Why the Lessons of Loving Are Still Relevant Today

[sheshe2]

It is a striking irony that the movie Loving, which depicts the personal side of the legal battle to end laws prohibiting interracial marriage, comes out just as the United States’ presidential election illuminated the persistence of racial and social divides in our nation.



The film tells the story of Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving. Jeter was Black and Loving was white. After marrying in Washington, D.C. in 1958, the couple returned home to Virginia. In the middle of the night just five weeks after their wedding, the local police raided their home and arrested them for daring to live as man and wife. The couple pled guilty to breaking the state’s Racial Integrity Act, and a local judge gave them a choice: Leave Virginia or go to prison.

The Lovings moved to Washington, D.C. For five years, but were rearrested while visiting family in Virginia. This time, however, the couple fought back. Inspired by the civil rights movement, Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for help. He directed her to the American Civil Liberties Union (my current employer, in full disclosure), which took the case to the Supreme Court. In 1967, the court unanimously struck down all state bans on interracial marriage.

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In today’s divided America, we can see how reaction to Loving can serve as a litmus test for viewers and their views on race. Perhaps the film is a reminder of how far we have come as a nation since Mildred and Richard Loving’s marriage was judged illegal simply because of their races. Or, when viewed against the backdrop of the recent election, perhaps the film serves as a bitter reminder of how far we still have to go to confront the legacy of deeply-entrenched discrimination. And the movie may be seen in some quarters as glorifying a love that no government should legally allow.

The strong link between fear and discrimination binds together the Loving era to the present-day. The Virginia anti-miscegenation law which criminalized the Loving’s marriage was the result of the centuries-old fear of black people, particularly their sexuality. The fear that black people — and particularly black men — were brutish, violent and hypersexual in large part spawned antebellum racial codes and the harsh Jim Crow laws that followed the Civil War. The fear of black men as rapists in waiting and the perceived need to protect the purity of white women from them was closely associated with many of the lynchings that plagued the nation for the majority of its history.


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Read More: http://motto.time.com/4575296/loving-movie-racism/

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I think it is past time that people keep their noses out of other peoples lives. Mind your own effing business.

[niyad]

1. as I repeatedly tell the annoying ones, "that is why they are called PRIVATE lives"

[sheshe2]

2. The annoying ones! Lol!

Yup.

[niyad]

3. my response to a woman demanding that I be upset about a non-het couple, "well",

"don't you CARE who they are sleeping with???"

"as long as it isn't anybody I am sleeping with, NO"

[sheshe2]

6. Love your resopnse...

[niyad]

7. sometimes, being a real smartass is FUN!!!

[brer cat]

8. It's also the best way to deal with them.

They are incapable of critical thinking or reasoning, so mocking them is the best approach. And as you said, more fun than getting angry.

[Martin Eden]

4. "In 1967, the court unanimously struck down all state bans on interracial marriage."

That was more than a century after the Civil War ended slavery.

A wise and very great man once said:
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Some arcs are still bending, and forces soon coming to power will apply pressure to bend the arc away from justice.

[sheshe2]

5. And that is what we have to stop.

Some arcs are still bending, and forces soon coming to power will apply pressure to bend the arc away from justice.

[brer cat]

9. So true.

The strong link between fear and discrimination binds together the Loving era to the present-day.

Having lived in the Jim Crow south, I know that irrational and illogical fear was a huge motivating factor and it still is. Insane but true.