quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:
The Lovings were forced into exile from their home state for 25 years in return for the suspended 1 year jail sentence. (Turned out to be 9 years in exile, though, because of Loving v Virginia.) This is not an an insignificant punishment. Talk to other couples today who have been and are being forced into exile to avoid their families being ripped apart if you think that it is a trivial penalty.

(Incidentally, I don't see much comparrison between the Lovings and Strom Thurman. In what ways are they analogous?)

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:
The Lovings were forced into exile from their home state for 25 years in return for the suspended 1 year jail sentence. (Turned out to be 9 years in exile, though, because of Loving v Virginia.) This is not an an insignificant punishment. Talk to other couples today who have been and are being forced into exile to avoid their families being ripped apart if you think that it is a trivial penalty.

(Incidentally, I don't see much comparrison between the Lovings and Strom Thurman. In what ways are they analogous?)

two white men in the south got young black girls pregnant. Richard met her when she was 11 years old. I'm just sayin'.

A lot of black men go exiled to hanging in trees and having their testicles removed with pliers. 25 years north of the Mason-Dixon is a cakewalk in comparison.

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

A lot of black men go exiled to hanging in trees and having their testicles removed with pliers. 25 years north of the Mason-Dixon is a cakewalk in comparison.

quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

A lot of black men go exiled to hanging in trees and having their testicles removed with pliers. 25 years north of the Mason-Dixon is a cakewalk in comparison.

So?

What is your point?

That Mildred Loving should have not wrote that letter, because she was not suffering enough from the 25 year exile to satisfy you?

That gay couples should not struggle for the right to marry, because they don't suffer enough to satisfy you?

That Black folks who suffer job discrimination should just shut up and take it, because they aren't sufffering enough?

Is your point just to minimize the effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, etc, etc by making comparrisons with having your testicles removed with pliers?

How much suffering is necessary before somebody has reached the threshold to satisfy you that they are justified in fighting back?

quote:

Originally posted by Fabulous:

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:
The Lovings were forced into exile from their home state for 25 years in return for the suspended 1 year jail sentence. (Turned out to be 9 years in exile, though, because of Loving v Virginia.) This is not an an insignificant punishment. Talk to other couples today who have been and are being forced into exile to avoid their families being ripped apart if you think that it is a trivial penalty.

(Incidentally, I don't see much comparrison between the Lovings and Strom Thurman. In what ways are they analogous?)

two white men in the south got young black girls pregnant. Richard met her when she was 11 years old. I'm just sayin'.

A lot of black men go exiled to hanging in trees and having their testicles removed with pliers. 25 years north of the Mason-Dixon is a cakewalk in comparison.

Damn straight it is.

quote:

Originally posted by HonestBrother:

quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

A lot of black men go exiled to hanging in trees and having their testicles removed with pliers. 25 years north of the Mason-Dixon is a cakewalk in comparison.

So?

What is your point?

That Mildred Loving should have not wrote that letter, because she was not suffering enough from the 25 year exile to satisfy you?

That gay couples should not struggle for the right to marry, because they don't suffer enough to satisfy you?

That Black folks who suffer job discrimination should just shut up and take it, because they aren't sufffering enough?

Is your point just to minimize the effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, etc, etc by making comparrisons with having your testicles removed with pliers?

How much suffering is necessary before somebody has reached the threshold to satisfy you that they are justified in fighting back?

I'm ALL for people fighting for their rights. Hell. In the right mood and circumstances, I might personally join them in that fight even when their issues don't directly effect me.

But as a heterosexual black male who isn't interested in interracial marriage, I feel no obligation whatsoever to shout from the roof tops about these injustices (even though I do acknowledge them as injustices).

Nor do I feel the slightest need to specifically celebrate homosexual or interracial unions as proof of my commitment to justice .... And especially not before I celebrate my own union ... which doesn't have a day on which it is specifically celebrated.

quote:

Originally posted by ricardomath:

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:

A lot of black men go exiled to hanging in trees and having their testicles removed with pliers. 25 years north of the Mason-Dixon is a cakewalk in comparison.

So?

What is your point?

That Mildred Loving should have not wrote that letter, because she was not suffering enough from the 25 year exile to satisfy you?

That gay couples should not struggle for the right to marry, because they don't suffer enough to satisfy you?

That Black folks who suffer job discrimination should just shut up and take it, because they aren't sufffering enough?

Is your point just to minimize the effects of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, etc, etc by making comparrisons with having your testicles removed with pliers?

How much suffering is necessary before somebody has reached the threshold to satisfy you that they are justified in fighting back?

quote:

Originally posted by Wiz:
Loving Day, named for Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple who's Supreme Court challenge to the miscegnetaion Laws of Virginia struck down all laws banning interracial marriage, 41 years ago, 19 freaking 67 that is. Not that long ago in the scheme of things. And while this was something to some people (Oprah made a movie about them, and they are recognized for this with 'Loving Day' celebrations by interracial couples, the irony of it, like pretty much our whole history in America, is not lost on me. They are heroic in the same way Rosa Parks is, I guess.

Miscegenation laws were never meant to protect one race from another. They had one purpose and one purpose only, to protect white women from black men, or more importantly to punish black men who thought to hard about touching a white women. White men were never barred from black women, as even Richard had access to Mildred, who was six years his junior and decided to "do the right thing' when she became pregnant by him, unlike the right thing Strom Thurmond did in a similar situation.

While they were arrested for their crime, but they agreed to move out of the state of Virginia and thus avoided the more serious punishment of imprisonment. From Washington D.C. they proceded to bring their case, going first to Atty General (Robert Kennedy who referred them to the ACLU who brought to the Supreme Court and had the laws struck down. Then they returned to Virginia and lived with there three children until he died in a car accident and she passed just this past May. It is a love story for the ages if not the races too. He was her hero, as white men often are.

On the other hand, I think about people like the Scotsboro Boys and Emmit Till. I guess they had no heros back then. No matter what happened, no one was going to string Richard Loving up in a tree for having sex with a black girl. No one. No one would have to pull his body out of a river, because he got a black girl pregnant. No one was going to have to visit him in prison for the next ten years because someone took a video of him with his dick in her mouth. But he gets to be a hero. a champion of civil rights fighting for his woman, in the Supreme Court of the United States. I think about all those black bodies hanging in trees and the fact that they had no hero. I am sure that there were men who had to be beat into submission trying to save a black woman, until such an idea became absurd.

Interracial reltaionships no longer hold the kind of baggage they once did. But still, something does not feel quite right or normal about them. Wealthy black male entertainers and their trophy blonde bimbos are almost normal. And so the college educated black woman finding no black men who are worth her are now finding love in the arms of white men who are more than willing to be their heroes. But still something does not feel right about it. Even with the many, many black baby daddys to the white skanks on Maury, something still does not feel quite right about it. Maybe it is just ghosts in the trees.