QUOTE(Taln @ Sep 12 2008, 01:37 PM)
That has me rather confused. Why would mariage bring disharmony, if dating promotes harmony? With the two so interralated, I fail to see how you consider them to have opposite effect on humanity? I might be able to understand (though disagree) if you considered casual friendships to have a less negative effect than dating and marriage. But once allowed the intimacy of dating, regardless of the depth of that intimacy, it should have a similar impact to marriages.
The only differentiation I can think of that would cause someone to view dating as more favorable to marriage in terms of interracial relations is when dating is a means to an end without committing to the responsibility of marriage. And if that were the case, it would no longer be in the best interest of interracial relations for that person to be even allow to date.
The difference I was thinking of reading that is the assumption that a couple who is just dating won't have children while if they're married they definitely will, and/or once you've married someone you're committed to someone of another race. People look at dating as if it doesn't have to lead to or be anything serious, so no harm done. Dating other races makes you just look "open-minded" and like we're all becoming more open-minded. However, if you marry someone of another race, people look at you as if you're "not coming back" to your race, you've chosen to "sell out"/hate your race and you're a lost cause. And so it might make people who have a problem with interracial couplings angrier than just seeing that couple date, accuse white men and white women or whoever of "stealing our women/men," etc.
Plus, people assume that interracial kids have all these mental/identity problems and/or want to be white and assume that some will pass/are passing. That bothers people because everyone wants to label and be able to tell quickly and accurately what race someone is, and they want people to identify as the race they're labeled as not all this "hapa" stuff or saying "I'm neither black nor white--I'm multiracial" or whatever. I've seen so many try to say that biracial and multiracial kids will singlehandedly eliminate entire races, and if you're Asian or Latino I can see where you're coming from if you believe that because the kids do get lighter and lighter very quickly from generation to generation if your family keeps marrying whites (in addition to so many mixed kids not wanting to identify/label themselves "Asian" or "black" and so on).