(February 20, 2002) — Day in day out, we sit back watching our friends date interracially, seduced by those forbidden people outside the fence of culture, religion and ethnic background. The day interracial marriages dominate the world, our society and our species will become a “huge salad bowl,” as senior Levon Khachatryan stated. Just because interracial dating is becoming more widely accepted doesn’t mean let’s all become one, hold hands and sing Kumbayah. Also, junior Michael Hovsepian said, “Interracial dating is like having a dog with a girlfriend who is a cat.” Let’s be closed-minded people just for a moment and examine an ordinary scenario. A woman of Tunisian descent decides to date a man from French Guiana. So now they’re “falling in love” and blinded by each other’s puppy eyes and mysterious, sexy accents. Pleading practicality here! Their communication skills are lacking in some respects, coated by their thick, soupy accents. Like the experts say, “Communication is the key to relationships.” Looking beyond communication barriers, why are we being called the “American melting pot?” Like soup, the more you add and mix, the more you get mush. As author Brenda Lane Richardson said, this endless dating leads to miscegenation, marriage or cohabitation of a man and a woman of different races, making us a “biological version of a cocktail mixer.” Gradually, our societal values are becoming mush, churning different ethnic backgrounds together and amalgamating religion, and California is evolving faster than the country. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that 4.7% of Californians were of two or more races, contrasted by 2.4% in the nation. As citizens and residents of the U.S., of California, of matriculating students at Clark Magnet, are we going to become the “rainbow generation” as Bárbara Cruz, author of Multiethnic Teens and Cultural Identity , puts it? All those years we’ve been taught to look past the exterior has finally paid off, but what about culture differences? As we all know, culture and religion play major roles in our lives. As junior Patrick Aghajanian said, “You learn [about] different cultures, but you may miss out on your own.” Interracial dating boils down to compromising one’s own culture. Senior Narek Zograbyan said variety is a good thing, but like anything, there are limitations. Honestly, someone rambling on about his ethnicity for half an hour isn’t all that appealing. He could go on about being a mulatto, or a jewlatto, or who knows what else. The variety is endless. Do interracial relationships help us create an enriching diversity or just augment our daily problems? Speculating at the direction society is heading, Americans will live up to the names the “rainbow generation,” the “melting pot, ” or God forbid, “the huge salad bowl.”