The laws restricting who can or cannot marry have relaxed considerably since I was a young man. Marriage between the races is pretty common these days. Not even frowned upon in most western societies. Color doesn’t matter as far as the law is concerned. You can marry your roommate, be they male, female, bi-sexual. Or whatever. It wouldn’t surprise me if sometime in the not so distant future it would be legal to marry your dog or your horse.
Which brings to mind the story of Staff Sergeant Moses Kozart and Miscegenation.
Sergeant Kozart and I had a lot in common and a lot of other things not so much in common: We had both been serving in Harry Truman’s newly integrated Army. The Army of Occupation in postwar Germany.
There was a war raging on the Korean Peninsula, but by Lady Luck’s fickle finger, we both had landed in Europe. While in Europe we both came down with lung ailments which landed us in the hospital. First in Frankfurt and then a flight back to Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver for a cure of drugs and bed rest. My case was an advanced case of pleurisy. I’m not sure what the problem was with Kozart. We both had German girlfriends who we wanted to marry, but had to be left behind because of mountains of paperwork and regulations. The Military did not make it easy to marry a German woman at that time, and being shipped back to the States on short notice made it impossible to meet all the deadlines.
What we did not have in common was the fact that I was white and Sergeant Kozart was black.
After I was discharged from the army, and returned home I was able to get my reprehensive from my home district in Northern Idaho, John Travis Wood to introduce a bill in congress (for the relief of my fiancé) which authorized a temporary visa good for six months and then permanent residence in the event she married me.
To make a long story short, the bill was also introduced in the Senate by Senator Henry Dworshak. Passed both houses, landed on president Truman’s desk, was signed, and Täubchen arrived in Spokane a few weeks later. This was in September 1951. We were married within the week. All thanks to two Republican congressmen and a Democratic President.
Which gets us back to Sergeant Kozart. The route I followed was not open to Kozart and his fiancé could not get a marriage license in his home state of Louisiana. Interracial marriages were still against the law I 1951 and would remain so until Loving Versus Virginia changed all that in 1967. It was also unlikely that Kozart would find a congress person in his state to introduce such a bill for him. Immigration through regular channels could take years.
After being discharged from the hospital I never heard from Kozart again, so I don’t know if his romance survived or died on the rocks of international bureaucracy.
So you want my take on interracial marriage? Marriage among the races should be encouraged, not discourage. This could be achieved by tax incentives or penalties. For instance:
White-white-25% penalty.
Black-black-25% penalty.
White-black-25% credit.
Brown-brown-10% penalty.
Brown-black 15% credit.
Brown-yellow 15% credit
Yellow-yellow 10% penalty
The list could be expanded to include every race, culture, religion, and so forth. For Instance: A black Pentecostal Christian married to an Orthodox Jew would garner a whopping 50% credit.
The outcome, within a couple generations, would be that we would end up with monochrome (milk chocolate) secular society of atheists and agnostics, and we could all live in perfect harmony without bias or prejudice.
Yes Rodney, we could all get along.
