The New York Times’ Editorial Board Is Apparently Extremely Stupid

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Monday, May 09, 2022

 

Over the weekend, the New York Times’ editorial board submitted this paragraph for public consumption:

 

Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t. The laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.

 

The people who wrote these words are stupid — yes, stupid — and they should all be unsurpassingly ashamed of themselves.

 

Yes, yes. I understand that it’s supposed to be a shocking analogy. But the claim here is concrete. The Times’ editors aren’t merely suggesting that we wouldn’t want X, so we shouldn’t want Y, either, and nor are they making specious legal arguments about the likely consequences of restoring Glucksberg. They’re contending that, absent the (entirely safe) ruling in Loving v. Virginia, some U.S. states would move to end interracial marriage, such that “the laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.”

 

This is nonsense. It is ignorant. It is stupid.

 

The debate over Roe v. Wade has been a fixture of American politics for fifty years. It dominates our judicial confirmation processes; it is debated constantly inside and outside of state legislatures; it has been a mainstay of both parties’ platforms since it was decided. It is a live question.

 

Interracial marriage? Not so much. Here’s Gallup, from September of last year:

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people, up from 87% in the prior reading from 2013. The current figure marks a new high in Gallup’s trend, which spans more than six decades. Just 4% approved when Gallup first asked the question in 1958.

 

This approval can be observed everywhere in the country:

 

In previous decades, Americans living in the East, Midwest and West were generally more approving of marriages between Black people and White people than those living in the South.

 

At this point in the trend, however, approval of interracial marriage is nearly universal across all regions, almost closing the regional gaps that existed in earlier parts of the trend.

 

Those numbers, for the record, are:

 

·         East (94%)

·         Midwest (93%)

·         South (93%)

·         West (97%)

 

There isn’t even a racial gap:

 

Today, the three percentage points that separate approval among White (93%) and Non-White adults (96%) is within the poll’s margin of error.

 

From where, exactly, does the New York Times’ editorial board believe that the impetus would come for “some states” to ban interracial marriage? And who would send the signals from on high? Would Mitch McConnell, the husband of of Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan? Would Justice Clarence Thomas, the formerly segregated black man who is married to Ginni Thomas, who is white? Perhaps JD Vance and Usha Chilukuri are gearing up for the role?

 

Sometimes, I wonder if the editors of the New York Times have actually been to the United States. Now, I must conclude that they have not.