23-08-2003 23:46									#31
	Re: What's the obsession with inter-racial relationships? Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by Albert Speer sometimes i get the feeling that during the height of jim crow, nobody gave a damn if two people of different races were married but now people go on about how big a deal it is... talking about how its a good thing and how a lot of people dont approve and all that bullshit... The show I Love Lucy had a white woman married to a hispanic man... have the same arrangement on a sitcom today and you'd have episode after episode of culture clash, random characters not approving, etc. and have reviewers and watchers go on and on about how good (or bad) it is that two people of different races are shown together on television... but back in the racially incendiary 50's, it dont seem like the inter-racial relationship on I Love Lucy raised a single eye-brow... its like people didn't care back then... thanks

Your ignorance is once again astounding, Albert.

The reason that nobody gave a damn about "I Love Lucy" is that ol' Desi was considered a "white" Cuban. So is Castro, for that matter. Cuban natives were pretty much wiped out by the Spaniards, so what little "native" blood is in the ethnic mix in Cuba was imported, in the form of more docile mixed native-African descended slaves taken from other islands. The majority of Cubanos are of African or mixed African-native descent. You can guarantee that if ol' Rickey was darker than he was, that show never would have been shown.

The networks in those days had a private censorship group that decided what they would and wouldn't allow. Ever see Brady Bunch reruns? How many married couples can you think of that sleep in separate twin beds? On network TV, you didn't sleep in the same bed, or even show one big bed, even if the couple was married. In the original Star Trek episode where Kirk kissed Uhura, the only way Gene Roddenberry got it past the network censors was that it (a) was set 300 years into the future, (b) it was science fiction, and (c) the plot made clear that they were forced by aliens.

As to mixed race couples, and Jim Crow, are you really that ignorant? If a white man wanted to get some out in the cotton shacks or behind the wood pile, that was considered ok so long as he didn't make a public scene of it or acknowledge any "by products." And if it was just a little casual servicing - if the dumb boy started to say words like "love" - well then, that sort of thang had to be taken care of so there wouldn't be any problems.

On the flip side (ever heard of the Jonesboro boys??? ) a black man with a white woman was running a risk of getting his **** and balls cut off with a straight razor (if he was "lucky") and then strung up from a tree. The atmosphere was created earlier in the 20th century, so that lynchings by the 1950's were a bit rare - the message was pretty much gotten across, and there were more "subtle" ways to deal with the occasional problem to make it go away.

If you think that's exclusive to the Jim Crow south, you're nuts. Just try having one of "them" come a courtin' on some South Boston Irish family's daughter, etc. etc.

In those "social conservative" good ol' days, illicit cohabitation (i.e. shacking up) was a felony in a majority of states, and a large number of states had miscegenation laws as well. The whole origin of the Jonesboro boys cases was in those laws - the claimed "victim" was a butt-ugly, venal, snake-biting piece of white trash who was both road-whoring on the train and traveling along with her boyfriend, to whom she was not married. So when the train was stopped and the yard bulls started throwing people off and arresting some, she figured she might be in a bit of trouble, so to cover her rather spectacularly skankified condition, why not blame them colored boys for a rape that never happened?

The rest is just one more sordid piece of history.

You know, you really might want to one day wake up to the idea that there's a whole world out there besides your little piece of Philly, and that things really did happen before you were old enough to remember them.

	23-08-2003 23:53									#32
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MtG:

its amazing how you could take the first line in my post, which i soon explained as exaggeration to make a point and completely ignore the whole intention of my post... i'll give you credit for explaining the I Love Lucy thing but this still leaves Othello, a story never intended to be about inter-racial relationships, now being seen as one. what caused this change in people's perceptions of the same play over the centuries?

	23-08-2003 23:55									#33
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because today, a drama about race will make more than one about class, duh!