Future race

Love Actually

The Village Voice: For Ken Tanabe, a 28 year old designer of Belgian-Japanese descent, June 12 is sacred. That's the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling against laws that would have made his own parents' marriage illegal.

Until 1967, states could ban interracial marriages and even send the bride and groom to prison. In 1959, the Virginia Circuit Court found Richard and Mildred Loving—she's black; he was white—guilty of violating that state's ban. The Lovings were sentenced to one year in jail, which was later suspended on the condition that the couple leave the state and not return for 25 years. They moved to Washington, D.C., and were later vindicated on June 12, 1967, by a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. Ruling in Loving v. Virginia, the court struck down all state laws barring interracial marriage and held that denying "this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes" was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Today, Tanabe has now made it his mission to educate his fellow Americans about the history of miscegenation laws. To that end, he created Loving Day in 2004. Part annual holiday celebrated on the decision's anniversary, part educational website, lovingday.org offers an interactive legal map, real couples' testimonials, short videos celebrating interracial couples, and the courtroom history of key miscegenation laws.

Has there ever been a more appropriately named plaintiff?! I wonder what the Lovings are up to now... what their kids are like.

There's an interesting quote from the judge in the Lovings' original case, via columnist Major Cox:

Judge Basile admonished in his ruling, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with His arrangements, there would be no cause for such marriage."

I wonder what decisions are being handed down today that will be ridiculed four decades down the road... and Justice Scalia wants to stick to what the framers intended!

It's not a coincidence that Tanabe's photo looks like something out of a video game. It's the wave of the future; one plus one makes three. Here's Tanabe's Loving Day website... maybe Hallmark can get behind it.

Tanabe has a really neat interactive map on his site where you can see in what years interracial marriage was illegal in each state. Pennsylvania was the earliest to make it legal, in 1780. Probably for whites/free slaves, and Indians. After that when New Jersey became a state in 1787 it came in with interracial marriage legal; then in 1788 New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York became states with it legal. Vermont joined in 1791 with it legal, then for a long time it was illegal in every other existing and new state, until Massachusetts changed to make it legal in 1843.

Wisconsin bucked the trend of it being illegal in every new state outside the original 13 when it joined in 1848 with it legal; nearby Iowa in 1851 changed to make it legal, a year after California joined with it illegal. Minnesota continued the Upper Midwest trend of joining with it legal in 1858, with bloody Kansas switching in 1859 and New Mexico changing in 1866. Washington state changed in 1868, bringing the total to 13 states legal, 30 illegal.

Illinois changed in 1874, with Rhode Island finally joining all of its neighbors and changing in 1881. Maine held out until 1883 when it changed, along with Michigan. Ohio changed in 1887, but then it was a long time--until 1948!--before the next state made it legal, with California changing, joined in 1951 by Oregon. It's interesting, the map of illegal/legal interracial marriage states at this point looks almost exactly like the Republican/Democratic state maps do today. Only Maryland is illegal, and Kansas and New Mexico are legal. If I were the Democratic nominee in 2008 I'd pour money into these three states.

In 1953 Montana goes legal, followed by North Dakota in 1955, Colorado in 1957, and Nevada and Idaho in 1959, with Hawaii and Alaska coming in free. This means for the first time in America's history a majority of states, 28-22, allow interracial marriage. The South is still all red. New Mexico changes over in 1962, then in 1963 Utah and Nebraska switch. In 1965 Wyoming and Indiana change and make it official: Only in the South is interracial marriage still banned.

And in 1967 the Supreme Court forces those final 17 states to join the rest of us.

As Tanabe says in the accompanying interview:

Prejudice and racism are quite alive and well when it comes to interracial couples. People think it's a preference thing—as in, "I don't care what everyone else does but my daughter is not marrying a black man." Loving Day speaks directly to that.

The more interesting stories are where people are working through their issues. One woman is white, her fiancée's Asian, and her uncle is racist against Asians because he fought in the Korean War. Because he loves his niece, though, he decided he's going to have brunch with her future husband every Sunday until he gets over it. In America, we’re used to the black/white angle when you think racism, not necessarily Asian/white or Native American/white.

Photo of Tanabe by Nicholas Ong in the Voice.

Update: Why uncritical celebration of Loving Day makes no sense