Lettor to Editor: Black vs. White

Mrs. Audrey Edwards,
I am a nineteen-year-old, Italian-American female and writing in response to your article “Bring Me Home a Black Girl” found in the December 2002 issue of Essence magazine. While I fully support raising children to have self pride in their culture and values, I strongly oppose confining them to date only within their Black race simply to maintain the Black community. One of the key points in your article, “…to want to be with people who share the same values, religion and culture is very normal, it is not anti-anybody else,” I fully agree with. It is understandable that people are most comfortable around peers that are similar to themselves. However, other significant points on interracial dating have been overlooked, such as reasons to why a person might accept a mate that does differ from them. America is a united collection of states founded on the very idea of tolerance of diversity, and there are more criterions to a person than just race...