A reader writes:
What I would really like to talk about is intermarriage. I have come to greatly abhor tribalism of all kinds, fueled most of all by this very conflict. That is why I firmly believe that intermarriage should be encouraged strongly, to just short of making it mandatory. If love isn’t everything, then love is nothing. But most important of all, the ‘silent holocausters’ need to be stopped.
It is forward of me to say this, but rip all vestiges of guilt you feel about it out of you. Not only is it unhealthy, it only serves to help those who see identity as more important than happiness, even to the point of unending war.
Am I insensitive to their strongly held beliefs? Maybe, but it’s not like I’m throwing white phosphorous at them or anything.
I’m all for this idea. Intermarriage of creeds, cultures, and races. The CC&Rs for the 21st Century.
[For our over-the-pond brethren, CC&Rs is a North American real estate expression used in gated communities, condo and townhouse units. It means Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions. They dictate community rules. When they're fair, they keep living together sane; when they're dictatorial or start encroaching on individual activity inside the residences, there's war.]
I have been (half)-joking for years that the solution to world conflict is forced intermarriage. In one decade, there will be billions of grandparents of different backgrounds cooing over the same babies. Of course, I myself am married to another white Jew, but I’ve never been one to avoid hypocrisy.
You made the right choice, David. I am of French-Polish Roman Catholic stock, and my wife is of Scotch-Irish Roman Catholic stock. My Polish grandmother warned me that this type of mixed relationship wouldn’t work, both of us coming from such different backgrounds. And I have to admit it’s a difficult go during the holidays, what with my family drinking Polish vodka on Christmas Eve, and my Irish in-laws drinking whiskey on Christmas Day. Not as easy a transition as one might think. Sometimes I feel as if I’m living a lie choking down that Irish turpentine through a forced smile. It’s only our families’ common interest in the humble potato that has kept our marriage afloat.
“I am of French-Polish Roman Catholic stock, and my wife is of Scotch-Irish Roman Catholic stock.”
Wouldn’t it be easier (and save space) just to be Americans?
” it’s a difficult go during the holidays, what with my family drinking Polish vodka on Christmas Eve, and my Irish in-laws drinking whiskey on Christmas Day”
I’m sure all our hearts bleed for you.
Roha, that was just my weak attempt at humor.
I regularly get my students (university) to debate the advantages and disadvantages of a system in which every 25 year old male in the world is forced to marry a 25 year old female chosen for him at random.
The most encouraging thing about the debates is that the students are always very concerned about how unfair this would be to homosexuals and lesbians. Racial issues just do not appear in their thinking.
They think it would of great benefit to the travel business, though, since people would be travelling all over the world to meet their new husbands and wives.
The more naive think that the language teaching business would prosper, as well. They imagine that husbands and wives talk to each other.
I should, perhaps, add that I do not just carry out this exercise with bunches of Australian students. I have used it in classes of Chinese and Korean nursing students (they turned out to be particularly concerned for the homosexuals), and mixed international classes with students from a wide variety of contries.
Of course, I myself am married to another white Jew, but I’ve never been one to avoid hypocrisy.
Thanks, you gave me my morning chuckle with this.
Even for those of us that are bothered by it, personal hypocrisy sometimes seems unavoidable. But as long as one marries for love rather than tribal affiliations of any stripe, I think you can be excused for not practicing what you(half) jokingly preach.
Isn’t that why we preach to others that which we find difficult to follow ourselves? from the words of every parent that ever was: ‘do as I say, not as I do!”
I actually feel really good when I see interracial couples, myself — a white person and a black person together, especially. It reminds me that in spite of everything, the bastions of “white power” (soft as well as hard) are crumbling regardless of the reactionary forces that currently control US government and society.
Besides, interracial children tend to have stronger genetic makeup and be more attractive. I’ve heard there’s scientific evidence to back this up (and it makes sense — the further you get from incest, the more robust the combinations), but just looking at interracial kids is enough to convince me. Not that I’d make a decision on whom to marry based on this, but it’s definitely a check in the “pro” column.
link to fasttimesinpalestine.wordpress.com
Which is why Singapore is not a good place for me. The girls there have a Chinese base, with plenty of Malay mixed in, plus bits of Tamil, British administrators, Japanese occupiers, and passing sailors from anywhere you care to mention.
And since Singapore is tropical, the fashions (and they are very fashionable) they choose tend be extremely skimpy.
For a man no longer in the first flush of youth, the strain on the system gets a bit severe.
Of course intermarriage is mandatory! As far as I know, it’s not legal in the state in which I reside to marry another man, so what else could I do? A guy doesn’t like to be alone.
Besides, if I’m going to marry someone who is a completely different species (female) small differences in religion are of no consequence.
As if we really know who we ourselves are, as if that knowledge could tell us who to marry.
Very cute – you strike again, Mooser…..a different species, indeed….
But we are getting closer, you know….though not soon enough for you to show off those high heels you must be keeping in the closet,,,,,at least not without life threatening consequences.
Exactly my position, and that of just about every man in a mixed marriage I know (and that is a lot).
‘Don’t the cultural differences between Australia and Japan make it difficult for you to understand each other at times?”
“They don’t matter. What makes it difficult is that I’m a man and she’s a woman.”
Wait a minute! I thought the reason my parents took me to visit my relatives so often was for that very purpose, to encourage intermarriage! What a confusing world.
Besides, I was always afraid of catching hemophilia.
