Time to look past interracial barriers

Thursday, March 12, 1998

Time to look past interracial barriers

MARRIAGE: Historically speaking, integration is best between the
sheets

I believe that interracial relationships are one of the last
unspoken taboos in our society. It’s hard to grasp this fact in Los
Angeles. It’s hard to see it on the UCLA campus. But if your eyes
are trained, you can see it all around you. I’m lucky that I grew
up in a multicultural environment and had friends of all different
races. My parents are an interracial couple, and I never thought
twice about my crush on the blondest guy in school. But when I got
to junior high I noticed all the cliques based on race, and in high
school the divisions only grew deeper.

It always saddens me when people tell me they have to marry
someone of the same race or same religion as themselves. There is
the old saying, similarity leads to compatibility, dissimilarity to
incompatibility. Any fourth grader could digest this bit of logic,
but I would like to think that adult men and women realize which
similarities really matter and which dissimilarities are minor
concerns.

Racial prejudice is so tightly woven into our collective history
that it is hard to talk about the present without reflecting on the
past. The colonial white man’s treatment of Native Americans,
followed by the barbaric enslavement of Africans, is still a
painful wound in our society. It is very strange that a culture
which felt superior in every way needed to pass laws forbidding
miscegenation. Even stranger was the fact that most laws only
discussed the African American and hardly ever mentioned the Native
American. One sociologist believes that perceived penis size and
sexual competence is the reason.

The Civil War and the period following produced a great deal of
anti-miscegenation literature and propaganda. The Ku Klux Klan was
founded during this period, one of the reasons being to stop
miscegenation among ordinary people. General Hugh Johnson, who was
in charge of conscription during World War I, said that queries
about racial antecedents had to be abandoned because so many white
Southerners committed suicide when they discovered they had Negro
ancestors. Funny, since it was white slave owners who crossed the
color line in the first place. Segregation in the streets,
integration between the sheets.

As recently as 1967, 16 states had laws against miscegenation on
the books. Even good old California had laws against miscegenation
at one point, but to our credit we were the first state to
challenge the constitutionality of such laws with Perez v. Sharp in
1949, when the state Supreme Court struck down our miscegenation
statute. It’s mind boggling to think that only a generation ago my
parents couldn’t have been married in certain states.

There’s always the refrain, "What about the children?" Really,
we’re fine. The problems that stem from being multiracial are not
inherent to the mingling of bloods, but rather come from living in
a society which cannot see past the rigid color lines established
here hundreds of years ago. I admit that there are issues I must
deal with that are difficult, and that people who are of one race
will never have to think about certain issues. But the blessings
that come from having the wealth of two cultures far outweigh any
negative aspects that a narrow-minded society can inflict.

Many people prattle on about racial purity and cultural
preservation when they argue against interracial relationships and
marriages. People who talk like this are only fooling themselves.
The continents of North and South America especially have been
subject to a great deal of racial mixing, from the first Asians to
cross the Bering Strait to the European settlers who sailed the
ocean, to the Africans who were brought here in chains, to the
immigrants who continue to arrive every day. Even religion is
influenced by the changing times and to think that somehow you can
preserve it by only marrying people of the same faith is an
exercise in futility.

Let’s look at some anthropological facts. Ten generations back,
each living person today can count over 1,000 ancestors. Twenty
generations back we can each count over a million, and 30
generations back the number tops 1 billion. I did the math myself
on this one, and my math nerd brother can confirm that these
staggering numbers are right. It is ludicrous to think that
marrying someone of the same race or culture actually matters in
this vast net of human relations.

What does matter is finding someone who can be a suitable
lifetime partner. And for many people, suitable means belonging to
a certain race, practicing a certain religion, or sharing a certain
code of beliefs. There’s something to be said for having things in
common, and in all honesty I do feel an affinity toward people who
are also racially mixed.

But this is not the same as blatant prejudice.

Interracial relationships are so frustrating to talk about
because many people won’t admit that they are against it. In
certain groups opposition is more vocal, but usually one has to
look past the words to see how people really feel about
miscegenation. It is almost refreshing as it is repulsive where
someone blatantly says they won’t date someone from such and such
group, or they will only get involved with such and such people. At
least a dialogue can then take place.

It is folly on my part to assume that everyone who is dating
someone of the same race is prejudiced in some way. It is rash to
assume that someone whose friends are all of the same race, culture
or ethnicity is somehow denying themselves of the richness to be
gained by befriending people other than themselves. People make
decisions and everyone has preferences. We are far from a
race-blind society, and many would argue that this is a good
thing.

After all, who wants to be washed away into oblivion? There is a
crucial balance to be struck between an identity through culture
and an identity of independence. And although I don’t really
connect with clubs and cliques whose membership is based on race, I
do see the need for these types of organizations. But this can’t be
the only way in which identity is forged. We must also look past
this and see people for human beings, individuals with tastes and
traits that are not always a direct result of their ethnicity.

Sonia Ortega