KAREN I. writes:

Your post about white women with black men brought this to mind. This is Kelly Ripa with her new co-host, Michael Strahan. Ripa, a married mother of three, apparently has no qualms about publicly embracing her new co-host. In fact, she did so with great enthusiasm on his first day, leaping into his arms as he entered the studio:

—— Comments —–

Terry Morris writes:

Several years ago I mentioned this at VFR in a comment to a similar entry:

Almost twenty years ago a retired public school teacher shared with me her theory of why we see this sort of thing so often these days. She said that white girls, being more emotionally driven and sympathetic than boys, and being taught in the public schools and by the surrounding culture that blacks have always been oppressed in America and are entitled to reparations, tend to believe that, therefore, they owe themselves emotionally and often physically to black men as a sort of atonement for white America’s sins against blacks. This is why we see beautiful white women like the subject of this entry symbolically giving themselves to ugly black men. And, of course, many go further than symbolically doing so, giving themselves entirely to black men.

Her theory seemed plausible to me then, as it does now. But I’m not sure how much of what we see in these pictures emanates from Mrs. Ripa’s belief that such public displays of affection make her appear to be a better person in the eyes of her audience.

 Laura writes:

That was an extraordinary public school teacher who would articulate what was so obviously happening.

I do think many white women feel they owe themselves to black men and that this explains the overwhelmingly excessive affection Mrs. Ripa shows here. This, and the rise of interracial pairing, is the logical end of the wilful obliteration of common sense about race. It means white women will in some significant number of cases prefer black men as mates.

Eric, who is a police officer, writes:

We have arrived at the pervasive miscegenation that exists now through a variety of ways. The media is a big part of it at this point, I think. But it started years ago, with the camel’s nose under the tent. The camel’s nose is that blacks ended up with white women that were the too fat, too ugly, or otherwise unsuitable for a decent white man. Unfortunately, decent white men did not get as worried about it as they might have if the blacks were involved with pretty women. Next came white women who believed that nonsense 1960’s zeitgeist of everyone being the same, and that granddaddy was all wrong about what he said about those “poor, poor” blacks. Next came white girls taking up with big-money blacks, such as sports stars and other entertainers, for purely mercenary reasons. (Well, it’s not like they had the choice to take up with black physics professors or inventors. The stats are what they are.) Many of them are willfully blind to the OJ lesson, namely that blacks are much more likely to be violent than white men over whatever slights they imagine the woman has perpetrated against them. Some white gals also seem to enjoy the fact that a half-way smart white woman is in a position to manipulate most black men, due to the innate differences in intelligence that certainly do exist.

As a policeman, I have seen that low-class blacks also appeal to otherwise decent looking white girls who are involved in the drug culture. I assure you that if you see a white girl with a pack of Newport cigarettes, that there is a 99% chance she has sex with ghetto blacks. These girls are frequently abused and not infrequently end up prostituting themselves. As a policeman, I do not find myself feeling a great deal of sympathy towards any of these willing victims of blacks.

This whole situation is one that we should not tolerate in civilized society. We did not used to, but white men have been forced to relinquish their leadership roles in their families and in society in general. There are a few of us who are old-school left, though, and I am proud to be one of them.

 Laura writes:

Thank you. You make excellent points, especially your point about the decline of male authority.

However, your comment about fat, ugly white women doesn’t strike me as accurate. Venture out into America, and you will find many fat, ugly young white men in backward-facing baseball caps, shorts that expose their underwear and tattoos. Surely, they need women too?

Alex A. from England writes:

Your picture of a beautiful white woman (presumably a ‘celebrity’ of some kind) embracing a black man and your comment that a significant number of white women will come to prefer black men as mates, raises the question of how white men will react to such a consequence of the atonement theory.

It doesn’t work that way in the opposite case. Very few white men feel that they ‘owe’ black women reparations for anything or find them attractive. Not many white men would marry or even form a temporary relationship with a black woman. (I’m talking about negro women here. For lots of reasons, Asian women are a different proposition from a white man’s point of view.)

I don’t know what a ‘significant number’ of ‘black orientated’ white women who suffer from liberal guilt amounts to, or how the numbers would add up in terms of social status and education. But in the event of a female preference for black men escaping from the world of celebrities and becoming rampant in the real world, you’d have a context for a race war.