And damn it, I have two sisters! Both fine upstanding women. How on earth could I marry a Jewish girl? I’ve always had a horror of incest.
But don’t worry Rabbi, I know who I am! Why, I can trace my genealogy back almost fifteen minutes!
As a species, I find it rather absurd that we humans continue to view such superficial differences as barriers. Surely, if you took 300 cats from Philadelphia and dropped them in Addis Ababa they would all mate with cats that are native to Addis Ababa.
The absurdity of the human race is that we have put ourselves on a pedestal as being more intelligent, highly evolved and certainly better than all the other species on this planet, and yet we seem to be the only species to have such irrational, unnatural behaviors and tendencies. Even homosexuality, which is currently the latest controversy to grip North America is found frequently in nature.
Avi, I read once that no two human beinks are any further apart than fifth cousins.
So we may not all be brothers, but we do have a hell of a Christmas-card list!
Yup, that’s what I said, fifth cousins. And not once removed, either!
Mooser, that further reinforces Guare’s six degrees of separation. Interesting.
Avi, please leave cats out of it – and don’t send them to Ethiopia just to test your hypothsis. Now lizards I don’t mind so much
“It is forward of me to say this, but rip all vestiges of guilt you feel about it out of you. ”
I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty it. But then, I’m not a Jew.
Too much consensus on this thread. I don’t think intermarriage should be discouraged or encouraged. If it happens great, if not, that’s fine too. I am suspicious of intentional attempts to assimilate and integrate – usually initiated by majority cultures.*
*Pond alert: “Why can’t they just be like us, we’re all the same anyway” is a big issue in Europe – very much to the detriment of minority cultures and the diversity of society.
Well, pond alert, right back ‘atcha, Shmuel. It’s a big issue here too. That’s why people are referred to, now, as Irish-American, Italian-American, Japanese-American, Polish-American, German-American, Chinese-American, British-American, Amish-American, Black-American, Red State-American, Blue State-American, and yes, Jewish-American. It’s also why Obama’s 1994 speech at the Democratic party convention, when he mocked all this and said there are only the United States of America, made him a big hit.
Except for Latinos — an anti-immigration hit job and led by powerful media since 2006 because Latinos dont vote for Israeli issues* — cultural diversity is an OK thing, including speaking your own language and maintaining your own culture.
* “Open Borders Threaten Jewish Clout”
link to forward.com
and
“The Jewish Stake in America’s Changing Demography
Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration Policy”
link to cis.org
“Open Borders Threaten Jewish Clout”
You are shitting me. Really? The actually even titled that racist piece of garbage article that? I mean, I knew there had to be Zionist Jews who think like that (*cough*Witty*cough*) but I didn’t think any of them would publish something that… that blatant.
I assume they naively believe that non-Jewish people just simple don’t read their publications. That’s… amazing. I almost want to print that out and distribute it to my Latino friends.
Wow. Really.
Chaos4700,
Then while you’re at it, tell your Latino friends that Haim Saban bought the controlling interest in Spanish-network Univision in 2007 (as well as the second largest media conglomerate in Germany) because “it’s good for Israel.”
Chaos4700, who do you think has been behind the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), et al — CIS was one of Lou Dobbs’ experts on the topic — and all the uproar over immigration and the false figures? Who do you think whipped everybody up with images of their jobs going, even though the loss of illegal immigrant dollars, and jobs, in states like CA, NV, AZ, NM, and TX have cost their treasuries BILLIONS. I dont have the energy to direct you to formal studies and articles and whatnot to prove this. (I would if I could just dump 20 links here.) TX said the illegals brought $17.2 billion extra into state coffers in the first formal national audit done by the state comptroller, and they brought in waaaay more money than they used. NV lost $9 billion because they never calculated the cost to the construction industry. CA lost billions in their fruit and vegetable businesses.
What? All to preserve “Jewish Clout?” Think about it.
You don’t have to quote the studies and articles to me, MRW — I could probably find those articles myself, with some effort, but even without them I know just by applying common sense to what I see from my vantage point in American society to recognize that this country doesn’t subsist without the constant expansion that immigration, among other things, provides.
I will say that I need more to go on to tie CIS to the Zionist lobby, in all fairness though. It’s conservative, yes, which means they’d hop in bed with Zionists, but I don’t see direct evidence that their motivation is the aggrandizement of Zionist Jewish power. They could just as easily be “good old boys.”
Chaos, who do you think wrote those articles?
Thanks, MRW. I’m pretty involved in this stuff – immigration, racism, integration – here in Italy, and know something about what’s going on in Holland, France, Switzerland, etc., but very little about the situation in the US. I think the problem here may be more acute, due to the existence of strong, relatively homogeneous national cultures, prior to the relatively new phenomenon of immigration. The “desirability” of intermarriage and assimilation is an important theme on the liberal left, to which some of the right is also forced to pay lip-service, because you can’t just say you’re a racist today.
Shmuel. We’ve had black-white racism is keep us occupied for 225 years, so the other forms (and nationalities) have had time to iron things out amongst themselves. Black/white intermarriage still raises eyebrows above people of a certain age, like 55+, but as you say, today it’s “lip-service’….
More… I would say that black/white intermarriage has been a a federal, or national, issue. Intermarriage between cultures, warring or otherwise, that dont affect the whole — because the whole neither understands the ‘niceties’ nor gives a shit — are a regional, municipal, or small town issue. You just had to change locations to escape the opprobrium connected to the latter; for the former, you moved to Canada or France. Or Sweden, if you really like to snowshoe.