I'm OK, Your Life Sucks

An interesting article on the boom in interracial marriages, which now make up 7% of US marriages.

Major Cox, a black Alabamian, and his white wife, Cincinnati-born Margaret Meier, have lived on the Cox family homestead in Smut Eye, Ala., for more than 20 years, building a large circle of black and white friends while encountering relatively few hassles.

"I don't feel it, I don't see it," said Cox, 66, when asked about racist hostility. "I live a wonderful life as a nonracial person."

Meier says she occasionally detects some expressions of disapproval of their marriage, "but flagrant, in-your-face racism is pretty rare now."

Cox—an Army veteran and former private detective who now joins his wife in raising quarter horses—longs for a day when racial lines in America break down.

"We are sitting on a powder keg of racism that's institutionalized in our attitudes, our churches and our culture," he said, "that's going to destroy us if we don't undo it."

This is a rare instance of the thought pattern that more usually manifests as "my school is fine, yours is terrible" and "my Congressperson is responsive, yours is a crook." We generally think that people adopt sweeping generalizations based upon their own experiences, but it seems that, as often, people ignore their own experience when adopting sweeping generalizations. Everyone thinks that their life is better than yours.