Last weekend I went to a friend’s son’s wedding and was bowled over by the diversity. The bride was from another country, and the vows were repeated in her language. The groom’s best friend and former roommate gave an emotional toast about helping one another through thick and thin. When the two men hugged it was a contrast of completely different skin colors.
The groom is one of the few truly-color-blind people I know. He grew up with black and Puerto Rican friends, he works alongside people of color in New York City.
His wedding reception was on the grounds of a gun club in upstate New York. He got the place because his relative, an excavator, is a member. Looking around the wedding, with the shooting range and deer-hanging rack and a magnificent stand of walnuts in the distance, I saw more people of color than I’ve seen at any party I’ve been to in elite settings in New York.
I know the groom because I’m close friends with his father, a contractor, and this is not his first child to marry across traditional lines. The American middle class may be small, but I sense that it’s diverse. There are a lot of groups rising and falling within it, everyone holding on by their nails. That’s the mix I saw at the wedding, including an interracial couple or two.
No one talked religion that day. My friend was raised Catholic but left the church a long time ago. When we pass a crucifix driving, he shouts that they oughta get a coat on the poor guy. There were no religious references in his son’s vows. The guy who officiated wore an open shirt. There were several Jews at the reception.
My friend is special; he’s a freethinker. But this is postracial America, the America that young idealistic people are building. (And yes, it makes the Zionist impulse in American Jewish life, the need to separate ourselves so as to insure our safety, seem more out of date than ever.)
Creating the new man
Homo Americus, familiar somewhat…
Im bout to get hitched; we told her pops we aren’t interested in a church wedding, let alone a catholic mass…. crickets. my girl got pissed by his silence and said, “well hopefully our not getting married in a catholic church doesnt offend the catholics more than say, kids getting raped by catholic priests.”
Me, my fiance and her mom laughed out loud, and hard – her dad, not so much. So, he’s living in the past to, where the catholic church still held a shred of moral authority among catholics, sort of like how being tribal was the accepted moral sensibility among jews. Tribalism is so 20th century.
I’ve always been a bit confounded by the lack of diversity by those who proclaim to love it the most, namely white liberal elites. I think Max Blumenthal mentioned that when he met up with a lot of young journalists just out of college in mid-2000s (Adam Serwer, Matt Yglesias and many others) at progressive meetups he was struck at how incredibly white it was. And this was underscored when NPR fired Juan Williams in 2010. He was their only black journalist at the time. Even Fox had more of them.
And this is also true if you look at the major media outlets, both their executive teams and their journalists. Hardly a black, hispanic or an Asian around at NYT, WSJ or WaPo.
And the same is true if you look at where they live, it’s very self-segregated and incredibly white. It seems that the lower classes, sneezed at for their lack of sophistication and supposed bigotry, will get there much faster. Among whites alone, it’s the working class that is most likely to intermarry out racially even if they in polls express more negative racial opinions(perhaps they are just honest) while upper-scale whites give great answers to pollsters because they know the game but in reality intermarry less often on average(even if rising).
Having said so, whites are still incredibly racially conservative. About 9 % intermarry each year of all marriages where one white spouse is involved. Blacks are at 20+ %, hispanics at 40 %, Asians at 40 % and Jews over 50 %(non-Orthodox only).
Let’s hope your friend is joined by many more in the coming years to tear down the racial walls of America.
By the way, Phil.
Here’s an interesting article re Jews and immigration you posted on a few days ago:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/104017/european-unified-by-soccer
Notice his celebration of diversity and immigration for Europe. I guess it would be the same for America. Now ask if he would celebrate the immigration of the same peoples(Arabs, Africans) into Israel? So we still have some work to do within our own community, the racial hysteria and obsession of blood purity concerning Israel and the complete opposite positions, generally liberal, positions in the diaspora. Ironing out these kinks will require some hard work the coming years.
PHIL- “But this is postracial America….”
You seem to place an inordinate emphasis on symbolism, while ignoring empirical reality. Post-racial America is an illusion. Your description of the wedding sounded eerily like “Rachel Getting Married.” Something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.
‘Having said so, whites are still incredibly racially conservative. About 9 % intermarry each year of all marriages where one white spouse is involved. Blacks are at 20+ %, hispanics at 40 %, Asians at 40 % and Jews over 50 %(non-Orthodox only).’
Sociologically, this could be seen as a matter of the pecking order. For all the hue and cry to the contrary, ‘they still all want to be white’ to put it bluntly. Conversely, whites want to stay white.
This isn’t to praise the arrangement. It’s just to note it. For what it’s worth, my wife is from El Salvador, and my son has been going steady with a very Mexican girl for over a year now — not to my unqualified approval, but I figure (a) she really is a very nice girl, (b) it’s not really my business to interfere barring something utterly intolerable, and (c) he could do a whole lot worse. To the extent that I would just as soon see the relationship end, it has to do more with her utterly working-class background and her being five feet tall than with her ethnicity per se. Again, I’m not seeking to justify the elements in my reaction — just to honestly note them. I’m not into self-deception.
Parenthetically, I find your statement that the intermarriage rate among Asians is 40% a tad at odds with my impressions. Hispanics do seem to become just more white people given a generation or two. Blacks try. You sure it’s the same with Asians? There’s some intermarriage — but surely not 40%.