Colorblind Love Essay - 2639 Words

Colorblind Love I met my wife Aretha in the fall of 1997; she had just moved from Portland, Oregon, to my hometown of Portland, Maine. By Christmas we were dating, and before we knew it we were both graduating and heading to Boston for college. We’re now happily married and have a one-year-old baby girl. It sounds like a classic high school sweetheart romance, right? Well, to us, yes. But to many people, we’re â€Å"different†. These people’s views have nothing to do with our love, our relationship, or our daughter. They have to do with race. Yes, I’m talking about the mere color of our skin. My wife is Black and I am White. We’re both Americans, born on the same soil and raised within the same language and popular culture—all variables are†¦show more content†¦For centuries, harsh laws called â€Å"antimiscegenation laws† prohibited interracial unions and carried severe legal consequences for violations. Randall Kennedy, Harvard profe ssor and author of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption, says that in 1913 â€Å"Wyoming became the last state to impose a statutory impediment to marital miscegenation, [and] forty-one others had already enacted similar laws†¦ Every state whose Black population reached or exceeded 5 percent of the total eventually drafted and enacted antimiscegenation laws.† These laws were frequently enforced and although they varied from state to state, prison sentences for violations averaged from one to ten years. In 1887 Ohio became the first state to repeal its antimiscegenation laws. Kennedy notes that no other state followed for sixty-four years, until Oregon did so in 1951. But no year was more important than 1967. In that year a White man, Richard Loving, and his Black wife, Mildred Jeter, were arrested in Virginia because their District of Columbia marriage license was invalid within Virginia’s borders. Lower court judge Leon Bazile ruled that Loving and Jeter could choose between a twenty-five year exile from Virginia or elect to serve a one-year prison sentence. In his article â€Å"Far From Heaven,† columnist Michael Lind quotes Bazile’s ruling: â€Å"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow,Show MoreRelatedDesiree s Baby : Irony1392 Words   |  6 Pageseyes are gray, Armand, you know they are gray. And my skin is fair, seizing his wrist. Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand,† (Chopin 3) and also, â€Å"But Armand’s dark, handsom e face had not often been disfigured by frowns since the day he fell in love with her.† (Chopin 2). The baby association with darkness came when the baby was lying across Desiree bed, â€Å" Desiree’s eyes had been fixed absently and sadly upon the baby, while she was striving to penetrate the threatening mist that she felt closingRead MoreThe Story Of An Hour1283 Words   |  6 Pagesher life. Although she described her husband in a positive light, I do not believe she was happy and/or in love with him. My assumption is based on the fact that she demonstrated an incredible sense of relief when she thought he had passed on. A good example of this conclusion is the following quote: â€Å"And yet she had loved him – sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognizedRead MoreArmand And Desiree Aubigny : Blinded By Their Own Circumstances Essay1834 Words   |  8 Pagesnurtured by her adopted family, she cares little about her unknown heritage or bloodline—she knows her self-identity and cares little for what other’s think of her. Desiree is kind, young, and oblivious—almost childlike in her manner. She is excited about love and married life because it is all new to her. The prospected of being the wife of a wealthy plantation owner and a mother makes Desiree overjoyed; in fact, she described herself as â€Å"so happy; it frightens me† (Chopin 163). Moreover, Desiree is a motivatedRead MoreRacism1051 Words   |  5 Pagesfamiliar with this topic then the other two topics because I was the once who did the research for our group presentation about this. I came across numerous articles that were very eye opening to me. The first article I will talk about is called, Is Love Becoming Color Blind?. I really enjoyed reading through this article because it had personal examples from three different interracial couples. The first couple was Kristina Adamski and John Phillips, who were both in their early thirties. In theRead More Color blind by the Counting Crows Essay1030 Words   |  5 PagesI am colorblind Coffee black and egg white Pull me out from inside I am ready (repeat 3 times) I am taffy stuck and tongue tied Stutter shook and uptight Pull me out from inside I am ready (repeat 3 times) I am fine I am covered in skin No one gets to come in Pull me out from inside I am folded and unfolded and unfolding I am colorblind Coffee black and egg white Pull me out from inside I am ready (repeat 3 times) I am fine (repeat 3 times) nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;TheRead MoreRacial Segregation And The Civil Rights Movement1407 Words   |  6 Pagesincreasing numbers, blacks adopted the dominant colorblind portrayal of society, which served to propagate an ideology of self-hate by wrongly placing the hegemonic culture as more righteous and respectable than African American culture. Black communities, whether explicitly or implicitly, were indoctrinated to reject their own racial identity and yearn for the alleged purity of whiteness, which in reality was a facade. All the while, this colorblind perspective completely concealed the racially-basedRead MoreRacial Predujice toward Minority Groups1564 Words   |  6 PagesRacial prejudice toward minority groups has been a problem throughout all of history. While overt racism and prejudice may be diminished from the days of our dark past, covert racism is very much alive. Society loves to embellish on how far the country has come in the fight against racial prejudice by highlighting significant events such as having the first black president. Yet there are still too many instances of subtle racism. In 2011, there were almost 700,000 incidents of stop and frisk policingRead MoreArgumentative Essay On Racism1326 Words   |  6 Pagesthe education and knowledge to understand that there are good and bad people in every culture. One isn’t born into the world hating another. According to Psychology Today, â€Å"Nearly all White mothers in their research study adopted a â€Å"colormute†/ â€Å"colorblind† approach when discussing a book that was either directly or indirectly about race†¦most chose not to discuss race at all.† (Olson 5) If we don’t educate out children to address the issues, we can’t prevent that judgment thoughts that will occurRead MoreArticle Analysis: Educational Demographics: What Teacher Should Know by Harold Hodgkinson1390 Words   |  6 Pagesculture and past. It’s really imp ortant for me as an educator and for the student to feel welcome. I like how the author said to be â€Å"culture fair instead of colorblind.† We also talked about this in class. Personally, I think it’s best to be culture fair, as each student is different and has many interesting aspects of culture. If I were colorblind, I would glaze over those diversities and miss out on such interesting aspects of my students’ lives. It’s so important to try to get to know each of studentRead MoreRacism : A Theological Reflection1580 Words   |  7 Pagesfor a solution, or what may be concluded as an avoidance, some Christian communities began to adopt a problematic colorblind rhetoric which exercises a, â€Å"See people as people, not a color† concept. â€Å"White Christians, especially, seem incapable of recognizing the contradictions of their utopian language and their distinctly and deeply racialized lifestyles and daily choices. Colorblind rhetoric prevents people from evaluating and dissecting the majority of their social relationships, the places they