Interracial marriage and the definition of race Hiroki FUJITA (12/06/04) Romance or race? Is it important for you to think about race when you get married? It is believed that Japan is a single race state, so that interracial marriage will often cause a big problem. Some people still have a prejudice against people from other Asian countries. It is true that Japan became one of the industrialized countries in the world after the Second World War at remarkable speed, but it doesn’t indicate the superiority of Japanese race. It was just the problem of the conditions; China became a communist country, Korea experienced the war and it hasn’t ended still now. Nevertheless, some people in Japan tend to think of China and Korea as inferior. They will regard a marriage with a Chinese or a Korean as abnormal. Even though there was no law that prohibits interracial marriage in Japan, it is not accepted, especially marriage with people from Asian countries. On the other hand, many various people came to live in the United States from other countries; some were from Europe, others were from Africa. Just walking on the street, we can see the diversity of the ethnicity especially in a densely populated area. Thus, the United States would seem to be more accepting of interracial marriage. However, it wasn’t; many states banned the miscegenation. In the past, people used eugenics to insist that interracial marriage would cause the disharmony in the human body and more likelihood of the disorder of their children. This idea was accepted widely and contributed to create the public opinion. However, this is obviously the discrimination against race. There is no evidence that proves the superiority and the inferiority of the race. According to the Mendel’s Law, the gene for white skin color is recessive; therefore, as some Christians claimed, if the human beings started with whites, it couldn’t produce the black (Malcolm X, 1965). Human beings started with the blacks originally in Africa. Although most of the whites thought of the blacks as inferior and tried to highlight the difference, what is the difference between the whites and the blacks? Is it possible to define the race? In this essay, I would like to discuss the definition of the race by introducing the Jim Crow Laws. First of all, I will tell you some general information about the Jim Crow Laws. Secondly, in order to know about the actual problem of the segregation and to reveal the basic consciousness of the discrimination, I would like to discuss the prohibition of the interracial marriage in the history of the United States. Finally, I will ponder the definition of the race. What are the “Jim Crow Laws”? Originally Jim Crow was the name of a character in a minstrel show that started in the 1830s (Davis). A white entertainer painted his face black and performed as a black person in a “silly” way. It became popular culture in the United States, and it created the stereotypical inferior image of the blacks. But it was not clear why the name of the character represented a series of discrimination laws. The Jim Crow Laws started after the Civil War, at first in the Southern States. These laws ruled the separation of the people in the public spaces in accordance with their race. It seeped deeply in the daily life; schools, churches, transportations, restaurants, and other public spaces were all separated between whites and blacks. But in 1950, the Supreme Court ruled that the denial of the equal education was unconstitutional, and in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., the Supreme Court upheld this decision and said “separate is not equal.” It opened up the way to integrated schools. These two judgments accelerated the Civil Rights movement, and led the end of the Jim Crow Laws. (Columbia Encyclopedia, 2003) Let us think about the interracial marriage. The ban of the interracial marriage is considered a part of the Jim Crow Laws. Generally, each state prohibited marriage between the white and “the negro.” Not only that, in many cases, the Malay and the Mongolian were also added to the list (Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site, 1998). In Florida and Maryland, interracial marriage was “forever prohibited.” But interestingly, the definition of the race was different from state to state. Mississippi, Missouri and Maryland define a black as a person who has one-eighth of black blood. In Florida, it was defined as one-sixteenth. In Virginia, a black was defined as a person who has one fourth of black blood, in addition, this rule lasted until 1910; the law was revised from one fourth to one eighth in that year. Then, the interracial marriage was forbidden in 1930. The worst case was Louisiana where had the so-called one-drop rule, which defined a person who has any one drop of the black blood as black, until 1970. This rule was revised in 1970 to one thirty-second of the black blood, and then, a lawsuit was held in 1983. As a result, the one thirty-second rule was abolished (Davis, 1991). What was the evidence for these definitions? In those cases, the ratio of the blood was the criteria. The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson case, in 1896, that the person with one-eighth of the black blood should be regarded as the black, and avoided ruling on race directly, took “judicial notice” instead (Davis, 1991). The concept of “Judicial notice” means the common sense or knowledge, the idea that is supposed to be believed in the society. It does not indicate any specific scientific date or result of survey, but it does reflect the consciousness of society; thus, it worked as a judgment. This ruling became the standard in the federal courts. It is terrible that the discrimination happens officially without any persuasive reasons. As we saw, the definition of race is quite different from state to state. One state defined black as one-eighth of the black blood, another state defined it as one-sixteenth. In addition, it is also different from time to time. If the race can be defined clearly by the science, the definition will be unchangeable. However, it completely depended on the states. This fact shows that the ambiguity of race. Race cannot be defined easily as the examples above showed. Besides, the concept of the “pure race” is “not accurate” (Gordon, 1964). In “Intermarriage,” Gordon discussed that the “pure” race. According to his arguement, “‘pure’ mankind may have been at the beginning of time,” but as a result of the “natural selection” and the “war, conquests, and many other factors,” the “pure” race doesn’t exist. In other words, the “pure” race is an illusion; it is an imaginary idea. “The notion of a pure race is, then, little more than a myth,” Gordon affirmed (1964). Therefore, it can be said that making a distinction between races doesn’t make sense at all. As the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women pointed out (1967), any form of distinction between genders causes the discrimination against gender. For instance, in schools we were supposed to make a line in classroom separately between males and females. However, unconsciously this experience gives children the idea that the male and the female are different from each other. At last, the distinction produces the discrimination against gender. Especially in schools, usually boys go fast and get to the front. Then, girls are forced to be in back. It will create the bias; boys are superior to girls. Similarly, we shouldn’t make any distinction between races as long as it definitely will create discrimination against race. To define race is nearly impossible. We are not the whites, the blacks, or the yellow, but the same homo sapiens (Alpenfels, 1957). In this sense, it can be said that the human being has only one race. The right of the marriage should be guaranteed to all the people. How can we oppose interracial marriage? Works cited Alpenfels, E. J. (1957). Sense and Nonsense About Race. New York: Friendship Books. Columbia University Press. (2003) Jim Crow Laws. In the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Oct 21, 2004, from http://education.yahoo.com/reference/encyclopedia/entry?id=24568 Davis, F. J. (1991). Who is black? : one nation’s definition. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Davis, R. L. F. Creating Jim Crow. Oct 21, 2004, from http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating.htm Gordon, A. I. (1964). Intermarriage: Interfaith, interracial, interethnic. Boston: Beacon Press. Malcolm X. (1965). Learning to Read. In G. Colombo &R. Cullon & B. Lisle (Eds.), Rereading America Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing Sixth Edition (p.247). Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site. (1998, Jan 5). “Jim Crow” Laws. Oct 21, 2004, from http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim_crow_laws.htm Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (1967, Nov 7). Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Oct 21, 2004, from http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/21.htm