no problem in principle with the idea of interracial marriage have; namely, that it is still a tough road to follow. Hopefully, it will become less so as time goes on.

Brian:

I thought it was obvious that Jane was not suggesting that being "capuccino-colored" is esthetically or morally or in any other way better than other shades. Surely the point was that if Americans intermarried to the point of being all the same color, the resulting shade (roughly 2/3 white, 1/8 black, 1/8 Hispanic, with a dash of Asian and a smidgeon of Native American) would be roughly the color of capuccino. There is absolutely nothing racist about that statement.

Jane's capuccino remark may be too pessimistic. It seems to me that racial prejudice rapidly decreases as we gain friends and relatives who are in mixed marriages or born from them. We don't all have to intermarry, as long as some of us do.

You don't hear a lot of Polish jokes these days, probably because so many non-Poles have Polish relatives. (Is my brother's wife's ex-husband a relative of mine? Close enough.) Fifty years ago, most WASPs, Irish-Americans, and Italian-Americans (just to take three examples) probably felt pretty safe telling Polish jokes, if they were so inclined, as long as there were no actual Poles in the room, and the same went for other ethnic jokes. As long as Poles almost always married Poles, Italians married Italians, and so on, they could abuse each other behind their backs with impunity. Nowadays, you'd have to make sure there was no one who was married to a Pole, or whose brother was married to a Pole, and so on, and you can't assume that because of the huge numbers of mixed-European mongrel-Americans. The very high intermarriage rates between Jews and Gentiles, and between Asians and whites have also undoubtedly reduced those kinds of prejudices. I expect the same to happen as marriages between blacks and other groups become more common. In fact, I read somewhere (Commentary?) that the percentage of blacks who marry whites, while still very small (2% or something like that) has quadrupled in the last 10 years.

By the way, when my German-American uncle married a Japanese-American around 30 years ago, my parents were worried about how grandma would take it. She was in over 60, with an 8th-grade education, and had lived in small towns in the Midwest all her life. As it turned out, she cared far less about my aunt's race than about her religion (eeeuw, Protestant!).

Ah, yet another fiasco of public education. They never end.

When a teacher is an employee of the state, her first amendment rights conflict with the equal protection clause. She can say anything she likes - as long as it cannot possibly offend anyone. This is not a prescription for good education. A good education should challenge the learners, and sometimes offend them. We remove offense from the schools because we must, but students lose because of it.

Contrast private education. Not only can a private educator say what this teacher said, private colleges can even oppose interracial dating. That's their right, and though offensive, it violates nobody's right to equal protection of the law because the State is not involved.

Jane asks: "is it that it's all right for black people to say things that are, per se, racist?"

You have to understand how the left defines racism. They define it as racial prejudice from a position of power. Or more long windedly:

Racism is an ideological, structural and historic stratification process by which the population of European descent, through its individual and institutional distress patterns, intentionally has been able to sustain, to its own best advantage, the dynamic mechanics of upward or downward mobility (of fluid status assignment) to the general disadvantage of the population designated as non-white (on a global scale), using skin color, gender, class, ethnicity or nonwestern nationality as the main indexical criteria used for enforcing differential resource allocation decisions that contribute to decisive changes in relative racial standing in ways most favoring the populations designated as 'white.'

Getting back to the subject at hand: if a black teacher had made the comment in question, most likely at least some of the people with the power to discipline would be leftists, thinking as above. As a result, no, she would not be disciplined.

I hate it that it should fall to me to say this, but it looks as if no one else is willing.

The races are different. In particular cases, the differences are often pronounced enough to make matrimony a bad idea. Over the years, I've come to believe that "often" means "usually."

Please, no nonsense about how "we're all the same underneath the skin." It's been pretty well established that that's not the case. Attitudes toward family, toward sex, toward religion, toward art, sport, and personal expression, toward the work ethic, and toward the time value of money are all very different among the three major races in America.

This has nothing to do with "racial equality," whatever your conception of that might be. It has nothing to do with any legal matter. It has to do with the cultural predispositions of the races, which change only slowly if at all. In individual cases these can be overcome, but statistically, they're well established and include all the strongest reasons for which marriages fail. Individual exceptions will be many, but that's no reason to deny the statistical tendencies. And, sadly, love does not conquer all.

If you intend to try marriage with a member of another race, you'd better be unusually perseverant, unusually flexible, and unusually ready to cope with social pressures unmixed-race couples would never experience. That's on top of the difficulties involved in marrying someone of another sex, which we know full well are considerable in their own right.

Over time, some of the barriers to racial intermarriage will become lower. Some may fall entirely. But only time will tell if they'll all disappear. In the meanwhile, it's best to be realistic about the hazards.

Francis, individuals ain't statistics; each one is unique, so for an individual to evaluate a prospective spouse based on racial statistical tendency, as opposed to in-depth knowledge of the individuals involved, is an inferior method of selection. Now, if your point is that people ought to be damned careful when evaluating propsective spouses, and take the time to perform due diligence, I'm with you 200%. There is no substitute for close, honest, observation of the individual you are contemplating sharing a toothbrush holder with for the next several decades. From my observation (luckily, of others) people are just as likely to marry a jackass of their own race as they are of another. It always silently astounds me when two obviously mismatched people get hitched, and then split up later, and differing race is far from the most likely source of failure.

