Loving Day. A Whole 24 Hours to Celebrate Race Mixing? YES.

Happy Loving Day. What, you don’t know about June 12? Know your history. A world without the likes of Halle Barry and Jason Kidd is a world I don’t even want to think about.

I heard about Loving Day last week when I was at the crunchy bookstore/coffee shop wifey frequents. The place is left wing like Ryan Giggs, and somebody’s always leaving some fliers up to promote some sort of community event or some such. They make good stuff here at this little coffee shop, but the service is slow as shit, so I often find myself checking out the fliers to pass the time. And thank goodness, a notice for a local Loving Day celebration caught my eye.

Forty-two years ago today, Richard (white dude) and Mildred (black lady) Loving (Richard’s real last name, no shit) had their jungle fever justified when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state of Virginia’s legal prohibition of interracial marriage. This one doesn’t rank like Brown v. Board of Ed. in the public consciousness, but it’s pretty major, no? The thing that struck me was the timeline: 1967 seems like forever ago, before I was born and while the capital-letter Civil Rights Movement was still on the actual move.

Then I flipped through the Web site and, hey, how ’bout this: Alabama had a similar law on the books until 2000! And South Carolina wasn’t much better! And in both states, about 20 percent of the population thought it would maybe be best to just leave those laws where they were! Holy fucking shit!

Of course, I’m not really surprised. Race hate is as trendy as ever; in fact, trendier than it’s been in a while. Hate Groups Are Riled Up, CNN says researchers say. Here’s a highlight:

President Obama’s election has been a huge issue with white supremacist groups, in part because he represents in their minds a demographic shift in which the white majority in the United States is becoming slimmer, Levin added. ”Interracial marriage and interracial children are the worst thing in their world, so [the demographic shift] is a big deal for them,” Levin said.

The homie Paul Krugman’s got a piece in the Times today pinning a lot of this on the right-wing media, which I want to believe is accurate. I think it probably mostly is. Mostly, I’m linking to Paul’s piece because he mentions “the black helicopter crowd,” which gives me all the excuse I need to post this:

Check out the crazy white girl at 1:50! She looks like she’s 12. Jeezus.

So, anyway, yeah, Happy Loving Day. And thank god for Mixed Chicks. Murs knows what the fuck is up.