I've lived overseas for much of my life. I know that different people-groups have different attitudes about racial intermarriage. My wife's people are okay with it as long as they adopt spouses into their people-groups, so they gave me a family name and some foster parents in the family network. The Padang people consider the children one of their own if the mother is Padang. The Javanese count the children as Javanese if the father is Javanese. And for some peoples, it is a big deal to keep their cultural identity. If I understand it right, Chinese children in Indonesia are only considered Chinese if both parents are Chinese. If they mix, the kids are no longer Chinese. There are 500 year old Chinese communities there. I knew an unmarried Christian Chinese man who was a leader in the house church movement whose dad was a pastor in a big Charismatic Bethel church there that is part of the COG. (I think that part of Bethany stuck with GBI since it was in Jakarta.) The unmarried man was dating a Batak girl. I didn't know them all that well, but just from what I knew of them, the girl seemed to be a really good candidate for a Pentecostal's preacher's daughter-in-law. She seemed really sweet, educated, very supportive of her boyfriend's ministry in church. Theologically, I believe they were all some sort of Pentecostal or Charismatic. As far as culture goes, the Batak are very pro-family and anti-divorce. A lot of the educated ones become lawyers and preachers. Many Pentecostal preachers are Batak, too.They wanted to get married, but the man's father didn't agree to it. Why? Because she was not Chinese. They just dated for years and finally the father came around when the man was in his late 20's. The last I checked, they'd been married for years and had a child, and were still active in ministry. For Indonesians, parental consent is very important for marriages, especially for the type of decent folk you might meet in church.I think Americans and other Europeans can be kind of ethnocentric and imperialistic when it comes to some of our values about race. If Cassius Clay wanted to marry a woman of the same race, good for him. But it is best if a society also allows me to be married to my Asian wife without social repercussions. I don't mind having half-Asian kids. I don't agree with him that your own race necessarily cooks better. Few white women's cooking could hold a candle to my wife's. I remembered later I'd prayed for a wife who could cook Chinese food. She cooks Indonesian, Chinese, American, Thai, Korean, and many other countries' dishes. She can even do some southern cooking