Laura writes:

A female preference for black men most definitely extends beyond the world of celebrities.

Jane S. writes:

Over the years, I’ve developed a great appreciation for the play Othello for it’s insight into a profound truth about biracial relationships. I don’t think Shakespeare himself ever had one.

Desdemona naïvely thought that her pure love and devotion to Othello would smooth over any problems that might arise in the relationship, to the point where she was willing to go off with him on her own to a foreign country. She never imagined that, if he suspected her of infidelity, he would kill her straight away without the chance of a fair hearing. She was used to an entirely different justice system.

Othello was ready to stake his life on her loyalty, until someone whispered in his ear to watch out for her, she was one of those “super-subtle Venetians.” He truly loved her, but he did not trust her. When it came right down to it, he still thought of her as “Other.”

Laura writes:

I have been planning to write about Othello, and will save my thoughts on it for another post. You are right. Shakespeare was brilliantly perceptive on this subject.

Sibyl writes:

It isn’t clear to me what the objection is to black-white couples. Does it arise out of a sense that people of different races ought not marry? That the races should be distinct? Or is it more of a class thing? This isn’t a snarky question; I really would like a reasoned answer.

I find the whole discussion, including a previous comment (in the post on the cream cheese commercial) about “miscegenation,” to be somewhat distasteful. That commercial was itself in very poor taste, but not because of the skin colors of the couple; rather because it was so obviously suggestive, almost pornographic. And the photos of Kelly Ripa hugging her co-host were shocking, not because he’s black and she’s white, but because they aren’t married to each other. I would never hug any man that way except my husband.

Laura writes:

Let me ask you a question.

Why do you think most people marry within their own race?

Sibyl writes:

Thank you for your prompt reply! First, I admit that when I asked I had not had time to go and read the previous articles you had posted. Having done so, I have a far better idea of what you were getting at. Probably you could tell that.

Why do people mostly marry within their race? Well, it seems to me that people generally marry within nearly within their social class, and that in fact class has much more to do with the differences we see in the U.S. between the general white population and the general black population. The skin color or the sense of “my people” seems to me a far less important thing, although perhaps it plays a significant role when it comes to children of recent immigrants (for example, where I live there are very large Somalian and Hmong communities, where English is not spoken at home and the clothing and customs are intact from the old country). Since most black Americans have been in this country for longer than many of the white people –anyone with predominantly Irish or Italian heritage will be able to claim fewer American ancestors than those black people whose ancestors were brought over before the Revolution — I posit that it’s not so much the color or ancestry as the class. And to back this up I suppose one could search out social science data about it.

My experience is, people tend to marry those “like” them; that is, whose values, upbringing, current lifestyle, ideas about education, etc all correspond. It’s not so common to find a middle class person married to a person of the underclass, since people in the underclass (black, white, and Hispanic) are different — they value different attributes in a partner, have a different lifestyle and education, different speech and music. A different culture. Which does not come from race but from religious (or lack thereof) worldview. As an example, one commenter talked about the worry he feels about “white culture” going away because of intermarriage. This, though, is not likely if black conservative Christians are marrying white conservative Christians. Because in that case, it is the Christian heritage that matters, not that white people espoused it. And, of course, “white people” is a vast term that encompasses so many different backgrounds that it almost cannot work as a term at all. Practically speaking, a white American of Russian heritage has almost nothing in common (racially speaking) with a white American of Portuguese heritage. The two histories are vastly different, and almost the only thing they share is Christianity (well, OK, and pale skin), and that only narrowly, considering it has been 1000 years since the split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

There’s much more to say about this, including why it is that you don’t really see that many marriages between the wealthy elite whites and the super-poor underclass whites, and whether a person’s physical characteristics — black skin, or fair skin and hair, for example — imply a certain type of culture.

 Laura writes:

There is much to say about your points, but I am going to make my response as brief as possible, encouraging you to look at the previous posts on this subject, including entries here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

You have a muddled view on this issue.

