Should interracial marriages be promoted?

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I remember reading a while back that some thinkers in Brazil encouraged mixed race marriages in order to lessen the impact of racism and I think in some cases for eugenic reasons. From the very early days interracial marriages were thought of as a good thing. When eugenics became popular in Europe there was even talk of breeding a mixed Brazilian super race with all the genetic heritage it had available. Of course, racism still exists in Brazil like it always has done, in its own subtle ways - at least that's what I've read. The idea still intrigued me.

I also remember reading that the Baha'i faith promote mixed race marriages for spiritual as well as social reasons.

I can see positives and negatives with this:

Positives
Mixed race people are attractive
Hybrid vigour
Interesting cultural synthesis

Negatives
Deliberately promoting it is still a form of eugenics
People will still be racist, even if the whole world was mixed. They'd be racist about which % of what you are mixed with.
People often date within their race for cultural reason, so it would be hard to persuade the majority of people to have mixed-race relationships

So whilst I think it's a good idea, I don't think it will be too difficult to promote as a social policy. I also doubt that it would have the benefits some of its proponent claim it will. I especially doubt it will foster world harmony. It might make society a tiny bit less racist, but I don't know.

Um... ...no.

Its a loaded question because it sounds designed to provoke an answer that infers mixed or single race marriages are inherently better or worse. Multi racial or mono racial marriages should not be 'promoted' one way or the other. They 'just happen'.

People should be able to love and elope with whoever they want, without fear of contempt or ridicule. Provided that person is of the right age and mentality to make informed decisions about their sexuality.

I agree. I think in the case of groups like the Baha'i though, it's a form of voluntary eugenics. They're encouraged, not enforced.

You do bring up an important point that I missed out, though. Encouraging one type of marriage implies that it is 'better' and others are 'worse', even if that isn't the intention.

One downside:

Children of mixed may feel trapped between worlds

I certainly think it would be a bit creepy if governments promoted it. But I think that more interracial marriage is probably a good idea, and if some academic or religious leader wants to promote it, then more power to them.

But relationships are a very personal matter. If you find someone in an interracial marriage, and you ask them why they married the other person, they will most likely tell you things about the other person. They won't say, "Because I wanted to do my part to promote interracial marriage!" So although it is possible to attempt to remove the stigma surrounding interracial marriages, I don't think that it is possible to actively encourage people to marry outside their race.

They should make gay marriage mandatory for fundamentalist Christians to lube them up for the idea

José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia of Paraguay actually required interracial marriages by law during his rule in the 1800s for similar reasonings and that's why the country is 95% mestizo now.

'But no, the government shouldn't promote any kind of marriage. I think people should marry who they love and feel compatible with regardless of race, creed, gender, whatever. The government should not be involved.

It might be an interesting solution in countries with various antagonistic minorities. Otherwise, it shouldn't be encouraged nor discouraged.

No. People can determine for themselves.

Those are both good things.


This seems less convincing to me as a positive since we actually already have quite a few cultures around, so people who like various cultures already have a large selection. Still not a bad thing.


I think that depends on how you do it. If you just go around saying it's a good idea, then that's fine. If you tell people off for marrying within their race, then it isn't.


I think that's more of a limitation than a disadvantage. Just because it won't fix everything doesn't mean it's bad.

Something I think it could help with is desensitizing people to the idea that there are other kinds of people out there, not just their own kind.

It would be a shame to make races completely extinct.

People who want to hate will always find some reason to hate somebody. If they don't hate you for your color they will hate you for your religion, or politics, or football team, or what kind of job you have or truck you drive or where you live or how much money you make.

Haters gonna hate.

In general, lots of mixed-and-matched genes leads not only to hybrid vigor (heterozygosity) on an individual level, but allows for greater independent assortment of genes and therefore greater ability for natural and sexual selection to work, leading to a healthier population overall.

I've never heard that eugenics had promoted the notion of race mixing to create a super race. Far from it; every racist eugenicists I've ever heard of has promoted the notion of racial purity.
The fact that America, a country made up of every tribe and nation on earth, which has been so successful and innovative, only proves the benefits of mixing gene pools.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I think it should be promoted I am open as can be! I would love to father mixed children someday. We are all the same species of animal the race thing is only as different from a breed of cat from another cat heh. So a siamese cat can breed with a calico no problem, then why not us with other kinds of people?

Last edited by AspieOtaku on 11 Aug 2012, 3:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

There have been some countries trying to unite several ethnicities. Unfortunately, more often than not, significantly-different ethnicities have significantly-different cultures. I'll take you back to Yugoslavia. It was formed as a state built not upon one nation, but upon several cultures, religions and ethnic groups. The reason it managed to remain one state for any amount of time was because it used violence against those who thought of independence for their respective cultural nations. Of course, after Yugoslavia collapsed, war emerged. The Serbs, known as quite a violent orthodox group throughout modern history, had a fierce hate for the islamic Bosniaks, and that was mutual.

They had, of course, been forced to live together and work together in one state, but they had always hated each other, a hate that probably went back for centuries. Even now, the men who had thousands of Bosniaks murdered in a genocidal fashion are widely and openly revered throughout Serbia. You can't change history, and you can't change feelings. Attempting to force a solution where people work together in any way while they don't want to will invariably result in war unless one group - as Serbians in Yugoslavia did for several years until the war - manages to control the country by using extreme amounts of violence against dissenters.



That doesn't really seem true. For a country 'made up of every tribe and nation on earth', it should be noted that only 2.9% of the United States population identified as belonging to 'two or more races', 72.4% indicated being 'White or European American', 12.6% indicated being a 'Black or African American' and 4.8% indicated being 'Asian', with some disagreement over the inclusion of Hispanics/Latinos. It's not a 'mixed gene pool' society as much as you'd believe.

And if mixed-race marriages are endorsed or even forced upon a population, we should at least be able to name what we'd want from them. And that would open a massive can of worms. Now, I'd be able to provide reasons through private messages, but not here in the open - I've been warned and censored for being 'racist' after discussing the results of several sets of research. It is, apparently, acceptable to discuss racism, but only if it's from the point of view that racism is unnatural, cultural, a problem and based on nothing.

I should have been more explanatory about how America is ethnically mixed. Most Americans are a mixture of different European nationalities, though I think that there are more Americans of mixed race than just 2.9%. Many Americans who are part Native American might construe the term racially mixed to mean of black and white ancestry, but not pertaining to themselves.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer