Calling all white people, part 8: Mixed-race unions aren’t the ultimate answer

Calling All White People, Part 8

(A periodic attempt to mobilize white people for something other than supporting just other melanin-deficient folks and maintaining a status quo of a nation geared toward whiteness as the baseline and the norm)

By An Average White Guy

TODAY’S EPISODE: Interracial marriage and mixed-race kids won’t save us
[To find other installments of “Calling All White People,” click here]

George Lopez had a joke he used in his stand-up routine many years ago that went something like, “The sooner we all intermarry and have babies and everyone looks like Filipinos, the better off we’ll be.”

Used to love that joke. Nowadays, not so much. I’ve learned better.

I don’t hate the joke. There’s even still tiny smidgen of truth in it. But there are a couple major thing wrong with it. First, we won’t ever all look the same shade no matter how much interracial procreation we do. Second, we always find ways to divide ourselves even when we’re in the same general color group. Colorism, for example, is a significant issue among many in non-white communities in the United States (dark-skinned Blacks vs. light-skinned ones, for example) and in other countries (such as India, just to name one).

No matter how many mixed-race babies we make in the United States, it isn’t going to erase racism. Too often I’ve seen in online life (and offline, too) white parents who have racist attitudes toward their non-white kids, whether those kids are biologically related or adopted. Issues around hairstyles that the white parent finds inappropriate (even if it’s natural for the kid’s genetically determined hair texture), for example. Or just about anything.

I mean, really. Even interracial marriage doesn’t prevent or eliminate racism. Plenty of white people have dated and married outside their race and continued to be racist at hell. Think about it: Plenty of misogynists are with women. In fact, most misogynists are with women. Married or dating. Doesn’t stop them from doing sexist things and being hateful toward women. The victims of their issues often being the women they are with, in fact.

But despite the glaring illogic that interracial relationships and families are the solution to our racial ills in this country, I see too many of my fellow white people lift up mixed-raced homes as the thing that will bring racism to its knees.

It won’t.

We need to do a lot more fundamental things to change society and our outlook on people who don’t meet the societal “norms” that we set if we are ever to solve racism. No matter how much fun it might be to try, we won’t screw our way out of the problem of racism.
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