Tag Archives: love

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MIXED UP

Anyone who thinks winning the lottery is the ultimate success isn’t married to someone they love.

Somehow, I think the odds are longer. There are more than 8 billion people on this planet. Out of them, I found the one. 

There are two reasons I bring this up. 

One is that last week was the 40th anniversary of our engagement. I’d like to say that I did something wonderful for the occasion. But, honestly, I’d forgotten the occasion when I exchanged an unused Met game ticket for the contest that night. So much for being sentimental (for those irate about this, rest assured the Mets lost.)

The other reason is the resurfacing of comments by Indiana Gov. Mike Braun. Three years ago, when he was a senator, he told inquiring reporters that the Supreme Court should leave the matter of interracial marriage to the states. It was taken – I wonder why – as an indication he’s not crazy about the idea. Soon after, he backtracked and said he didn’t understand the question and opposes all forms of racism.

That’s nice.

I suspect this remark resurfaced in light of a lot of Trump-inspired opprobrium about people who aren’t white. WItness the occupation of Washington, D.C., by red-state national guardsmen, the effort to gerrymander non-white representatives out of office and even Trump’s attempt to tell us that slavery got a bad rap that caused that no-big-deal Civil War.

My relationship – hey, my marriage – is interracial. Being different races isn’t the reason we’re married, just as being different races wasn’t a reason not to marry. It’s just that the one in 8 billion people I fell in love with happened to be from the other side of the world.

The side benefits of interracial marriage are amazing. I’ve been exposed to cultural experiences I never would have seen. My kids – who, like every offspring of interracial parents I’ve seen, are gorgeous – can tell the difference between good-and-bad dan tats and cannoli.

If there’s a minus, it’s that other people sometimes seem bothered by it. 

We’ve gotten fisheyes from department store clerks in Florida, cab drivers in Hong Kong, waiters in a Brooklyn restaurant. My kids didn’t tell me until they were grown up how much antipathy they faced in our mostly white suburb. 

On the other hand, we’ve been blessed with total support and pride from both our extended families. 

Obviously, that isn’t always the case.

Interracial marriage wasn’t completely legal in this country until 1967, when the Supreme Court ended so-called “miscegenation” laws via the case of the Lovings of Virginia – a Black woman and white man who married. That ruling voided those laws everywhere, although it took until 2000 – 14 years into our marriage – for the last state to do so.

Most laws against interracial marriage focused on Black and white couples. Especially Black man-white woman couples that caused nightmares for those who combined racism and sexism. But there was also hostility toward all other kinds of combinations – any mix of white, Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous people (and, of course, any mix of sexual orientation involved, but that’s a topic for another time).

When I was born, less than 5% of Americans supported interracial marriage. Even when the Loving decision came, a majority opposed the idea. Shortly after we married, it turned – more Americans supported interracial marriage than opposed it. ( I don’t think we had anything to do with it, but who knows?)

In the last Gallup survey taken four years ago, 94% of Americans approved an interracial marriage – just about a complete reversal of the percentages from the 1950s. About 1 in 5 American marriages are multiracial.

It’s a wonderful thing to see.

All kinds of combinations sitting in the stands at Citi Field, walking with their families at Disney World, attending a Beyonce concert in Los Angeles, running to a gate at O’Hare.

It also seems to drive some people crazy.

Part of what we’re seeing from Trump and the MAGA creeps is an attempt to reestablish “racial purity.” Whites with whites. Other races with their own, in a diminished stature.

It seems to make them nuts – not that they need much to achieve that – to see multiracial kids and not know whether to treat them as white or whatever other race they are. How can you profile people if they’re not exactly the ones you want to profile?

The fact is interracial marriage is contributing to what makes America truly great – the idea that we are committed to the important principles of love and inclusion. Interracial marriage has given us Barack Obama, Derek Jeter, Alicia Keys and The Rock.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the same race. It doesn’t matter if you’re a mix of two or more races. 

It matters what you bring to the American table, what you contribute to make this a better country, and whether or not the person you love is that one in 8 billion you dream of finding.

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2 – ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

Marriage had already changed a lot through the first half of the 20th century.

By 1954, the idea of arranged marriage – your parents selecting your spouse – had pretty much ended. Many of the early 20th century immigrants, from every part of the world, had brought the idea to America.

The idea that superseded it, of course, was love. It sometimes bothered older people that younger people chose their spouse on that basis. But that’s how it worked.

One of the reasons for arranged marriages was the notion of keeping your tribe intact. A mixed marriage in an Italian family was when somebody from Venice married someone from Sicily.

But that, too, began to change as Americans began to intermingle with people of different backgrounds. Irish and Italian. Polish and Spanish. German and Greek.

There remained some taboos. The first was race.

It was all right, supposedly, for white people to marry white people, Black people to marry Black people, Asians to marry other Asians, and so on. 

Interracial marriage caused people to gasp. And the words used to describe it had negative bias: Miscegenation. Mongrelization. Octaroon.  In some states, any form of interracial marriage, but particularly Black and white marriage, was illegal.

Yet, as time passed, love prevailed.

People just married who they wanted anyway. And, finally, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Virginia law barring interracial relationships, specifically in the case of the appropriately named Mildred and Richard Loving.

Interracial marriage produced mixed-race children, who seemed unbothered by the idea. As of the 2020 Census, more than 10% of the nation’s population says it is multiracial. 

One of those people became President of the United States.

And, of course, two of them are my children, who have been telling people since they were tweens that they were Chitalian.

The final taboo didn’t fall until this century. 

People of the same sex have loved each other since we evolved into humans. But often it has been looked on as some kind of sin, as if a loving sexual relationship between two people could not possibly involve two men or two women.

But some brave people said the hell with that. They not only wanted to share their love with the person they loved, they wanted everyone to know and respect it. 

So they fought for the right of people of the same sex to marry each other. 

It’s an idea that seemed impossible when this century began, just a few years after an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. President Bill Clinton complained about the law. But given the veto-proof majorities in both houses, he acquiesced and signed it.

That didn’t stop love.

The idea of same-sex marriage was not popular even as recently as 2008, when California narrowly approved a state constitutional amendment banning it. But that amendment proved to be the basis of legal appeals, and then state referenda and legislative action.

Until, in 2015, the Supreme Court – in Obergefell v. Hodges – ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry.

In his majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of those seeking the right to marry: “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

And that ruling gave people like my daughter a chance to be happy.

Seventy years after my birth, my family would have startled my parents had they known what was coming. But, in the end, they’re exactly like us, because they were bonded by one thing that no arrangement or prejudice can overcome.

Love.

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