First, it can be a problem to marry outside of one’s class, though not so much as in a time when the classes were sharply demarcated by manners and culture. Nevertheless we live in a society that strongly encourages people to marry within their own class. You don’t see Yale students boasting of their openness toward and tolerance of whites from community colleges. A woman from Harvard who married a white motorcyclist with tattoos who worked as a truck driver would find herself discreetly ostracized and shamed by her friends, particularly if she adapted to his lifestyle over time. Our higher education system does a very good job of stratifying society by intelligence level, and the classes are to a strong degree sharply demarcated along these lines.

So while there is hardly any widespread pressure on people to ignore the effects of class, there is pervasive pressure (on whites especially) to ignore racial distinctions and pretend they are not significant.

The fact that there are ethnic and class divisions that separate people, and that may make marriage difficult, does not negate the reality of racial differences, which are based in a greater number of innate, biological distinctions than class distinctions. The child of a black/white marriage strides two very distinct identities, and usually, after some confusion, chooses one. He is most likely not going to choose to identify with his white ancestors because he will look more radically different from them given that white characteristics are more recessive. Obama strongly identifies as a black, even though half his ancestry is white.

You say,

“[W]hite people” is a vast term that encompasses so many different backgrounds that it almost cannot work as a term at all.

You are making a fantastic leap of logic.

Essentially, you are saying that because race does not mean everything, it doesn’t mean anything. If “white” cannot work as a term at all, then “black” cannot work as a term. Why do we see so many organizations devoted exclusively to the interests of blacks if “black” is a meaningless term? Why does the president often speak of blacks if there is no such thing as blacks? Why do our laws recognize racial distinctions? Why do blacks so often think of themselves as in opposition to whites, if both these terms are meaningless? Why do blacks and whites tend to live in neighborhoods of their own race, if these are meaningless disinctions.

You write:

As an example, one commenter talked about the worry he feels about “white culture” going away because of intermarriage. This, though, is not likely if black conservative Christians are marrying white conservative Christians. Because in that case, it is the Christian heritage that matters, not that white people espoused it.

Christianity does not obliterate all the natural distinctions between people and overturn the natural order. What we believe does not change all of our basic, inherited nature, whether it be as male or female, black or white, tall or short. God does not hate the natural order and made it clear that he does not want humanity joined in one Tower of Babel.

There is no such thing as a conservative black Christian or a conservative white Christian who believes intermarriage is good so we don’t need to consider the effects of the two marrying. Scriptures recognize over and over again that God made distinct peoples, and that these distinctions were often used for higher purposes.

I do not agree with everything C.R. Dickey says in this article, but his point here is very important:

One of the oldest and most fundamental of Divine laws is … the prohibition of racial amalgamation. It is as fixed as the law against idolatry, theft or murder, and was never abrogated by Jesus Christ. Only the ordinances pertaining to animal sacrifice were abolished by the Christian Gospel. The unchanging basic laws were made more binding than ever by Jesus’ interpretation of them. They were codified by Moses and confirmed by Christ as the Constitution of His everlasting Kingdom of righteousness.

New Testament writers said little or nothing about the law of segregation because it never occurred to them that Christians would question or repudiate any fundamental law in the Old Testament. They took for granted that believers would understand that Christian society must develop within the framework of Biblical law, as enunciated by God from the beginning, and as ratified by Jesus when He came. To be all one in faith does not imply all one in race. Oneness of faith in Christ does not abolish the innate barriers of race, which God ordained for the good of all races.

Laura adds:

I would encourage Sibyl to think of race in this very simple way.

A long time ago, people of each race lived and developed almost exclusively with each other. As a result of this long period of procreating among themselves, they formed communities and they became linked by not just biological characteristics, but in intangible, pre-rational ways that we can’t ever fully define. These bonds — and they are bonds — are not all-encompassing in the sense that they do not erase the common humanity of all people, but they are significant. In order to transmit culture to future generations, we best work within these communal ties and affinities.

Ethnicity also creates strong affinities, and there is a good case for honoring ethnic differences in marriage too. Not too long ago, it was scandalous and risky for an American Pole to marry an Italian. However, many of these distinctions have been erased by modern culture. And even so, a Pole and an Italian have a common European heritage.

Lisa writes:

We’re moving beyond this issue pretty quickly. Soon you can omit the “woman” and “man” part, since gender assignments, as well as racial acknowledgements, are so “narrowminded.”

