The Loving decision knocked down interracial marriage bans in 16 states, and it later provided precedent for the Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage bans were unconstitutional.
Fifty-two years later, the legalization of interracial marriage has not resulted in a more liberating environment for interracial relationships.
Being able to have sex with and marry someone who identifies as racially different than you can only go so far when the racist systems, ideologies, and practices that European settlers exported to the colonies are still thriving in our communities. Of course, marriage and monogamy are not the only means by which we express and manifest romantic love. The institution of marriage has remained an important vehicle for partners to access benefits from the state that support their partnership and their families.
My mother is a third-generation Japanese-American cis woman, and my father is a White cis man. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the s and s, I was told that my family was a sign of racial progress, and yet little to nothing was said about what we were progressing from and towards. In my adolescence, I became more engaged in piecing together an understanding of my identity and my family history.
I witnessed my parents navigate White, neoliberal suburbia—how different it was for each of them as individuals, and how it was for them as a couple. I take a page literally out of Dr. Maria P. I identify as a multiracial Asian. I am also yonsei , a fourth-generation Japanese American, and I am an Asian person with proximity to Whiteness. I am not White, nor am I half-White. I refuse to be Whitewashed into a history of defining multiracial people in ways that further White supremacy. People with mixed racial heritage have existed since the early years of what settlers later called the United States.
