Mildred Loving, a black woman whose marriage to a white man led to the seminal U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Virginia's ban on interracial marriage, died today at age 68. NPR has a good interview with her from last year, on the 40th anniversary of the Court's case. Pam at the Blend observes that Loving is also a beacon of hope for supporters of same-sex marriage:

Those of us eagerly waiting for the day when same-sex marriage is finally legalized across the land owe a debt of gratitude to Mildred Loving, whose 1967 case (Loving v. Virginia) resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision that broke down a major social and legal barrier  - interracial marriage.

A moment of silence for a woman who once said she wasn't trying to change history; she just fell in love.

(Crossposted at Mombian.)

Going through the posts over at feministing.com I was  surprised to read about some seriously ill advised, flat out racist opinions pieces in college campuses. This one in particular, about "Asians" was shocking in its vitriol.

Students have claimed this to be "satire." At the very least, they should retroactively fail whatever literary classes they've taken for their abuse of the word, and sit with Alanis Morissette in a class on "proper use of literary terms, satire, irony, etc."

There are many things college is supposed to be- a place to learn academics, yes, but it's also a safe place to test limits, to protest, to drink too much, to make mistakes. But how far should students test those limits? Often we look to colleges to create the most passionate, activist types around us, and I think it's shocking when something like this- which, let's be frank, is average in its offensiveness when you compare it to the general populous- comes out of a college. We expect better. And yet you will not find me on the side of colleges acting in loco parentis. I wonder what the consequences for something like this should be? In "real life" you'd get fired... or maybe sued by China. I have a story after the jump about my own experience with  campus media. It's isn't entirely pertinent to post, but the link opened old wounds and I felt the urge to purge.

I know racism and sexism sadly still exist as we often cover here, but if there is one more thing I am looking forward to when we finally have a presidential nominee it is the end of Hillary-Barack sexism-racism “trend” stories. (Die, die, die!) Most recently, MSN’s Eve Tahmincioglu -- who I normally respect -- covered an MSNBC.com/Elle survey that even women prefer male bosses. Oh. My. God.

Hillary Clinton might want to sit up and pay attention to results of our exclusive survey on attitudes in the workplace…

While more than half our 60,000 respondents said a person's sex makes no difference to leadership abilities, most who expressed a preference said men are more likely to be effective leaders.

Of male respondents, 41 percent said men are more likely to be good leaders, and 33 percent of women agreed. And three out of four women who expressed a preference said they would rather work for a man than a woman.

The survey, conducted early this year, found a bonanza of stereotypes among those polled, with many using the optional comment section to label women "moody," "bitchy," "gossipy" and "emotional." The most popular term for woman, used 347 times, was "catty."

Okay, let’s take another look at that. More than half the respondents said “a person’s sex makes no difference.” But it wouldn’t be a sexy news story unless we profiled some scary, catty, insecure women so there goes the spotlight on the minority of those respondents. Who are these freaks anyway?

And even though the survey did not ask the respondents who they are going to vote for in the primary -- or if they are even Democrats! -- Hillary must be tied in there somewhere. Someone gouge my eyes please. Grrrrr!

My son's preschool class has been talking about the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. "Martin Luther King was a peacemaker," my son informed me last week. "And a bad man shotted him."

All things considered, I'm glad he doesn't say the word "shot" enough to know its proper grammatical usage. I agreed with his assessment of Dr. King, and reaffirmed that being a peacemaker meant trying to teach people to get along.

The next, day, when I picked him up from school, he told me, "All people have melons in their skin."

I had an image of bulbous protuberances, and wondered how this came up in the classroom.

"If you live in a hot place, you have a lot of melons in your skin," he explained, "but if you live in a cold place, you don't have a lot of melons."

Ah. "You mean 'melanin.'"

"Melanin."

I think it's only a matter of time before we'll be having to explain that "les beans" are not, in fact, a type of French legume. Still, if he understands the value of peacemakers, I'm okay with that.

How have you explained this holiday to your children? What do you say when they ask why someone shot Dr. King?

Good to "see" you, Fabooj! Thanks for the timely diary. -Elisa

x-posted at my blog

Indulge me a bit in posting on "old news", but there's a discusion going on in the blogosphere about the Senator, with the basis in feminism.  On BooMan Tribune, Arthur Gilroy has decided that women, particularly left-leaning, blogging women, hate Clinton because:

They resented her success. They resented the template ITSELF. To some degree, the fact that this woman had become a truly DOMINANT woman...not just independent,. but dominant over the lives of many, many men as well as children and women pressed buttons in both of their heads that had been implanted in their early "I ENJOY being a girl!!!", "Play with those damned dolls or ELSE"  youth.

