Even though Augs is white and I’m Indian*, I don’t think of us as a mixed-race couple. The closest I ever get to it is in the summer when I tan to a warm, coppery brown and Augs burns to a rosy pink.
But every now and then – the reality of our life together hits me. Like it did the other day when I started thinking about Loving v. Virginia – the landmark civil rights case which overturned all race-based restrictions on marriage.
Fifty years ago, Augs and I could have been jailed in certain parts of the country just for being together.
We couldn’t have rented a hotel room, eaten at the same lunch counter or sat next to one another on a bus.
Fifty years.
That’s nothing.
My parents and every single one of my aunts and uncles were alive fifty years ago. Hell, music that I listen to on a regular basis (Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis, Green Onions by Booker T and McGs, Please Please Me by The Beatles) was created 50 years ago .
When I was born, we were a mere 20 years removed from institutionalized racism.
To bring it closer to the present – THREE years ago, a chowderhead justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to marry an interracial couple out of “concern” for their future progeny. Yeah, ‘cause it’s not like a biracial child has ever achieved anything great, right?
It stuns me. I mean, really? People still think like this? After all this time and how far we’ve come?
Then, I start thinking about all of the people I love in same-sex relationships.
It is utterly devoid of logic and human decency to say your love isn’t worth as much as my love because of the color of your skin, where you were born or who you love.
Hell, even Dick Cheney agrees with that.
DICK. CHENEY. Underline. Bold. All-Caps former vice president of the United States who Jack Donaghy may or may not have sodomized while under the influence of a weapons-grade narcotic.
I guess what it comes down to is the following three things:
1. I don’t get it. I do not understand how I live in a world where people actually espouse a belief system so bigoted and wholly stupid.
2. Some truths are so universal that a dyed-in-the-wool democrat and a Sith Lord former Republican vice president can see eye-to-eye on them.
3. If you don’t believe that everyone deserves the same rights, you are not a good person. Let me repeat that. If you do not believe in equality – you are not a good person and shouldn’t fool yourself for a minute thinking that you are.
I’m usually not one for posting YouTube videos here because well, I kinda hate them. BUT, this one is important. Just make sure you have Kleenex at hand.
Okay, so Indian women are like Malay women when it comes to eating too much then. Because I do seem to remember being scolded for eating too much, and it’s like, “Dude, the first thing you said to me wasn’t “Hello, how are you?” but “Here, EAT!”, and now you’re yelling at me for eating? Wha..?”
Baffling. And no, it never stopped me loading up my plate and going back for seconds, ha.
Totally the same thing!
Eat too much of one thing? Get yelled at.
Say you’re not hungry? Get dismissed and fed anyway.
Say you don’t like a certain food? Get yelled at, get dismissed and fed anyway.
Good thing the food’s always so good!