And I thank you all for your input, for the sincerity of it and for the intelligence of it. I'm really enjoying this discussion.<P>CNote, thank you. I'm cool. While I must keep an open mind and actively seek to be influenced (if I want to grow) I am not going to take these responses as personal attacks. Truely, I haven't felt any "attacks" come my way.<P>As for thinking communally instead of individually, I don't think the choices are that strict. I do think very communally. More an more these recent years, I've been feeling my place in the community and my responsibility to the community. I've looked back on my upbringing and recognized rituals that, though I didn't recognize them then, are part of the black culture. Many of them that come subconsciously, naturally, not out of some kind of intention or obligation. All this though at some point in my recent lineage I have white parents. Somehow this culture was not lost on me, so I don't have as strong a fear as you that a white mother will completely unravel the fabric of global black culture.<P>On the other hand, it will. But only insofar as culture grows. It's dynamic and living. New necessities build new rituals while old, obsolete ones die off. To define it so strictly cages it and keeps it from growing. Definitions are stagnation. This is why, for example, I'm against formal teaching of "ebonics" or an "ebonics" dictionary. Because the moment the language is locked down like that, "joint" can no longer mutate into "jawn" as needed. The old words are needlessly held onto. The new poetry has to go through some asinine standardization before it enters the vocabulary. The same thing here.<P>The adaptable survive. The stagnant parish as the things it clings to parish.<P>Personally, though I'm a writer, I hate to see the oral tradition go. The beauty of passing a story from mouth to mouth and from person to person. The way it changes subtly with each telling to leave out the things that don't apply to a situation while adding things that do. The way we reference the wisdom from the past and honor it by repeating it. But then again, the oral tradition still exists, in hip-hop, in sampling. In the way we pay tribute to the words and wisdom of, say, Stevie Wonder or James Brown in the snippits we borrow from them (this so long as a eurocapitalist system doesn't tear our history from our lips and attach a price tag to it).<P>My point with this is that traditions change, and stay the same. Don't fear for the annihilation of black culture because it is dead. It died yesterday and it will die again tomorrow. It was reborn yesterday and will be reborn as many times as it needs to be. Never in the same form as before because that form is not fit to survive today. But what will survive is the important part. The truth of it which will always ring in our ears. We may "lose" that jawn came from joint or where joint came from, but we will know where it comes from ultimately.<P>How will a white woman raise a black child? Most simply, with love and caring and enough smarts to survive to the point where the child can begin to appreciate his heritage. Black, white, global heritage. That doesn't happen at 2 oe 6 or even 15 years old. Increasingly this world is more culturally overlapping. Our much advanced communication facilitates this change. More important than black heritage is going to be global heritage.<P>I threaten to offend people when I say this, but being black isn't the most important thing in the world. I will not teach my child that no matter what ethnic make-up he or she has because it is not true. I will not ignore black culture because it is part of global culture. And I will certainly teach more black culture than, say, Aboriginal Austrailian culture because, just as my personal agenda has to take precedence in some ways over the black agenda, the black agenda, for me, takes precedence over some aspects of the global cultural agenda.<P>I think our teachings and actions must be made with as broad and truthful a view as possible. The black agenda is not broad enough to survive in the global agenda. It must influence and allow itself to be influenced by the global agenda.<P>That is how Black Culture will survive, through it's influence, NOT through its ablity to dominate while remaining in tact.<P>I think for the black agenda to ignore its new and probably true identity for some old, antiquated one is backward thinking. Separatism (including, "I must keep my blood pure and not mix is with those not of my 'race'") is impossible in this age of communication and interconnectedness. To try to hold onto this is clinging to the dead and that only brings disease.<P>I could rant on that subject for a while longer, but I think you get my point. If you don't, please ask.<P>How it can be in my personal best interest to marry outside of the race. Whatever makes me happy is going to keep me motivated in doing the things I want to do. Education, awareness, enlightenment, thoughtfulness...these are the things I like to bring to people. Not everybody likes these things so you might not want to motivate just anyone to do what they like to do. But this is personally.<P>How my marrying outside the race is in the best interest of the race, well... Black people know more about white people than white people know about black people. This is because black people live both cultures. We, of course, are black but we live in a white world bombarded by white images, white philosophies, white concepts. We cannot survive without having some ability to "be white." White people on the other hand don't have to know about being black. We see their movies, but they don't see ours. We work their jobs, but they don't work ours. We live their lives, but they don't live ours. We know their minds, but they don't know ours. This is our advantage and a disadvantage. Our knowing this much more than them has allowed us to survive. The lack of understanding on their part is what's trying to kill us. Education is the key. We've lived in secret too long. The only way to progress is to be vulnerable again. Give up our advantage. Let them know who we are, let them feel who we are. Make them understand us, connect on a fundamental level. Have them know us as well as we know ourselves. Have them be us as much as we are them. They will be a lot less likely to destroy us, and themselves, after that. My marrying outside the race creates a connection, a conduit for education and understanding. It forces the issues from black to global, to the level we will ALL need to understand to survive. Most simply, it creates common ground.<P>As for love, you're right. Romanticism is a recent fad. We don't always understand our own best interest. Wiser, more objective elders arranging our marriages might be a good thing. At the same time, I must mention this, getting married at 25, 30 is also a recent fad. We are the ages of those who once chose our marriages. So while we still lack the objectivity, we have much of the wisdom of our former choosers. Much more worldliness and much more cunning and smarts. I don't know if it balances, but there's probably less disparity than you think.<P>Again, thanks for your intelligence. I feel blessed to have it.<P><BR>b. well<P>box<P>-"Where's the Love?" - Hanson<BR>-"Heed the message, Kill the messenger" - Shawn Colvin