You have to read the entire post to fully appreciate that women, according to Gilroy, can not make a decision regarding Clinton because we're preconditioned.  

What happens when you choose to live and work in another country, and, by fate, you meet a child with whom you and your partner establish a connection? What happens when you attempt to adopt that child in a country where there is no clear adoption program and laws for foreigners? It can blow way out of control - as Madonna found out when she got a court order that allowed her to take her son-to-be out of Malawi during the 18 month adoption process.

Or it can bring geopolitics of a region down to the most personal of all actions: building a family. And, that's the story Neely Tucker tells in Love in the Driest Season.

Love in the Driest Season is the story about how his daughter-to-be, Chipo, came into their family, but it's also the story about Tucker's life in Zimbabwe as a foreign correspondent caught both professionally and personally in the whirlwind of shifting African geopolitics. Tucker and his wife Vita move to Zimbabwe when Tucker is assigned the African post for his newspaper. They volunteer in an orphanage and watch 35 children die in 24 months. Both of them become involved in working at the orphanage and raising money to improve conditions. And then, their work becomes something more.

There's always a first time. I was with my son at his school playground last week, taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to hang with the other parents and kids at the end of the day. My son wandered over to the sandbox, where another boy his age was playing. They introduced themselves in the soft, hesitant tones of children still practicing social niceties.

The other boy then asked "What's your cousin's name?"

My son looked puzzled, as did I. "I don't have a cousin," he said. (He does, of course, but not in the vicinity.)

"What's your cousin's name?" the boy asked again, with the persistence of the preschooler. The best I can figure is that he meant the other redhead on the playground, who is no relation except insofar as we carrot-tops all have some common genetic link back down the evolutionary tree. My son again responded in the negative.

The boy went in a different direction. "What's your dad's name?"

No one else heard the gong going off in my head. I kept silent, wanting to see how my son handled it. He paused for just a second to think.

"Well, that's Mommy," he explained, gesturing to me. "And the other one's Momma, but she's at work now."

"This truck can go faster than the boat," said the boy, picking up two of the somewhat battered toys sitting in the sand, and doing a demonstration.

Bravo, young man, I thought to my son, proud that he'd found his own answer. I was heartened, too, by the other boy's simple acceptance of the response. Maybe they will indeed grow up into a better world.

It struck me, then, that the two of them, going to the same school and playing together with nary a raised eyebrow from parents or teachers, represented another sort of progress. My son is white, and his new friend is black. No, the world isn't perfect yet, for either of them, but it's a whole lot better than it was. With effort and luck, it will continue in that direction. I watched them drive trucks around, rapt in the present, unaware of either the past or future they embodied. Two boys, covered in sand and hope.

(Crossposted at Mombian.)

Whether you are in the suburbs or the city, a private or a public school, one uncomfortable trend persists: Low-income minority children are not in the advanced classes. Largely white middle class children are while their low-income counterparts flounder in remedial courses.

Most recently, Newsweek’s Ellis Cose re-visited Little Rock, Arkansas 50 years after desegregation. He was struck by how the same problems of poverty and segregation still afflict minority neighborhoods -- and schools.

Today, like much of the rest of America, Little Rock grapples with a continuing achievement gap in its schools, economic distress in disproportionately minority neighborhoods and mistrust among competing communities and public officials. Earlier this year Central High student Brandon Love drew a straight line from the past to the present. In an article in the Arkansas Times and elsewhere, he observed that his Advanced Placement classes were overwhelmingly white: “As an African American and the student body president, I have encountered A Tale of Two Centrals…As the only African American in most of my classes, I experience firsthand what some dismiss as “’subtle’ racism,” he wrote. Nancy Rousseau, the transplanted New Yorker who is principal at Central, acknowledges that more whites than blacks take AP classes -- but she blames differences in preparation and achievement, not discrimination. “That’s an issue that we’re dealing with, an issue that, unfortunately, is universal,” she says. “There are places that are overcoming it, and I want us to be one of them.”

I wonder where these places are as they aren’t Berkeley or San Francisco either. Unfortunately, the divide is only growing.