 Jane S. writes:

When I was in high school, it was trendy for white girls to date black football players. This was when the civil rights movement was in its infancy, if that. So it is nothing new.

A classmate of mine once commented that she could understand why the attraction is there when you’re young, but what about when you’re older? What’s it like to grow old with a person of another race?

I’ve been reminded of that remark over the years and have come to consider it a rather astute insight for a high school girl.

When you’re young, it’s natural to be attracted to someone because they are different. The differences between you create a tension that is exciting. It is my observation that it’s always young, attractive, biracial couples that are held up to be admired. That’s why the Philadelphia cream cheese video shows a sexy young couple in bed. Have you ever seen an advert featuring a sweet older mixed-race couple with their mixed-race grandkids? I can’t recall a one.

 Laura writes:

Great point. When you see ads for banks or senior communities, with older couples mulling over their finances or life’s decisions, you never see a biracial couple.

Even advertisers know there’s only so far they can go.

Eric responds to Laura:

Mrs. Wood, you are certainly correct. Surely, the knucklehead white “guy” needs a woman, too. (A white “man” does not comport himself as the young whites that you describe.) It is my opinion, based on observation, that these guys are typically fishing in the same mating pool of girls who think that it is all-right-mighty-fine to consort with blacks. Certainly, we have all seen fat white women with a white kid and a mulatto kid in tow. (If not, please visit your nearest Super Wal-Mart on the first of the month.) There seems to be a sense among some of these less-than-desirable women that any guy who is willing to be seen in public with them is as good as the next one, no matter if they are white, black, or Mexican.

Our public policy exacerbates this. With the pervasiveness of welfare payments and state support, women feel no need to choose wisely when selecting a mate. (I mean of course, in this context, a “baby daddy.”) There is little or no economic penalty for a woman selecting a shiftless black over a hard-working white man. The irony of it all is that the white man is still the one paying for the results.

Art writes:

I am neither an opponent nor a supporter of miscegenation. I genuinely do not care, nor do I lend much credence to authorities such as Dickey who in the end must be considered a Protestant and therefore not entirely trustworthy to me even if I believed this. I would also suggest that overemphasizing racial bonds can weaken a nation by dividing it. Mass immigration and the importation of slaves is the root evil, but that does not change the present situation where every other man available to a Christian girl may in fact be black. I will also point out that Roman Catholic canon law has not now nor ever before put any impediment on an interracial marriage. This does not mean an interracial marriage is good, but it also means it is not particularly bad.

Laura writes:

As I see it, it is not categorically sinful to marry someone of another race, despite Dickey’s implication that it is. But it is also not sinful to care about one’s cultural identity. If it were, many nonwhites would be living in a state of open and unrepentant sinfulness purely for wishing to perpetuate their racial  identity. There have been many loving and fruitful marriages between people of different races. But interracial marriage when widely approved has, as I have pointed out, negative cultural effects and individuals are less likely to sustain a happy marriage with someone of another race, as the divorce statistics indicate.

I agree that overempasizing racial bonds can weaken a nation, and we live in a nation in which racial bonds among nonwhites are overemphasized.

I’m not sure what you mean about “every other man” available to a Christian girl may be black. I don’t think the problem is that there are not enough white men.

Also, you might not care but black women care and Asian men care. And they are losing potential mates to whites.

Art responds:

I left that sentence about “every other man” a bit too short. I was thinking of specific contexts, such as having the misfortune to live in Detroit or Gary Indiana, or some better circumstances like certain towns in the rural South.

“I agree that overempasizing racial bonds can weaken a nation, and we live in a nation in which racial bonds among nonwhites are overemphasized.”

I have agreement there.

Laura writes:

The phenomenon is not confined to places like Detroit, and may even be less common there, for all I know. But if it was a question of a shortage of white men in a specific place, do you think white women are entitled to the potential mates of black women? Isn’t it likely that they would simply shift the shortage onto others?

Art writes:

” if it was a question of a shortage of white men in a specific place, do you think white women are entitled to the potential mates of black women? Isn’t it likely that they would simply shift the shortage onto others?”

It would, but the phenomenon of black women marrying white men is not unheard of either. Look at Alte at the Traditional Christianity blog. The marriage pool is effectively an open one.

