Till 1967, seventeen states in the USA, banned interracial marriages!
That same year the law was found unconstitutional and thrown out. Immediately after that public approval of interracial marriage rose from around 5% in the 1950s to around 80% in the 2000s! Which means that because of a stupid law, people felt marrying from another community was wrong.
And because they felt it wasn’t good, they segregated blacks and whites, not just in schools, and buses but sadly also in churches! After all, they felt, their daughters could fall in love with an African-American while listening to a sermon!
A law that disallowed interracial marriage, made racial hatred deeper.
And as we see such laws passed closer home, all that will happen is deeper divisions. Today, in America, just over a half century after that draconian law was thrown out, a Vice President, whose father is black and mother, brown is a breath short of the White House!
Laws that cause divide, cause deep rifts. Rifts that take ages to heal, and sometimes never heal, as with the case of Mr Orange Hair, exploiting the racist sentiments he knew still existed in those who gave him support.
It is so easy to bring about racial and religious discrimination! And we in India, have even learned to coin new terms for it!
Such discrimination isn’t entirely new.
‘Hey Moses, your wife is black!’ his brother Aaron and sister Miriam must have shouted after they saw their brother had married Zipporah a Cushite woman, and they fought with her, till God intervened and what was Miriam’s punishment? These words are not Biblical, but I can imagine a furious God saying, “So you’re proud of being white is it Miriam? Okay I’ll even make you whiter!”
And she became white with leprosy!
I can’t think of a more fitting punishment!
Which makes me wonder what our punishment is going to be, as He watches with concern our own racial and religious discrimination?
Coming back to the USA, I wonder what would have happened if the law had not been thrown out in 1967? We don’t have to look far to find out. Just across the very narrow sea we saw a genocide in Sri Lanka as Tamils were killed. We see the same in Pakistan as Christians and Hindus have hardly any rights, and even in England till date, only a Protestant can become the Prime Minister, which caused much bloodshed in Ireland till a few decades ago, and also sees Britain which once ruled the seas, now all at sea!
Progress is a coloured path, as America discovered all over again. A path which rolls out a carpet of unity through diversity. Any other method, which might get votes as short term gains, will only see the crumbling of the carefully built red ramparts of the fort; our nation..!
………………………………………
JOIN THE BOB’S BANTER WRITER’S COURSE. SEND A HI! TO 9892572883 AND OUR COORDINATOR WILL SHARE DETAILS WITH YOU
***************************
Would love to hear from you in the COMMENTS section below…and IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE BOB’S BANTER EVERYDAY, PLEASE SEND YOUR NAME AND WHATSAPP PHONE NO TO [email protected]
————————————————–
Interesting Bob! God’s love is equal. Every lives matter in His sight.
Bob, the Bible is relevant for all ages. Today people suffer because of lack of knowledge of God (Hosea 4:6) who made us in his own image and likeness. Thanks for your wonderful insight.
Time and distance over geographical locations is going to produce great variety. Why should that create hostility n enmity? If God wanted all of us to be same, HE would have created us that way.
Skin has colour, the soul doesn’t!
It is not the colour but the intrinsic quality of the person that matters. If only people could understand this fact.
Trump is not a racist. It’s a rumour spread by the very party that was racist and had thousands of slaves while the Republicans had just ten. History should be read,not fiction watched in films. My friends voted for him. They wouldn’t have if he had been racist. Latinos Hispanics, Blacks, Indians and Whites got jobs under his governance unlike the years before he took over.
Racial Discrimination and Casteism are a Curse on Society in These days of Advanced Social Thinking .Color and Caste or Religion should be of no consequence because A Humanbeing is A Human being having the same Mind Heart and Body…Only he is conditioned because he is brought up in that particular environment.