In light of No Child Left Behind, which has led to an exodus of middle class families from urban public schools, according to a prominent educator quoted in Newsweek online, there is an (unfortunate) perception that urban public schools are simply institutions to help poor children and those with special needs; that a middle class child won’t be challenged. And I am surprised that in even a liberal bastion like Berkeley, there is a lot of racial tension -- or at least perceived slights -- in the schools.

Recently, a (Latina) acquaintance with two children in a Berkeley public elementary school told me she thought white parents liked the school’s dual immersion program so that their children can be with Hispanics and other white children, but not poor black kids. Her observation is that the dual immersion program has mostly white and Latino kids in it, which is in sharp contrast to the “regular” school, which is largely black. What she has noticed is when white parents do not get a coveted slot in the program -- which is dictated by lottery -- they immediately flee for private schools.

In defense of the white families I know in private school, I told her they desperately want their children to learn Spanish -- just like us.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said.

Thank you for posting this great diary Erin! I too had a weird fascination with these twins since seeing them on a talk show...I'm thinking it was Oprah, but I could be wrong. It's always been very difficult for me to understand a child express hatred and racism, especially knowing that we are not born this way. You're right, hatred is NOT a moral. My son is bi-racial, and for a very long time hated being associated with the black side of him. It took a lot of patience, and a lot of communication to get him to see that he is lucky, in that he has two cultures to embrace.  - Gloria

I came across this blurb on Jezebel (thanks, Erika!) about Prussian Blue, a duo of white supremacist musician twins by the names of Lynx and Lamb.  I've been aware of these girls for several years now, and paid attention with perverse fascination whenever I came across information about them.  I was always disgusted, of course, but never gave much thought to the fact that these children were the victims of their parents' agenda, publically humiliating themselves in order to spread their mother and father's hateful world view.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the remaining interracial marriage bans in 16 states in the U.S. I needn't belabor the parallel between the struggle to end interracial-marriage bans and our current fight to legalize same-sex marriage—most readers here will make the connection.

Loving Day has much more in celebration of the Loving decision, including a neat interactive map that lets you see which states restricted interracial couples during every year from 1662 and 1967, a courtroom history of the cases that led to the Supreme Court, and stories of real couples affected by the ruling. It's good reading for anyone, including children old enough to take an interest in civil rights and history.

Tying it in with the struggle for LGBT rights, Freedom to Marry has joined with a number of groups, LGBT and not, to celebrate Loving:

1. as a milestone in the fight against racial inequality,
2. for its importance in securing the freedom to marry as a civil right,
3. for its embodiment of the importance of social justice activism and independent courts, and
4. for its relevance to today's ongoing battles against unfair exclusion from marriage.

In the spirit of this day, to celebrate relationships and families of all types, I'm going to ask you to leave a comment if you personally know any couple or family you consider "non-traditional"—whether LGBT, interracial, of mixed religions, with adopted kids, single parents, etc., etc. You define it. No need to name names, if you don't want to; let's just use this as an exercise to show how diversity--and equality--touches all of us, in many different ways. Anecdotes of acceptance or bias also welcome.

The Rutgers women's basketball team held a press conference yesterday regarding the Imus comments.  They did a great job; they showed class, grace, dignity and smarts.  As a New Jerseyite, I was so proud of them.

So what happens to Imus now?  Will he be ousted after his two-week slap on the wrist?

Calls for his ouster have come from a growing number of individuals and organizations, from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to the National Organization for Women to Al Roker, the famously amiable weatherman.  In another ominous sign, three corporations announced yesterday they were withdrawing advertising from the show in response to Imus' comments.

But guests are still coming to his show:

Though baseball star Cal Ripken Jr. canceled an appearance on "Imus in the Morning" yesterday, guests who did show up included comedian Bill Maher, CBS News political analyst Jeff Greenfield and former Carter administration official Hamilton Jordan.

Some experts say it is likely he will survive:

"My bet is he survives," said Larry Gerbrandt, senior vice president and media analyst for Nielsen Analytics. "I think it’s the principle here. You can’t let third parties decide corporate policy."  He added, "If the notoriety pushes up his ratings, he could even come out ahead."

Finishing up with a quote from C. Vivian Stringer, the women's coach at Rutgers, from her remarks at the press conference yesterday.  She captures the whole scandal beautifully:

It’s not about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. It’s about women. Are women hos? Think about that. Would you have wanted your daughter to have been called that? It is not about they as black people or as nappy headed. It’s about us as a people, black, white, purple or green. And I want to suggest that as much as I speak about that, the truth of the matter is that it is not even black and white. The color is green. The color is green.