From that point of view, you cannot even talk about "black racism". Racism requires power; blacks don't have it; ergo blacks cannot be racist.

I'm not sure if I agree with this theory, but it's not a necessary logical consequence of it that "black people can't be bigoted." It just means it doesn't really matter if some minorities are bigots, as they don't have neough power to do anything about it.

Will Allen said it perfectly. Social pressures may make life more difficult for some interracial couples, although that has to depend a lot on the communities they're living in and maybe on which races (I can believe that black-white is still harder than most). But to say that two individuals are likely to be incompatible simply because they are of different races is wrongheaded at best.

"I'm not sure if I agree with this theory, but it's not a necessary logical consequence of it that "black people can't be bigoted." It just means it doesn't really matter if some minorities are bigots, as they don't have neough power to do anything about it."

Of course, if you go by this theory, honesty demands that one acknowledge the fact that a lot of white, Asian, and (fill in the ethnic/racial group) people also don't have enough power to do anything about any bigoted feelings they might have about other racial/ethnic groups. Which brings us back to square one. It's a self-justifying argument that tries to demand unilateral disarmament (by denying one side the right to call the other on their racism) from one's ideological opponents as an alleged moral imperative. Much like the attempts by certain groups to demand that the West unilaterally disarm during the Cold War, this argument is best dealt with by a metaphorical middle finger (or a literal one, if one is so inclined).

I, like Megan and many others I know, am all for a cappucino-colored world. I'd bet that the percentage of US population (of all races) that is actively in favor of interracial marriage and procreation is significant and increasing. If this is true, it may be possible over time that interracial marriages and their offspring will receive extra social support from friends, coworkers, and families, rather than stigma or other hardship.

I don't have any problem with anyone arguing the contrary, in a high school or anywhere else. But the possibility ought be acknowledged that, in 21st Century America, an interracial marriage might become an asset rather than a burden.

Of course, if you go by this theory, honesty demands that one acknowledge the fact that a lot of white, Asian, and (fill in the ethnic/racial group) people also don't have enough power to do anything about any bigoted feelings they might have about other racial/ethnic groups. Which brings us back to square one. It's a self-justifying argument that tries to demand unilateral disarmament (by denying one side the right to call the other on their racism) from one's ideological opponents as an alleged moral imperative.

Uh, no, it's just a recognition of reality. And I think you're missing the point: until the 1960s, even the most powerless white citizen could get away with killing a black citizen. Society has improved an amazing amount since then, but the trend is still faintly visible: the death penalty imposition rate for blacks who kill whites is much, much higher than for whites who kill blacks.

More importantly, on the referenced page they define racism as "prejudice + power." Prejudice is still bad, obviously, but not as bad as racism, which they define as more-or-less the ability to implement your prejudical beliefs on society. This "unilateral disarmanent" bit you're talking about isn't there.

I could accept the prejudice+power theory, even if I disagree with it, if it was at least applied consistently. By that argument it would be impossible for white people to be racist if they lived in Zimbabwe. But I doubt that many of the people who argue R=P+P would be willing to admit to that. The argument just gets raised to another level (European historical global hegemony or some such) "proving" that certain groups can't possibly be racist.

The institutionalization of racism that can come with power is particularly harmful because it can be both subtle and far-reaching, but on an individual level, racism is racism. Whenever I hear anyone trying to argue otherwise I always assume a political agenda.

As to the difficulties faced by interracial marriages....
I think that depends on the people involved. My wife is Chinese, from mainland China. I am the type of person who is excited about the opportunity to learn something new. Sure, it sometimes feels weird that she has no personal experience of the cartoons I watched as a kid (and related issues), but I find that more than made up for by the opportunity to learn about cartoons and holidays and practices and foods and philosophies I've never encountered before. Her parents love me more than their other, Chinese, son-in-law, because they care about the person. She's had friends who told her not to marry me, but she is the type who cares more for family than friends, so she blew off the advice and they remain friends.
Whoever said the biggest obstacles are much larger than a cultural difference had it right. On the other hand, though, I know people who recoil at the idea of trying to merge cultures; they prefer familiarity. For these people, it would probably be better for them to not enter into a mixed marriage.
But in any case, I do think the climate for mixed marriages is getting better. I can see a marked difference within my lifespan, even within the last 15 years.
And it isn't just actual mixed marriages that have contributed to the improved climate, but knowing more people and having a broader range of experiences, as someone very wise pointed out earlier in the comments section

There's so much I can say here.

For starters, I think that the argument that black-white interracial marriage is a bad idea because the children will be subject to rejection and prejudice is a silly argument. Taken to extremes, you could use the same argument to suggest that black people shouldn't have children at all.

