[net.politics.theory] Coffee & Cream

janw@inmet.UUCP (12/03/85)

 I wonder if many agree with me that the permanent  way  to  bury
the  problem  of  racism is through racial intermarriage. Brazil,
compared to the USA, is  an  interesting  example.  It  abolished
slavery 25 years after US did; its black population was relative-
ly greater; yet - compared to USA - it has had a history  of  ra-
cial  harmony.  There is a correlation between complexion and so-
cial position - but merely correlation. It may be because  mis-
cegenation was never the taboo there that it was here.

There is a racist explanation of such things.  According  to  it,
ethnic  groups of Germanic, North European stock such as English,
German and Dutch (Boers)  are  less  tolerant  of  contacts  with
blacks  than  Latin,  South European people . In my opinion, that
explanation doesn't wash. A rich white gentleman in the old South
of  USA  would fill his house with black servants and let a black
woman wet-nurse his children. Had the same black woman entered  a
restaurant and sat down three tables across from him, he would be
full of revulsion and indignation, and would take  drastic  steps
because this would be contact on the basis of *equality*. Now his
descendants are no more troubled by this, though not free of oth-
er vestiges of racism.

Racism is not instinctive or natural but acquired  and  cultural.
The  reasons  for  the  intolerance  towards  mixed marriages and
liaisons are historical. It seems that in USA, such unions  are
becoming  more  and more socially acceptable - and more frequent,
and this is hopeful.

			Jan Wasilewsky