Month: March 2017 (Page 2 of 4)

In 2016 the acclaimed movie Loving, about Mildred and Richard Loving, who defied their state’s prohibition against interracial marriage, was nominated for two Golden Globes. I haven’t had the chance to watch it but it does present a similar problem to the stuff we discussed in class.

The facts of the case are that Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving got married in 1958. Mildred had black and Cherokee ancestry; Richard was white. They lived in Virginia. Virginia at that time had anti-miscegenation laws that forbade the marriage of whites and non-whites. The Lovings appealed their case all the way to the Supreme Court and the court found in their favor. The court found that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.

But clergymen are different. Shouldn’t clergymen be able to exercise their freedom of religion and refuse to marry intersex couples? A similar question would be: shouldn’t clergymen be able to exercise their freedom of religion and refuse to marry inter-race couples?

Yes. I feel that all citizens of America have these rights. However, this should be an individual and case-by-case choice only. I don’t feel like it’s ethical to have it mandated by law to forbid intersex or interracial marriage, as affirmed by Loving v. Virginia. Similarly, I think that clergymen shouldn’t be persuaded by their constituents or hard-line religious fundamentalist groups that they must refuse to marry intersex couples.

What I’m trying to say, is that the law should protect clergymen that are bold enough to defy the religious scriptures to do what they feel is ethical. I do not think that other racist laws or narrow-minded people or lobbyists should legally be able to influence their decisions. Of course, the vast majority of clergymen would choose to stick with the teachings of their scriptures and that is their choice. But the freedom of choice must be given to those who choose to defy scripture and follow their conscience.

And on a hopeful note, I think that we are moving towards a more inclusive and tolerant society. This has been shown by Loving v. Virginia and the virtual mainstream acceptance of interracial marriages. This has also been shown by the Supreme Court ruling in 2015, legalizing gay marriage. I really hope that our nation is becoming more tolerant and in the near future intersex marriages will be accepted because no one can remember a time when it wasn’t.

***One thing I forgot to mention: marrying inter-race and intersex couples has one important difference. Intersex marriages are prohibited by Christian scripture but I don’t think that inter-race marriages are. Like I think all they need to be is Christian. The Bible condemns homosexuality however.

Immigrants have faced an innumerable amount of hardships while trying to assimilate into the United States. On Monday, we briefly discussed our trip to the Museum of Chinese in America. Before visiting that museum, I was totally unaware of how much discrimination Chinese immigrants faced. They came into this country in search of new opportunities and freedoms, and were utterly discriminated against.

There were certainly many images that had stuck with me throughout the trip, especially the propaganda image, titled “The Coming Man”, which was created in the year of 1881. This shows a cartoon of an evil looking Chinese man with long nails taking over and monopolizing all of the different work industries at the time. When white laborers began to organize for higher wages, American capitalists turned to Chinese workers to fill the need for human labor to open the frontier, fuel the industrial revolution, and support a new middle-class lifestyle. The Chinese were caught in between big industry and labor. Labor organizers used ideas of white supremacy to rally the working class. Prevented from joining labor unions, Chinese demands for better working condition fell into obscurity. White workers labeled the Chinese as the enemy. Americans accused Chinese workers of stealing their jobs, as well as being unfit for citizenship.

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Even though this happened in the late 19th century,  this issue is still relevant today. Many people in this country claim that immigrants are stealing jobs from American citizens. During Monday’s discussion, we touched upon how racism can still exist through different mediums, like putting up a rent flyer that says “Chinese only” or “Whites Only”. This makes us reflect on the fact that history does repeat itself in a strange and scary way. It makes me ponder on what the future holds for America.

On Monday in class, we were debriefing the class visit to the Museum of Chinese in America.  Our discussion of the Museum led to many topics relating to Chinese Americans as well as Asian Americans in the US.  The topic of discussion that I found particularly contentious and worthwhile examining was Asian people in Hollywood movies.  The problem with these movies is that there aren’t a lot of Asian actors acting in them.  To make matters even worse, there aren’t even Asian actors or actresses playing the parts of Asian characters in the movies.  As it was mentioned in class, Katherine Hepburn played an Asian character in a movie and wore makeup to look the part, something called “yellow face.”  Katherine Hepburn wasn’t the only actress of her time that wore a yellow face to portray these specific characters.  Professor Rosenberg mentioned how this wouldn’t very well pass by people today because it’s very demeaning and derogatory.  But, I find it funny how even though yellow face doesn’t occur as frequently today as it did before, there are still non-Asian actors and actresses who play Asian parts in Hollywood movies.  To some, it might seem trivial that this still happens today and that it doesn’t have to mean anything in the greater scheme of things.  But to think that would be ignorant to the fact that Asians are not only underrepresented in these movies, but misrepresented.  Why does this happen?  The only parts that Asian Americans are able to get are usually the stereotypical roles such as kung-fu or martial arts characters, especially with Chinese Americans.  I’m not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing since several Chinese actors, such as Jackie Chan, were able to take advantage of this gap that Hollywood badly wanted in their movies to be viewed as worthy in the movie industry.  But I think that in a nation with so much diversity, why don’t we see this diversity in the movies we watch?  Minority characters are so rarely seen in these films and usually they’re never the main lead as they’re usually the supporting characters at the most.  Personally, I don’t think that’s as bad as the idea that Asians are misrepresented.  I think once we fix the misrepresentation of Asian characters in Hollywood movies, we can focus on fixing the underrepresentation.