Interracial Marriages

The Republican Party Is More Horrendous Than Ever!

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It is hard to believe, but the Republican Party in Congress is more horrendous than ever before!

A party which used to have a substantial number of moderate Senators in the past has gone totally nuts!

Yesterday, this author and blogger condemned the handling of the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Lindsey Graham, and Tom Cotton.

Now Marsha Blackburn is added to that list making fools of themselves in the hearings.

But even outside of that issue, now we have Indiana Senator Mike Braun who says that Interracial Marriage, declared constitutional in Loving V Virginia in 1967, should never have been accomplished by the Supreme Court.

This is part of setting constitutional law backwards, along with the threat to abortion rights Roe V Wade (1973), and Griswold V Connecticut (1965), which promoted the constitutional right to sexual privacy and legalized contraception for married couples.

Although Braun now has backtracked, it is clear that leave it to the Republicans, and they would interfere with the privacy rights of Americans, not only interracial marriage, abortion, and contraception, but also gay marriage, if given the opportunity.

This is right wing totalitarianism, denial of basic human rights, and going back to the years before the Warren Court (1953-1969) and forward!

Martin Luther King Assassination Anniversary, And Trayvon Martin As A Symbol

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Today marks 44 years since the tragic assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

As we mourn that event yet again, and as more Americans visit the MLK Memorial in Washington, DC, we have to ask how far have we come from that day in 1968.

Certainly, the conditions for African Americans are far better today than they were in 1968, but that does not mean we can sit on our laurels.

Having a President who is African American; having other political leaders in Congress and the states and cities who are African American; seeing the growth of a large black middle class; witnessing more African Americans in the professions; witnessing more interracial marriages–all these signs of progress are wonderful!

But they are not enough, when we still have a large crime rate in the inner city ghettos; when black males are an endangered species when they end up in white neighborhoods and are seen as intruders; when one third of young black males are in prison; when the educational attainment of many African Americans still trails that of other racial groups; and when the illegitimacy rate is still much too high in African American households.

And the case of Trayvon Martin, a young black male who was no threat to anyone except for his skin color, being murdered by a man who had no right to utilize his gun; was over 100 pounds heavier; and who was told by 911 operators to leave tracking of Martin to the police, so as to ascertain if he was looking for trouble, is just the tip of the iceberg!

As long as we have tragedies such as Trayvon Martin, we are far from judging people by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin. Prejudice and discrimination still run rampant, sadly, two generations after King’s death!