Silk Road Theatre Project

Yohen takes place in the year 1986.  In 1986, some states still had constitutional bans on interracial marriages, even though the Supreme Court ruled against these bans in 1967. Some judges were still upholding these anti-miscegenation laws as late as 1999. (”Miscegenation,” by the way, dates back to the 1864 presidential campaign, when anti-Lincoln critics feared “mongrelization”–a term that sounds even more racist today.)  The second half of the twentieth century saw, in this country, police bursting into the bedroom of a married couple to arrest them because they were of different races.

(Mildred Jeter Loving and Richard Loving, subjects of Loving v. Virginia)

1986 turned out to be a significant year for conversations on race.  On January 14 of that year, the Supreme Court barred racial bias in trial jury selection.  And, on September 8, 22 years ago this week, national broadcasts began of a new daytime talk show by an African-American woman named Oprah Winfrey.

Now, it seems the world is full of Oprah.  And a quick glance around the media shows us that the world is also full of couples of more than one race.

Michael Caine says it was “love at first sight” when he first saw his now-wife Shakira in Maxwell House commercial.  David Bowie and Iman prove that rock stars and supermodels can stay together for the duration–and Seal and Heidi Klum are chasing their record.  Even a movie critic and a judge can make it work (Roger Ebert and Chaz Hammelsmith).  The list, of course, goes on and on.  Can we learn from celebrities?

Oprah says yes.

(You can read more about the history referenced above at:

http://www.slate.com/id/2193747/pagenum/all/

and

http://www.lovingday.org/loving_story.htm

The full text of the Loving v. Virginia decision, regarding the marriage of the above-mentioned pulled-from-bed Mildred and Richard Loving, is available at

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Cross-cultural Families, Yohen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.