For one, I'm not saying me. I didn't get pregnant thinking "Well gee, my husband is white. I'm white. So that narrows down my baby's chances of getting....." I am saying that there ARE people out there who are concerned with diseases and illnesses, and it's not reliant on just race.
Even if you specifically weren't thinking that way, my point was that the argument
has come up that one should avoid procreating with other races because of the genetic disorders they're likely to have -- and that argument is stupid, because if you're really concerned about genetic disorders, then you should be looking at
way more things than race.
And if you
are looking at way more things than race then that's one thing. But if you're ignoring a lot of those other things and just using race as your primary concern, despite the fact that, as Gwazi brought up, your kids might actually have better odds of not inheriting anything weird if you open yourself up to more genetic diversity? Yeah,
that's my concern.
You can't take offense for someone's reproductive choices. If someone wants their child to be the same race as them, that is their personal choice, and no one has the right to judge them for it. You're not going to be taking care of that child, they are, and if they think that it'll be better to have a baby that is one race, than that's entirely their choice. Telling people they're wrong because they feel that was it just play ignorant. People who feel that way have their reasons, and you don't know enough about their story to really judge them. I for one wouldn't have had a mixed baby because 1.) The area I lived in would have made it difficult for them to be accepted. 2.) My family would not have accepted them, and while you may fel that isn't important, try raising a baby alone without any family support.
You're right that, if I don't
know someone's reasons for not wanting a mixed-race child, then that's one thing. As for your specific situation, I totally agree that you had a valid reason to make the decision you did. There's still a bit of room for a moral debate, though -- as Mid said, it sort of perpetuates the kind of racism you're trying to avoid -- but, yeah, it's not exactly something where I can assume you're a racist shitlord just because of that choice. I agree, you had good reasons.
But if the reason why someone doesn't want a mixed-race child
isn't because of the same sort of concerns that you had -- if someone explicitly states that their only reasoning is just that they want their kids to look like them and that they don't want their own precious genetic line to be corrupted by anything less than their own pure race -- then
that is something I can call out as stupid. And if someone is being a racist shitlord then, yes, I can judge them for it. I can't force anyone to procreate outside their own race if they don't want to -- and I certainly wouldn't want to shame anyone about it if they had a good reason -- but if a person can't provide any good reasoning for their decision other than straight-up racist comments, then, yes, I can at least judge them for it. Just like I can judge someone for being a racist asshole in any context. Or a sexist asshole. Or a homophobic asshole. Or any sort of asshole, really.
The question is whether or not you really understand someone's situation well enough to really say that they're just an asshole, which I admit is a bit more complicated. But, if someone's only answer for not wanting mixed-race kids is just "I just want my kids to be white/black/whatever my own race is"? With no other reasoning attached to it? Then, yeah, I can call that argument out on being kind of racist.
I was in a long term relationship with a black guy, and there was a lot of things that turned me off of the idea of having a child with him, and race did play a part in it, but it was my race. Seeing how his friends and family treated me and listening to all the 'The white girl this....' and 'The white princess....' that, I would have never brought a kid into that. My ex's uncle was married to a white woman, and his kids were the outcasts of the family. They were teased and ridiculed at every single family get together, and always considered beneath the other kids who were black. No one wants to see their kids subjected to that. Now if my ex's family had been more accepting, and he and I had gotten to the point where children could be considered, than I might have thought about it. but I still wouldn't have gone through with it because of the reasons I stated earlier. My family would not have been accepting, and whether people like it or not, I do have a close relationship with most of my family and I would not want to ruin that. Plus, living in a predominantly white community, I knew that they would have had an extremely difficult time with acceptance.
Once again, I totally understand your reasoning. I'm not trying to condemn the idea of not wanting a kid to be born into a bad family situation -- and a bad family situation could exist for a number of reasons besides race, mind you. I just don't like the idea of "well, I'm white, so I just want my kids to be white" -- despite the fact that it's totally plausible that you could find a black person whom you really connect with and whose family is totally accepting of you. (Er, not that I'm trying to say 'you' as in
you specifically here -- more of a hypothetical 'you'.)
But, going back to your specific situation --
if this black person's family treated you well, would you still have any reason to not want to have kids with him? Based on your reasoning so far, I'm going to say, probably not. And that's good. Congrats: you aren't at all the type of person I was referring to with my comment, because you actually had a valid reason for not wanting to bring a mixed-race kid into the world -- as opposed to a dumb reason like "well, I just want them to be white", or the genetics argument, which, as stated by myself and Gwazi, has a number of flaws to it.
