Hear Me Out: Interracial Marriages Can Still Be Racist

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out: amore, but make it anti-racist. Honoring interracial marriage has only been the law of the land for a few decades in this country; there are couples alive today whose relationships were illegal within their lifetimes. There are now more mixed-race couples – and children – in the U.S. than ever before, and interracial love is overwhelmingly supported by all Americans. But is that an indication that we’ve actually made progress toward racial equality? Jamilah Lemieux, writer and contributor to Slate’s Care & Feeding, argues no: and that unless a couple has done the work to be truly anti-racist, their children will pay the price. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie. Want more Hear Me Out? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/hearmeoutplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley.
0:03.0	Marriage Equality is an ongoing project for the LGBT-plus community, yes, but also for interracial couples.
0:10.0	Supreme Court justices on the court now have expressed interest in re-evaluating
0:16.0	whether interracial marriage can be banned. And there are people alive today
0:20.8	whose marriages in the mid-20th century were illegal in this country.
0:25.0	It's only been 57 years since honoring interracial marriage was made the law of the
0:30.4	land. So that sounds like progress and so does the substantial increase
0:35.1	we've seen in interracial marriages and mixed-race kids, but is it really a sign of racial
0:40.2	progress? If you are a white person who is dating a person of color, you should really be an exemplary
0:46.7	ass white person.
0:48.2	People of color have responsibility to themselves to hold the white people that they partner with to a certain standard and
0:54.8	a lot of us have not done that.
0:56.8	Jemila Lemue of Slate's Care and Feeding joins Hear Me Out in just a moment.
1:01.4	Stay with us.
1:08.4	Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley.
1:16.3	So if you are mixed race like I am, identity is often complicated. Not only do people constantly ask, what are you?
1:21.6	But defining your racial background is a longer conversation than it is for most people. You check the other box on a lot of forms and you describe
1:24.7	yourself with hyphens. Public opinion on interracial relationships has never been more positive.
1:30.7	94% of Americans support interracial marriage, 20% of Americans are in an interracial marriage.
1:38.0	That is a massive increase from where we were in the mid 20th century.
1:42.0	But is it a sign of racial progress to have more mixed-race
1:46.2	couples and more mixed-race kids? Our guest today says, no. Jamila Lemue is a writer and the co-host of Slate's Care and Feeding
	...

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