Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Unjust Nature of the Interracial Marriage Ban
In the last post I discussed HWA's ban on interracial marriage and how it was based on faulty understandings of Scriptures. I was never really comfortable with it, but I was convinced HWA worked with God, and I thought there was so much more to this religion than that, and it did not effect anything I did, so I just passively accepted it.
However I did not then realize just how utterly unjust this belief is, as some writers on this question revealed.
Many states of the United States of America used to have anti-miscegenation laws forbidding interracial marriage. These laws were overturned following the 1967 Supreme Court decision in the case Loving vs. Virginia. The couple in question was convicted of breaking this anti-miscegenation law in trial in 1959. The judge used arguments very similar to what HWA would later use in banning interracial marriage, as may be seen here. This shows both were drawing on common erroneous beliefs to perpetuate this oppression.
"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 arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." (Judge Leon Bazile.)
Some analysts have concluded that this restriction on marriage choice was an even worst violation of liberty towards African Americans than the infamous segregation of public schools imposed upon them.
"In 1958, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an emigre from Nazi Germany, wrote in an essay in response to the Little Rock Crisis, the Civil Rights struggle for the racial integration of public schools which took place in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, that anti-miscegenation laws were an even deeper injustice than the racial segregation of public schools. The free choice of a spouse, she argued in Reflections on Little Rock, was "an elementary human right": "Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."" (Wikipedia: Anti-miscegenation laws)
Gunnar Myrdal also ranked this ban on interracial marriage as among the most fundamental and severe injustices inflicted upon African Americans.
"In his essay, Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem (1948), Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern whites on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, "social equality" including dancing and handshaking, and most importantly, marriage. This ranking was indeed reflective of the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell.... the bans on interracial marriage were the last to go, in 1967." (Ibid.)
He had no right to take things out of context to produce this oppressive doctrine. Like the Pharisees Jesus condemned HWA added burden upon burden upon his deceived followers. Why do those in the COGs continue to support a man who placed such heavy unnecessary burdens on his followers and who decided to perpetuate such an unjust institution?
However I did not then realize just how utterly unjust this belief is, as some writers on this question revealed.
Many states of the United States of America used to have anti-miscegenation laws forbidding interracial marriage. These laws were overturned following the 1967 Supreme Court decision in the case Loving vs. Virginia. The couple in question was convicted of breaking this anti-miscegenation law in trial in 1959. The judge used arguments very similar to what HWA would later use in banning interracial marriage, as may be seen here. This shows both were drawing on common erroneous beliefs to perpetuate this oppression.
"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 arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." (Judge Leon Bazile.)
Some analysts have concluded that this restriction on marriage choice was an even worst violation of liberty towards African Americans than the infamous segregation of public schools imposed upon them.
"In 1958, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an emigre from Nazi Germany, wrote in an essay in response to the Little Rock Crisis, the Civil Rights struggle for the racial integration of public schools which took place in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, that anti-miscegenation laws were an even deeper injustice than the racial segregation of public schools. The free choice of a spouse, she argued in Reflections on Little Rock, was "an elementary human right": "Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs."" (Wikipedia: Anti-miscegenation laws)
Gunnar Myrdal also ranked this ban on interracial marriage as among the most fundamental and severe injustices inflicted upon African Americans.
"In his essay, Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem (1948), Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern whites on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, "social equality" including dancing and handshaking, and most importantly, marriage. This ranking was indeed reflective of the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell.... the bans on interracial marriage were the last to go, in 1967." (Ibid.)
He had no right to take things out of context to produce this oppressive doctrine. Like the Pharisees Jesus condemned HWA added burden upon burden upon his deceived followers. Why do those in the COGs continue to support a man who placed such heavy unnecessary burdens on his followers and who decided to perpetuate such an unjust institution?
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