February 05, 2008

Interracial Dating, Gay Pride and Biology

As I do each Tuesday afternoon this semester, I taught biology lab today. It was one of those labs where students take observations every so often, leaving lots of time to chatter. Once I had explained glycolysis and isozymes and fermentation and such to them, I let them. As long as they get their work done and understand the material, why shouldn't they go ahead and talk? I find that letting them do it makes the class more enjoyable and, when we go over the material and tie concepts together at the end of the period, they're more receptive, more energized, and more willing to venture answers to questions, both from me and from one another. It's a good thing.

While they were waiting to take a reading today, the topic turned to a conversation about movies, particularly about dance movies. I don't remember names and I'm not the target demographic, but one interesting point that got tossed about by the students was how many of these movies apparently make interracial dating an important plot point. Without exception, none of these 18 and 19 year old students even understands why anybody would make that a featured plot point in a movie. It's not a big deal at all to them; it's every bit as "natural" as dating members of one's own ethnicity. To me, that's a wonderful thing.

I grew up in an extremely racist family. When I say "extremely," I mean just that. OK, not neo-Nazi extreme, but still quite harsh about it. In my family, where Yiddish was frequently spoken, the derogatory term used was schvartzes. It only means black, but it's the way it was used — with the same connotations that I have heard the term "porch monkey" used in the south. My parents participated on at least one occasion in frightening away a black family who had put a down payment on a house in our neighborhood. They vandalized the property in ways that, frankly, I'm too embarrassed to enumerate. They weren't the only ones; several people of my parents' generation and older in the neighborhood joined in. Needless to say, dating outside of my race was absolutely prohibited. In fact, dating outside my religion was grounds for violent reactions. I once dated a Korean girl who had been adopted by Jewish parents; my parents hit the ceiling and not only took it out on me, but my father called this girl's father on the phone and chewed him out for being a Jew and adopting a "chink" because, as anyone knew, no "chink" could ever really be Jewish.

I value the fact that these students, here in the middle of Massachusetts, haven't been raised in such an environment. To them, ethnicity isn't even a consideration. I don't think it should be. They're so far removed from a world in which it is, in fact, that it doesn't occur to them that there are some places — many places — in which interracial romance is controversial and it's that very forbidden fruit that creates a draw to movies that feature it in such places.

The chatter on the subject piqued my curiosity, and so I decided to throw out a news item that Ed Brayton wrote about yesterday on Dispatches from the Culture Wars. It's an incident that occurred in Holmes County, Florida in which a high school has banned student expression of pro-gay sentiment. I wanted to see what their reaction would be to this sort of thing.

Without exception, every student in the class seemed appalled. Could some have been faking it? Sure. But not one of them agreed with a school doing such a thing. Beyond that, several of them took about the same attitude toward homosexuality that they did toward dating people outside their own ethnicity. Without exception, they appeared to hold that gay people and straight people and those somewhere in between should all get the same treatment from one another.

I like that. I'm glad that despite all efforts to the contrary by any number of political and religious entities, these kids don't seem to be affected. That's a hopeful thing. That's the good side of the humanity. It's nice to know it's here. All things considered, Worcester and its environs don't seem to have done a bad job raising this generation, at least in some ways, if this group was at all indicative of parental guidance here.

Now, if I could only get them to read the material before they came to class...

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