Are interracial marriages necessary?

The answer is "Yes", according to Ralph Richard Banks, the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. In a recent article titled An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage Professor Banks laments the declining marriage rates of black women in the USA, and suggests that they open themselves up to the idea of marrying men who are not black.

The article deals with the various reasons that black women either end up in bad marriages to black men, have few marriages to non-black men, or fail to marry altogether. Rather than critique the entire article (it is worth reading it for yourself and drawing your own conclusion about some of the interesting issues Professor Banks raises), I am going to write about a few things that captured my attention.

Here is one section that caught my eye:

Black women lead by far the most segregated intimate lives of any minority group in the U.S. They are less than half as likely as black men to wed across racial lines. Only about 1 in 20 black women are interracially married.

Part of the reason ... is the market. Numerous studies of Internet dating confirm that black women are the partners least desired by non-black men.

Several paragraphs later there was this:

To understand the intimate segregation of black women, we must go beyond the question of whether black women are wanted and look instead at what they want. For some black women, the personal choice of an intimate partner is political. They want to help black men, not abandon them. As one woman told me, "If you know your history, how can you not support black men?"

When I first read this paragraph, it sent a jolt through me like an electrical current. Just prior to marrying my wife in Tanzania, I had the chance to speak with an American lady who taught at an international school in Germany. She told me that she believed interracial marriage was the only hope of bridging racial differences. In other words, she saw my marriage to my beautiful Tanzanian bride as a political act.

There is something terribly sad - as well as disturbing - in the willingness to see marriage as political activism designed to bring about some desired social good. Some years ago I heard a story (perhaps apocryphal) about a white pastor who announced to his congregation that he planned to marry a black woman. He said that he was doing this in order to provide a living lesson in the need for racial tolerance and harmony. Not surprisingly, the marriage quickly fell apart. When human beings are reduced to mere tools designed to further a certain political outcome, disaster is usually the result.

The purpose of this post is not to provide a Biblical justification for interracial marriage. A very solid case can be found in the excellent book Just Don't Marry One. Nor is this post about the Biblical requirements in general for marriage (for a good source, check out Fit To Be Tied). Rather, this is a lament about the degree to which people are willing to deprive themselves of love and intimacy just to worship a god of secular political activism. Is it really worth it?

Finally, for anyone desiring to date (or marry) someone in order to further a political cause like race relations, I beg you: don't. The person you will be involved with is not some sterile political ideal, but a living human being with feelings. Do your would-be partner a favor by not messing with their lives in such a selfish and thoughtless way.