Loving Day or Never Being Born
So here’s a little bit about me. My mom was born in the American midwest, a combination of German, Slavic, and Bohemian. My dad, on the other hand, was born and raised in Shiraz, Iran. They met in the late 70s, in an engineering class at their midwest community college, and shared their first dates in its cafeteria (years later, I had a few impromptu dates down there too). It wasn’t long before they fell in love, married, and travelled the country looking for work so that they could kick off their American dream. My mom already had a son, but they had two more together: me and my brother. But given in the time and place they met, they may have never had the opportunity to date, marry, or even legally have children. So I’ve been asking myself a lot, lately, what if they never had met?
So a couple of weeks ago, America celebrated the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, which made interracial marriage legal throughout the whole country. Here’s the skinny:
The Racial Integrity Act of 1924 that was passed in Virginia stated that there are two classes of people: white and colored. Emphasis on the word class, because it is was as much a distinction of financial barriers as it was about race. It defined colored by the “one drop rule.” You’ve got one drop of African blood? Indian-American blood? Asian blood? You ain’t white. But this wasn’t just meant to keep the races from co-existing — it was also to prevent them from mixing too.
Didn’t stop Mildred and Richard Loving though. In 1958, Mildred was black and knocked up, and though Richard was white, being the fella that he was he meant to marry her. But they were young and maybe still a little naive about the way the world worked back then — he was 24 and she was 18, so they fled from Virginia to Washington D.C. to get hitched. You’d think that’d be it, right? To each their own, let bygones be bygones, live and let live. Well, not quite.
That night, after the Lovings returned to their Virginia home, the police broke in and arrested them. Their crime was miscegenation, the mixing of race, which was a felony in Virginia. Not a slap on the wrist, but a crime that came with actual jail time. So they each served a year in prison and were then kicked out of the state of Virginia. Like literally, exiled from the entire state.
Booted from their home and unable to visit their families, the Lovings took Virginia court in 1965 with the help of the ACLU. What began was a two-year debate between the federal courts and the commonwealth of Virginia about whether or not the races were meant to mix. In 1967, 50 years ago, they changed the law and that changed everything.
Interracial marriage was not permissible in the American southeast until this landmark trial. Numerous court trials had preceded the Lovings case in other states, but it hadn’t been made federal law until they came forward. Their struggle gave us Angelina Jolie, Mariah Carey, and President Barack Obama. Well, they may have been otherwise born, but they wouldn’t have become the superstars that they are today. Oh, right, there’s one other fella: me.
So let’s pretend that instead of Illinois, my folks met in Missouri. And instead of the 1970s, it was the 1960s. By then, colored students had been admitted into many southern and midwestern universities — and due to the scarcity of Middle-Eastern Americans in that era, we can primarily assume that my father, whose skin tone ran on the darker end of the color spectrum, would have been considered colored. After all, one drop, right?
With this slight shift in time and space, I could just as easily never have been born. My life may mean nothing to the casual observer, but it means a lot to me. Same goes for my brother. In fact, the reason I waited to post this story is because…
Well, this week my brother, Bobak, an Iranian-American, asked his white girlfriend and the mother of his daughter to be his wife. If it hadn’t been for the struggle of the aptly named Loving family, he may have never had that freedom. Or if he would have, it may have meant that he’d have to flee his home to realize his happiness. Just like my folks, they met against all odds and came out on the other side loving.
So maybe we’ve been taking this interracial marriage and dating thing for granted. It’s one of those things that me and my peers have the freedom not to think about. I have a choice about whether I want to swipe right or left when a white girl pops up on Tinder, which is kind of a dumb thing to be thankful for, but I am so thankful for it.
I’m thankful for my niece too, but not as much as I am excited for her — she’s the first quarter-Iranian person that I’ve ever met. The fact that she can be is a terrific freedom, and she’s going to pass a little bit of that Iranian that’s in to her on to her her kids and their kids and so on, all without ever having to bear the cruelty of a segregated society. If the Lovings can give her the freedom to exist, I can’t even begin to imagine what she will accomplish one day.