However, this next thing is what I
really have problems with:
Everyone is also overlooking the fact that in spite of the fact we've evolved past the point of cavemen, humans are still instinctual creatures. We are attracted to the people who we believe will give us the strongest offspring (At least if you believe in Darwinism and all that jazz.) If a person is against the idea of having an interracial baby, it could be that their instincts simply do not deem a mixed child as the strongest possible offspring. You can't argue with the programming inside your mind. You can try, but in the end it's going to win out.
Because human instinct is absolutely shit at dealing with today's world. Our prehistoric ancestors lived in a completely different world than we do, and the traits that helped them survive can actively work
against us today. We have a vastly different set of needs and circumstances than they did, and evolution hasn't had any time to catch up. The fight-or-flight response that helped our ancestors escape predators is how helping us become overly stressed during something as non-life-threatening as, say, a math test -- giving us unhealthy levels of stress, and actually making us
more likely to die sooner than someone who isn't so easily-stressed. Justifying an action just because it's instinct is absolutely ridiculous when you consider the vast number of ways in which evolution-approved thinking goes awry in today's world.
For example, say that some prehistoric humans observe an animal eating some berries, and then the animal shortly thereafter dies. It's easy to see why the humans that thought "that animal ate those berries, and then died, so the berries must be poisonous!" were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. The problem is, the same reasoning, when used in today's world, yields results such as "this person played video games, and then killed a bunch of people, so the video games must be the cause!" or "this child was vaccinated, and then diagnosed with autism, so the vaccines must cause autism!". The ability to notice connections helped our ancestors survive, but our world is more complicated than that. In fact, there's a chance that those particular berries
weren't poisonous, and that the animal died for some other reason. It's even possible that those berries could've had some impressive health benefits that the early humans never would've noticed! But, it's definitely easy to see why assuming a connection would be safer than saying "well we don't really
know for sure, and correlation isn't causation" before stuffing your mouth full of berries. Today, though? Assuming a connection results in people boycotting vaccines just because of some inconclusive correlation, thus causing
more people to die due to diseases that were previously nearly eradicated...
yay...
Oh, and evolution didn't just wire our brains to think in terms of logical fallacies. It can also be attributed to, well, pretty much all cases of racism, and stereotyping in general! Our brains don't like uncertainty. We like to know what to expect when we meet someone new. So if prehistoric man sees someone from an enemy tribe, they're more likely to assume that person is unfriendly. This is even more true when someone sees even just one or two instances of a member of that other group acting hostile towards one of their own group members -- even if those incidents were just outliers, and fights happen more often within their own tribe than with people outside of it. Back then, it helped us survive, because those other groups could very well be threats -- but today, it just creates unneeded separation between us. We know better -- we don't have any need to be racist anymore.
Also, let us not forget that a certain political figure (perhaps soon to be two political figures, unfortunately) once decided that the best thing to do for his own race was to purge his country of all the undesirable races -- so that the pure race, the
best race would thrive.
^ I realize that this is a bit of an extreme example. But, the point remains, that line of thought was fueled by the same instinct that encourages people to breed with their own race
only because they are your own race, and you want what's best for your own bloodline.
And, "you can't argue with the programming inside your mind"? Nonsense. Yes, our instincts can skew our thinking sometimes -- but, if we're
aware of our brains doing this, then we can combat it. Your brain might jump at the chance to point out a connection between two things, but you can stop and say "no, wait, we don't know that there's a connection -- correlation is not causation". And you can observe one member of a particular group acting a certain way, and notice your brain trying to assign that trait to all members of that group, and then you can stop and think "no, that's stereotyping. I know better. That one person doesn't represent the whole race". Hell,
I catch myself thinking racist or sexist thoughts from time to time -- because, yes, those survival-based instincts can't be suppressed completely -- but then I can disregard the racist/sexist thoughts almost immediately, because
my conscious mind knows better. And there's a big difference between simply
having racist/sexist thoughts and actually
acting on them, or allowing them to alter your thinking. Understanding that we have certain thoughts because of evolution doesn't give us an excuse to act on them. If anything, it makes it easier to
disregard those thoughts -- knowing that the only reason you're more afraid of that black person walking by you on the street than you are of the white person walking by is because your brain has a very skewed idea of who or what is dangerous. Knowing that, it's easier to combat those thoughts -- so we don't allow ourselves, or society as a whole, to be controlled by them.
So, not only is it
possible to fight back against our programmed minds -- but, given the things that our survival instincts are telling us? I'd say we
should learn to resist them. At least when they're telling us things that we consciously know are wrong/irrational, anyway. @_@
