Loving Day

[nanila]

I had wanted to post this yesterday, as it was the 50th anniversary, but ran out of time. So, a day late, but no less important: Here is my very personal celebration of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision, handed down on 12 June 1967, that legalised interracial marriage in the USA.

Without it, my parents might have been jailed or permanently separated. Without it, I might not exist. I am grateful that what was just and correct prevailed in the face of popular opinion.


[Image of my dad, baby!me and my mom, with one of my aunties in the pool at a Honolulu hotel. Photo taken by my maternal grandfather.]


[Image of me in a flowery yellow dress being cuddled, and surrounded, by my Filipino cousins and aunties.]

Comments

[novel_machinist]

I love old pictures like this. <3 It's super hard to imagine that there are people who are alive still who remember when people made such a big deal out of what seems like such a strange and arbitrary thing.

[nanila]

My parents largely kept the impact of (micro)aggressions away from me when they could, but I vividly remember an occasion when the three of us crossed from Canada into Michigan on a road trip and the US border guards gave my dad a really hard time, asking him for his birth certificate, questioning our familial relationships. He was furious.

[novel_machinist]

That really sucks. :( It always blows my mind when people act like that. It's like "hrm, these two adult people look kind of like these children people. OBVIOUSLY CANNOT BE RELATED"

:/

A friend of mine dealt with that last year. Went to pick her daughter up from daycare and the lady at the front almost didn't give her her own daughter. The child with her nose and facial expressions mind you, because friend is Black and her daughter is very pale because 1) babies are paler in general and 2) husband is white.