Follow-up dialogue on Joan Walsh’s piece on interracial relation(ships). The black woman who wrote the article about her son needing to marry black responds. Joan then breaks-down her double-standards, while Edwards just hurls back a reality check. I sympathize with the plight of both women. In the end, Edwards is a realist-there is a large surplus of eligible single black women. Walsh might want the world to adhere to her idealistic beliefs about racial harmony, but race matters, race exists, and for black Americans who live under the continued shadow of racial hostility, platitudes about our Kumbaya future have less appeal than to someone like Joan Walsh….
Personally, I believe that “race-mixing” will be practiced by certain slices of the human race often jet-setting & transnational, united by abstractions, intellectualism and international capitalism, while the vast middle classes of decent folk will be rooted in faith, family and folk as they always have been….
Update: I guess I need to clarify, when I used the term “decent folk,” I didn’t mean to imply that I thought “race-mixing” (you can use whatever term) was a bad or good thing, but that the bulk of any given racial or ethnic group will want to “marry their own.” You can see this among Jews (an ethnic-religious group) and blacks (a racial group) or even evangelical Christians (see singles adds that specify that the person is looking for a fellow “Christian” [this generally means evangelical, though obviously Catholics and mainliners are Christian too]).
The upper castes, that prioritize high-powered careers and status often mix based more on money, education & material well-being. The race and religion of the partner (and very importantly, devotional religion is less powerful among the upper castes in most cultures) are less important relative to particulars of personal history-college, career and political values. The underclass that does not have a stake in the community on the other hand are tied together often by less savory civil institutions and life experiences.
Can someone find a survey on attitudes toward interracial marriage, etc. broken down by education? I couldn’t find any googling….
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