Two Notes On Being In An Interracial Marriage
The Multiracial Activst
by Rev. John Kenyon
May/June 2004
I was amazed to find this website where for the first time I could listen to conversations and read perspective on a subject which I have been ruminating on in relative isolation for far too many years. What follows will no doubt sound like an old story to many of you, but I offer it in the spirit of adding my voice to a cause which I am convinced needs to be heard now more than ever, and heard in order to help fend off archaic errors that still define much of our global view of the human race.
Nearly thirty years ago while attending a white, conservative evangelical church, I found myself involved in my first debate over racially mixed marriages. The year was 1970, the location a suburban town in northern Jew Jersey, Hillsdale to be precise, where the police harassed anyone riding a motorcycle (they stopped me without probable cause on my little Yamaha 250 and warned me to tell all my biker friends to stay out of town!), harassed anyone with long hair who paused to rest in the public park (they rousted me out of it when my hair was barely over the tips of my ears), and I must assume likewise kept the town clean of any ‘non-whites’, because in the three years I lived there I never saw a black person in town. I do not recall anyone other than whites owning homes, walking the streets, or coming to our church. The fact of who ruled the community and how they ruled only left the option of proceeding in a court of law to remedy those offenses, which I did not do.
This entry also posted in A Mixed Blog.