Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Bigotry. Nationalism. Ego. It's all tribalism.

When we were cavemen and women, it probably made sense to just show loyalty to our own kind. As a matter of survival, it would have been much safer to just reject anything too different, from a weird-colored berry on a bush to a rival tribe that wears zebra instead of leopard skins. This ignorance would have been acceptable back when the most sophisticated communication was facial expressions and grunts.

Our tendency even now is to revert to the same dismissiveness when it comes to people we don't understand or agree with. It's a lot more work to really internalize someone's position and then promote the better idea--or to learn from them when you're wrong. When real communication gets frustrating, the comfort of reverting to neanderthal mode is as undeniable now as it was 100,000 years ago. This makes rejecting way easier than accepting.

Loving Day is about an interracial couple who basically went through hell and even to jail, just for being married in America. They won the freedom to marry in 1967. But even after all that, the wife Mildred was still against same-sex marriage right up until being persuaded to change her mind 40 years later. This is a beautiful story, but that last part is the most telling. It's the lesson of how you can go through so much and still be ignorant of the exact same plight of other people, just because they are from a different culture. Not your tribe.

It wasn't until the year 2000 that the last laws about interracial marriage were removed, but trust me, the resentment toward mixed-race couples is more alive in the last few years than at any time in generations. It comes at me and Messmistress from ALL races, every time we step outside. But we're all vulnerable to this type of intolerance, especially now because there are forces out there that provoke it and leverage it for their own political gain.

We won't ever be rid of these primal instincts embedded deep in our lizard brains, but at least now we should be intelligent enough to identify them and do better. As this site tries to exemplify every day, we've evolved enough as humans to connect with each other out of common interest and passion rather than attributes we were born with.

Happy Loving Day.