Loving: 50 Years Later

As June 2017 comes to a close, let us take time to honor the momentous U.S. Supreme Court decision passed down 50 years ago this month and revel in the legacy of Loving vs. Virginia all these decades later. In the time that ensued since the victorious resolution of their case, the Loving family settled down to the peaceful life they'd sought, until Richard's untimely death in 1975, after which Mildred kept the flame of their historic romance burning until her final days. Their last surviving child, Peggy, lives her life just as quietly as did her parents, and this is a testament to the idea of a very low-key couple and family who were reluctant warriors, but who, with this quiet determination, paved the way for families across America to take for granted their existence and has brought forth a new generation of biracials that has proudly taken up the responsibility of continuing Richard and Mildred's hard-won fight by utilizing modern media to speak up about their experiences and lives in the biracial sphere. So 50 years on there's much to celebrate and here's to 50 and beyond!

Biracial in Trumpville

 

Hello again my lovely readers. It's been many a day, but the election of Donald Trump to the highest and most sacred office in the land has turned my spirit nearly to mush and manifested in an inability to transmit my thoughts to blog.  In his short time in office, this destructive force of a person has, among many things, fostered a still-mysterious association to an autocratic Eastern European leader forged yet another (currently suspended) attempt to ban Muslims from the country, and tried to sell us a cruel healthcare bill.  Amongst this smorgasbord of national security concerns and discrimination, my thoughts and concerns have focused in particular on the ever-present faultline of racial relations that has currently exploded in an earthquake of division, especially regarding the biracial space in which I live. When I began this blog in 2008, in the dawn of the Obama era of hope and change, I was quite inspired by having a leader in the White House who, even though his path of identity diverged from my own, lived his life with one white parent and I endeavored to give a glimpse into what's it like existing in this particular truth.

 It was and still is my thought that discussing how two historically opposing backgrounds operate together in reality would allow some insight that, although people such as myself don't represent the saving grace of race relations in America or exist in "the best of both worlds", that it might be understood that to be half-black half-white is to have a kaleidoscopic vantage point of both the complexity of embodying two sides of a very fraught American story, and the beauty of feeling the warm embrace and sense of home each culture offers, bringing a unique sense of one's place in the American fabric.

In Trumpville, those such as myself and others in my particular community would be, quite literally, illegal. The beautiful coming together of two communities who've been at odds since this country's very founding would've failed at the steps of the US Supreme Court on a June day 50 years ago. In an environment where the bodies and  souls of black and brown folk are under constant threat, all of us, including those of us who dance in between, must continue to stand, shout out our right to exist as who we are and keep up the good fight so that the diversity that this country has always struggled with but strived towards will truly lead to a more perfect Union.