Something that fascinates me is love.

I know last week I revealed my scientific way of looking at things but even so, I still love, love.

One thing that fascinates me is how couples get to together in difficult times and under impossible circumstances.

For example: interracial marriage in apartheid America. Interracial marriage between a black person and someone from a country that is racist, not just America but Asia too, like South Korea or China.

Marriages that happened in those times or conditions fascinate me.

In apartheid America it was disgusting. It is still disgusting now but wow, they didn’t even try to hide it back then because it was ok. It wasn’t seen as wrong to be racist. (I know right now it doesn’t feel like anything has changed but the Civil Rights Movement did change some things).

Side note: did you know one of the crows in Dumbo was to be called Jim Crow but they changed it? They were going to call him Jim Crow?!

Anyway during those times of segregation I always used to imagine that there was no love between the races. That’s how I pictured it because how can you love someone from another race if you come from such a messed up and racist race and how can you love someone who comes from such a messed up and racist race?

Then I heard about the Loving vs Virginia case. This case led to the US Supreme Court allowing people to marry interracially as not letting them marry who they wanted to was unconstitutional.

The couple who triggered this case were Mildred and Richard Loving (isn’t it cool that his last name was Loving?). They got married in 1958 and were sentenced to a year in prison for it. They appealed this conviction in Virginia where they were from and when that didn’t work they went to the Supreme Court who agreed to hear their case and that led to the law being changed in 1967.

So this all happened at the tail end and a little after the Civil Rights Movement.

Mildred Loving is quoted saying it wasn’t their doing but God’s work.

It’s so beautiful. A black woman and a white man, they fell in love and their love led to freedom for other future and past interracial couples (as they weren’t the first in America to be in an interracial relationship).

By all means, they shouldn’t have fallen in love. If Richard Loving was racist or Mildred Loving was angry or distrustful of him the relationship would not have worked but no he was not racist and she loved and trusted him. They had a pure love.

I know there were white people during that time who were not racist, I know that. I would honestly like to talk to them and to ask them how they bypassed the racism of that era. How they were able to be anti-racist is some cases.

Even today, people who come from small towns that are only white and racist who end up not being racist, how does that happen? What makes them different?

Another example: I was watching a YouTube video and it was about the YouTuber’s parents. The YouTuber is half black and half Korean. His mother is Korean and his father was black (I think he’d passed already when they made the video). So she met him way back and he was a solider. She’d just come from South Korea to America. She saw him and liked him and they started dating and got married.

There were people in her family who opposed the relationship because he was black but she was happy and decided to stick with him because she loved him.

I remember watching her talking about it and what she felt when they first talked. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with falling in love with a black man even though she knew there were others in her race who thought differently.

Maybe it’s because I’m black but those stories fascinate me. They make me think, what is different about them? How come the racist socialisation didn’t take effect on them? As racism isn’t something that people are born with but it’s something that they are taught or gain due to ugliness in the heart. So yeah, what makes them different?

It also makes me think, they truly have the capacity to love. They truly have pure love in their hearts. It’s easy to marry someone from the same race as you. As long as you don’t have internalised racism or colourism, it is easy.

I love black love and my own people.

However, I also think interracial love is beautiful. It especially gets to me when it happens in times when it’s frowned upon. It’s like this person is not only, not racist, they see the beauty in a race other people of their race hate. They hear all that and think, “Nah, she’s beautiful or he’s beautiful and a human being… I love them.” That’s beautiful.

I should probably become a sociologist or something… I have so many questions and thoughts in my head that I want to expand on. Not just about interracial love but other forms of love too.

Did this make sense? Because I don’t think I articulated myself properly.