It's fairly easy to take anecdotal evidence and use it to build a case that suggests that children of interracial marriages face some particularly vicious sort of racism that is worse than that experienced by children who have two black parents. It is also sloppy thinking.

The same can be said for the notion expressed above that "the races are just different". It is a particularly nonsensical notion to presume that the perceived differences between the races are somehow a function of biogenetics rather than subcultural propensities. A marriage between a black person and a white person is exactly that -- a union of two people, not a marriage of two races. Given the divorce rate between same-race couples, I don't know that interracial marriages are significantly more difficult as long as all the parties involved are committed to the relationship.

I am a black woman from Philadelphia (yes, it is a lovely city, isn't it, Jane?). My husband is a white man from a small town in Texas. We have been married for almost 20 years, and we have four children. They are not all the same color. Then again, my sister and I are not the same color either, even though both our parents are black. My husband and I have not had any really serious cultural difficulties to overcome, in spite of the fact that I am an escapee from a public housing project and a single-parent, welfare dependent family, while he grew up in middle-class suburbia.

News flash: you can come from almost precisely similar backgrounds and still find that your marriage is extraordinarily difficult to hold together, depending on the individuals involved.

News flash: you can come from extraordinarily disparate backgrounds and discover, with patience, humor and commitment, that your marriage can work and work well and be fulfilling, depending on the individuals involved.

I suspect that a large part of the reason that my marriage has worked as well as it has is a result of the fact that my race is not very high on my list of the attributes with which I identify myself in my own head. Yes, I'm black, but other things about me are much more important. That's the way I see the world and that is why race has never really mattered to me very much.

My children, who range in age from five to fifteen, have had some minor brushes with racism -- up to and including the rejection of my in-laws for a time, which caused an estrangement between my husband and his father. They have been hurtful incidents -- rejection in any form is hurtful -- but they have also be very, very rare. And each of them has been cosmically balanced by the times we have been stopped on the street by people who tell us that they find the existence of my family to be a beautiful, hopeful thing.

Meanwhile, my kids do not seem to be headed toward bitterness because of the infrequent nastiness. So far, they have not been placed in a situation in which they have had to choose one race or the other. I hope they never are, but at the moment, they seem fairly well-armed.

When people ask them what race they consider themselves to be, they simply say, "I'm mixed." That's all they say, and the person they are talking to just has to deal with it.

They seem to be very cool with that.

It's fairly easy to take anecdotal evidence and use it to build a case that suggests that children of interracial marriages face some particularly vicious sort of racism that is worse than that experienced by children who have two black parents. It is also sloppy thinking.

Agreed.

I could accept the prejudice+power theory, even if I disagree with it, if it was at least applied consistently. By that argument it would be impossible for white people to be racist if they lived in Zimbabwe.

If you're so sure they wouldn't agree, why don't you ask them?

I won't accept the "prejudice+power theory" no matter how it is applied because of its blatantly self-serving nature. It was created by leftists in the humanities and/or social sciences as an excuse to claim that blacks cannot be racist. It's a stupid attempt to redefine words for political benefit, and I'm not buying it. Neither are most people.

I have similar problems with the redefining of the word "minority" to refer to any supposedly disadvantaged group, even if they make up the majority in a society.

The power aspect of discrimination, and the corollary that therefore blacks could not discriminate was added explicity to limit discussions of black racism. This arbitrary "requirement" makes discussion of discrimination under this standard meaningless, but that isn't the worst effect.

The worst part about this is that IT ISN'T TRUE. The idea that blacks have no power was ALWAYS wrong. Certainly in the past a small percentage of blacks did have power while most did not. But Frederick Douglass had power, as did Booker Washington and other less well known figures.

However, fast forward to today. Do Oprah Winfrey, Spike Lee, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, Colin Powell, and Condolezza Rice all have no power? There are millions of blacks in positions of authority throught this country. The idea doesn't even make sense.

On top of this, the idea was always disprovable. Any accusation of discrimination must be accompanied by an explanation of the damage done, such as the loss of a job. Without damages, discrimination is irrelevant. In other words, discrimination already has a built in check for power negating the need to eliminate groups en masse. Anyone guilty of causing such damages by definition had power.

I hope niggers die :-D They are inferior pieces of shit :D

I firmly believe that racism is an epidimic thats has spread throughout our world and needs to be stopped asap. Some of the comments I've read on here have deeply moved me. Are we defending racism? Or are we provoking it? Thats the question all of you need to be asking yourselves. I just recently did a project on racism for my morality class. It was a very wide-spread topic for me. I coverd the most inner realms of racism. My question to you is, why when I was presenting my project and why here now do I see that no matter how you want to discuss racism it will always come out defensivily toward another person. Another race, even if your defending that race. I believe that if the world today could just knock the chip of of their shoulders we could possibly live to the standards of all equal humans. Under the eyes of God we are all equal and isn't that what matters the most? Are we not put on this earth to please God so that we can forever live in the glory of the heavens? I may be getting a little deep for all of you out there but hear me out. Before we open our mouths about racism know what your talking about...relize that its not just something that other people have brought on to others, its what your bringing upon yourself.

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