Laura writes:

Of course, the phenomenon is not unheard of, but it is relatively uncommon, suggesting ingrained tendencies, to which I suppose you would simply say, Tough luck. In any event, I don’t think you will do away with the hostility such a free-for-all engenders in those who cannot induge their natural inclinations while others can.

Sibyl writes:

While I was interested and enlightened to read your response to my comment, and while I do agree that race matters in our society (and that we would do well to have more honesty and less name-calling when we discuss it), I cannot agree with your implication that the behavior and characteristics we see in a single racial population come from innate, biological causes. You and some of your commenters have confused coincidence with causality. (You won’t, of course, mistake the word “coincidence” for anything but its proper meaning here.)

You argue with my point about class, yet you don’t disprove it. It IS extremely discouraged for people to marry outside their class, and the unfortunate fact is, many American blacks are in the lowest one. [Laura writes: And yet marriage between blacks and whites is not discouraged. That was my point.] I fully agree that that class is full of all the terrible trouble that has been discussed here: poverty, welfare abuse, single motherhood, drug abuse, child abuse, illiteracy, and more. But were these characteristics to be innate to a race, you would have to always and everywhere see them when you saw an individual of that race. [Laura writes: You could just as easily say, “Sickle cell anemia is not innate in blacks because not every black has sickle cell anemia.” The distinctive behavioral and cognitive tendencies in races are not fixed and universal, but they are general tendencies proven over and over again in psychological tests, life outcomes and common observation.] Since this is patently untrue, we can’t honestly say that race caused these things but that these things reveal the class. And of course we all know that there are plenty of white Americans fully as degenerate, in places where there are few or no blacks. [Laura writes: I’m not sure of your point here. I have never objected to intermarriage because blacks were degenerate. I have objected to it because it heightens sexual competition; causes confused identity in children; makes for more, not less, resentment between the races; and weakens communal bonds.] People with white skin do not share a common culture except in the broadest sense that our ancestors all came from one continent (or two, if you count Russians, Middle Easterners, or Egyptians). If we did, you would find it common to see white Harvard doctoral students dating functionally illiterate white gas station clerks. [Laura writes: Again, you are saying that because race does not account for everything in a person, it accounts for nothing. Most people, especially blacks, would strongly disagree with you.] Our repugnance at that scenario (at least on a personal level — we wouldn’t ourselves be in this kind of relationship and we wouldn’t want it for our kids) is at root (unless you really believe that skin color influences character) identical to the repugnance that some have expressed for a biracial marriage. [So despite everything that has been said, you insist that objections to interracial marriage are really only a form of class snobbery. Given your intractable conviction, it is pointless to argue with you.]

Religious worldview, history, and personal character, however, have a great deal to do with how people in every class live. [Absolutely.] Before the welfare state came around, the city where I live had a large neighborhood inhabited by mostly blacks. I’m told by my parents (no diversity propagandists, let me assure you) that this neighborhood was like the other working-class white neighborhoods around it. There were churches, stores, and houses. Most adults were married and most kids lived with both their parents; kids were expected to work hard and stay in school; yards were neat. The rate of illegitimate births was far lower than what the white illegitimate birth rate is today. [Things were certainly better for blacks before they launched a racial war against whites. Doesn’t that tell you something? Essentially, you are saying that things were far better for them in the age when interracial marriage was discouraged — and I assure you it was much more discouraged in the period you mention than it is today.] Now again, we can agree that after the imposition of the welfare state and after the upheavals of the 60s the black community fell apart and many of them were blameworthy in that. [And, you might add, after whites came to insist that there were no racial differences, except those that pointed to white failures.] But it shows that what we see today in the black underclass comes not from the color of their skin or their genes but from the choices of their parents and grandparents, the circumstances of their lives, the lingering slave mentality perhaps, and underneath all of it original sin. [Blacks are most definitely moral agents, but you seem to be confused on this point and suggest instead that they are victims not to be held accountable. It has been about 150 years since slavery was lifted. If blacks have not mentally recovered from it by now, when would they? Why haven’t those who were persecuted in World War II shown the same inability to recover? I hold that blacks are moral agents, but like all human beings, they are not gods and must work within the limits of their innate nature. I would like to be a genius, but I’m not and nothing I do will make me a genius.] 

