This diary is part celebration of our progress, in memorium to a childhood friend, rehash of Obama's family, and related matters.
Loving Day commemorates the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia 1967 Supreme Court decision of June 12, 1967 that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. By happy happenstance Loving was the loving couple's name, Mildred and Richard Loving. Loving Day's mission is to fight prejudice through education and to build a sense of community among people who engage in meaningful interracial and intercultural relationships.
1. My Friend:
I am a straight white male but raised in a somewhat mixed liberal environment in New York City. Today remined me of my close childhood friend who was the child of a mixed race couple, and how the children of lefties often take other paths. I mostly ignorant of the significance of all this when I was kid. Gordie was just my friend and the cool older kid I looked up to and tried to keep up with (and was so happy he let me, played with, encouraged me). But his dad Marvin Rich was the...
Community Relations Director for National CORE. This was the second highest executive position in CORE in the late 1950s to mid-1960s [roughly coresponding with when James Robinson was the head]. Marv was one of the original members of St. Louis CORE, when he was in his teens. He had worked for integration on the Washington University campus. After graduating in Sociology, he worked for Earnest Calloway, in the Teamster's Union. After the Army & another stint with the Teamsters, he was sent to Washington, DC. He married Evie Jones, & they chose not to return to St. Louis, where their marriage was not recognized. He went to work for Histadrut in New York, but worked almost full-time at National CORE. As fund-raising improved, CORE was able to hire him. He is now retired & works for the Committee Against Censorship.
His mom, Evie Jones Rich was an activist and freedom fighter during the same period. Later she was also a principal and administrator in the public schools, a dean at Hunter college, and a scholar of the teaching of African and African-American history. More recently she is a board member of Americans for Democratic Action, executive director of the Rubin foundation, the Daphne Foundation and on committees for the NY State Board of Education.
So, their son Gordon was a good childhood friend (as children rank such things, he was my second best friend). With two years age difference we grew apart in Junior High School. We stayed in touch with an occasional phone call, letter or lunch over the years. Meanwhile, he was taking a very different professional path from his lefty activist parents, eventually going into into Wall Street mergers and acquisitions, though after he died tragically young his family established an educational foundation.
2. Obama's Family:
We all know about Obama's parents, white mom globe trotting anthropologist...
...and his Kenyan biological dad whom he never really knew.
Indeed it is in having parents who were PhD academics, and more or less cosmopolitan atheist secular humanists, that Obama truly differs from recent Presidential candidates!
Recently his Kenyan half-brother Malik has been in the newsnews:
The half-brother of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Malik Obama, told Army Radio on Thursday that Obama would make a good president for Jews. Malik Obama, a Muslim who resides in a small village in western Kenya, also requested to send a special blessing to the Jewish people around the world from the Obama family in Kenya. The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik - live in Britain or the United States. Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii with his American mother after his parents divorced and did not meet his brother Malik until 1985.
This is beautiful and wonderful of course...
But Obama's family tree is full of fascinating tidbits and irony, the greatest being that while he is not descended from enslaved Africans, he is descended on his mother's side to slave owners, as well as a Revolutionary War veteran, and Irish (O'bama is true, though on the other side of the family), and yeah, the Cheneys.
Of course Obama (kinda like my childhood friend Gordie), has in his personal life, family life and in his domestic policy stances has moved to a very moderate centrist and mainstream.
3. More Loving Marriages to Come:
One of my first diaries here pointed out that my religion required me to allow the marrying gay people. Those opposing gay marriage were infringing on my religious rights and tradition. Laws against same sex marriage are in effect endorsing government interference in free expression of religion and illegally taking sides to favor some denominations over others.
Although based on State constitutions and State law and precedent, one cannot help but to compare the history of anti-miscegenation laws the Loving decision to the current fight for equal rights for gay people including same-sex marriage.
Although, alas, Obama says that he does not, Mildred Loving did support gay marriage and movement is in that direction!
- What Does it all Mean?
I don't know.
A plea for love and tolerance?
Maybe it is a commentary on how the children of radicals may tend to hew back to mainstream?
When will we have a woman president? An open atheist? The child of a gay married couple? We shall see...
Well, anyway, we've come a long way not only from guess who's coming for dinner but also from next week's holiday, Juneteenth (that's in exactly one week).