Loving is Universal

The Lovings

During one of the most trying presidential primary seasons in American history, one thing became clear. Race is still an issue in our country.

Barack Obama last week became the first African-American to become a major party’s presidential nominee. Some people, politics aside, cannot get past the black-and-white of him. But for many, Obama is a sign of change, a step in the direction of true racial harmony.

A biracial man running for president represents acceptance and the disintegration of old-school thinking on interracial couples and mixed people.

“Barack Obama’s family has drawn attention to the value and worth of multiracial families and individuals,” says Sarah Starnes, president and a founding member of the Kansas City Multiracial Family Circle.

Obama represents America as we would like to see it, a place where race isn’t used to degrade or divide — the way Richard and Mildred Loving wanted it to be when they got married 50 years ago this month.

In 1958 the Virginia couple (a black woman and a white man) were arrested and then banished just for pledging to love each other.

It was against the law back then, but they challenged it. And their case led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1967 that dropped the hammer on state laws that banned interracial marriages.

Mildred Loving died last month at the age of 68. Just a year before her death she was still fighting for the freedom to love. She spoke out against bans on gay marriage. It was her belief that everyone has the right to marry. Her husband died in 1975, and she never married again.

Although the Lovings have now passed, their love lives on through the many people they touched. It’s celebrated on June 12, known as Loving Day ( www.lovingday.org), an unofficial holiday commemorating the legalization of interracial marriage.

“We are grateful to Mildred and Richard Loving for stepping up so that oppressive laws could be changed and that constitutional rights could be upheld,” Starnes says.

“Loving Day is important because it represents the triumph of love and equal rights over bigotry, hatred and injustice. Interracial coupling has been going on since the beginning of humankind. Our recognizing that it is a natural phenomenon has resulted in a much higher quality of life for our entire society.”

Without the determination and sacrifice of the Lovings to fight to the Supreme Court, John-Alan Suter says, many more people would still be close-minded about interracial relationships.

“Marrying outside of your race presently is more and more prevalent all over the world,” says John, 25, a white man married to a black woman.

“Personally, without someone taking a stance for interracial marriage, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to share my life with the person whom I chose. The freedom to live and love as I can is the most important of all freedoms.”

Kathleen McCarther, 48, has been in an interracial marriage for eight years. She says that even though people don’t chastise or shame interracial couples the way they did in the past, some still aren’t comfortable with it.

“It’s like you are in this odd kind of category, like it’s still not the norm,” she says. “I don’t feel like I have transcended everybody’s acceptance. People give us a look, like we’re different, like we’re good people but we’re different. I guess you can’t be part of the norm, making a choice like this. People think there has to be an underlying reason to why you would love someone outside of your race instead of seeing it as a straightforward path of love.”