You say that no conservative black or white Christian would agree that interracial marriage is OK. I simply deny that entirely. I myself am a conservative Christian and will not bother to present my bona fides but would be pleased to if asked. And can also supply you with examples of successful interracial middle class couples if needed. [Okay, one can be very conservative and have a liberal view. And by a liberal view, I mean the idea that interracial marriage is not, at the very least, problematic for the parties and offspring involved.] For the record, both my brothers are in interracial marriages, but I only objected to one of them, and that was not because his wife is Japanese but because she is not a Christian. [It’s worth noting that the Japanese are among the most race-conscious people on earth and do not look as favorably on interracial marriage. This couple will most likely choose to emphasize one of their identities, probably Japanese because their children will look Japanese.]

Further, much of the conversation throughout these threads (and thank you, I did go back and read the previous posts) reveals some ignorance of history. For example, one commenter cites, as evidence that blacks are more violent, that Africa is so war-torn and in such terrible shape as a whole. But Europe itself was every bit as violent, cruel and warlike for most of its history, up until about 15 minutes ago, metaphorically speaking. Indiscriminate killing of whole villages, including women and children? Happened many times in Christian Europe. Rape, pillage, genocide? Yup. Barbaric forms of capital punishment? Yes, unfortunately. Whole swathes of population living with open sewers, children running around naked, complete illiteracy, slavish dependence on the local warlord? Yes. These things aren’t exclusive to any one race, or even predominant in any one race. [Fifteen minutes ago? You’re saying that Europe was an open sewer and widely illiterate in the recent past? It’s certainly true that European civilization has included violence and social disorder, but, stretching back thousands of years into its Greco-Roman and Hebrew roots, the social disorder and violence have been offset by advanced levels of civilization.]

I’m not trying to denigrate the greatness of European achievement; heaven knows, I’ve spent my life benefiting from it as well as loving it for itself. America is, quite possibly, the greatest European achievement of all time. I mourn to see the coarsening of our culture. (And I fear it, as my husband and I are raising six children in it.) But it is embarrassing to find people who feel as I do on this topic worried that interracial marriage will help to disintegrate it further, or create more confusion, or that it will deny the goodness of European or American culture. It just isn’t true. We white folks are doing a fine job of destroying American greatness, all by ourselves. [Again, you are distorting my main points about interracial marriage, points which have as much to do with the happiness and welfare of individuals of all races  as with the worthy project of maintaining Western civilization. It’s not a question of maintaining some beautiful abstraction in the form of Western civilization, but of helping people of all races find their identity and foothold in a heartless and impersonal world.  You would deny them those bonds — bonds which are real though not all-encompassing and can be seen by all of us — and send individuals forth into the modern Tower of Babel in which identity revolves exclusively around abstractions, competition and material gain.]

July 29, 2015

Buddy Sampson writes:

I’m a journalist in Los Angeles. Right now, I’m extremely tired but I read your posting about Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan and will respond to it in more detail when rested.

I’m a fairly well known Black journalist in LA and find your statements and posts appalling to say the least and realize you just simply have too much time on your hands.

First you should ask Kelly Ripa herself if she wanted to give “reparations” to Black men by jumping into Strahan’s arms. She would laugh at you and expose you for what you are- an intelligent racist.

Because you use fancy words and have education doesn’t mean you’re smart. Your attitude is what’s wrong with society. People are people. I’m sure there was a lot of hate mail generated by racists to Kelly and Michael, both wonderful people who I’ve been lucky to meet.

Before you make generalizations about people, do research. And go to the source. It’s attitudes like yours and police officers with that attitude why America is becoming less respected in the world and why people worldwide rejoiced when Obama got elected.

Come to the 21st century. There are actually white women and others that like black men because of their charisma and mannerisms not because of “reparations.”

My God, I feel bad for America. Attitudes like yours are pervasive in this country and wrong. There is absolutely NOTHING in the Bible and in Christianity that Blacks and Whites can’t or shouldn’t intermingle.

Travel to Europe. Get a world view. And that intelligent racism you have cannot be masked by degrees or big words.

Racism is racism. And we, as a country have to root it out. I’m ashamed to say that people with comments like yours represent the stupidity of our nation.

Get a life.