Race mixing to to break down racism?
Posted: Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Taken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board.
The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayanna

"… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic] - Ras Adams Simeon

I personally find this a very ugly suggestion. Not because I have a personal problem with people of any race mixing for whatever personal reasons they desire, but for a white person to come into a black movement/ forum and advocate race mixing is extremely ugly in my view. As someone from a Caribbean island that is extremely 'mixed' racially due to our slave plantation legacy and later further infusions of Indian, Chinese, Syrian and Portuguese labourers and merchants, I know quite well, and I am sure other informed Caribbean ones can attest to this, how often we see whites looking at little mixed, light skinned children with a preferential eye over dark skinned children or at children with 'good hair' over children with 'bad hair'. Because these whites may find these mixed children cute, or even have a relationship with those who may be a part of their biological family, it does not mean they suddenly love black people or even learn to view blacks without racism, it just means that they are grateful to at least have a less black one in their midst.

To me, any white that advocates race mixing hates black people. I see the same attitude in many blacks in the Caribbean as well. Many of them also prefer these children who are mixed and light skinned, and curly/ strait haired. This is simply a continuation of the degradation of plantation slavery where to have a mixed child would mean possible upward advancement for that child. It is also a manifestation of an ingrained self-hatred where one desires to be as close to white as possible. Surely you must be aware of this. We have debated this issue when we looked at colourism before, and when we looked at the whole issue of hair straitener vs natural hair and how each is viewed.

Race mixing is certainly not a new phenomenon. It was rampant among plantation societies and is rampant now. Certainly you cannot advocate that planters who sexed black slaves eventually became less racist? Certainly you cannot state that because people jumped into bed with each other that they suddenly developed some deep abiding understanding of race issues and their own hypocrisy and ignorance? Sex is the oldest form of domination in the book and we women know that quite well. You will have to come again with that argument to convince me. Especially when I live in a society where racism is simply more undercover especially among the various mixed shades of the black community, where most would rather die than be called African or allied with the kinky haired black Africans.

From the way this discussion has been going it would appear that the way to end racism in the view of some here is to eradicate the pure black race! To turn all blacks into a non- threatening shade of brown! All blacks! From the half confused self-denigrating Diaspora black to the pure Bantu woman proud of her race and culture. To do what? To create a race of Halle Berry's to make us more palatable to racist whites who want an exotic and not a real person? Indeed the problem of racism simply becomes even more dense and complex when there is race mixing. It certainly does not eradicate it, and it may even compound it.

This is no 'pie in the sky' assumption. I can state this having lived in a biological family where the skin tones and mixing runs the whole gamut, as well as observing a mixed race community and wider society for many years. I have always been aware that the preferred general aesthetic was to be mixed and light, among whites who viewed blacks and among many blacks who viewed other blacks.

I can say much more on this if others engage the subject properly and with an eye to viewing the real situation that exists. It may be nice to assume that at some indefinite point in the indiscernible future that we will all mix and be a melting pot of friendly brown, but I can tell you that there are societies where this has already happened to a considerable extent, and they are no closer to resolving race issues than they were in the 1800's. 

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