Interracial relationships

Interracial relationships in the United States have played a major role in race relations since the first antimiscegenation laws were introduced to the American colonies in the seventeenth century. For hundreds of years marriage, not to mention relationships, between people of different races was taboo, but following the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and a rise in the US population of people identifying with races and ethnicities once defined as minority, this is no longer true. A Pew Research Center study released in 2015 showed that 6.3 percent of marriages in the United States in 2013 were interracial, a significant rise from under 1 percent in 1970. As in previous decades, American Indians and Asians were the most likely to marry someone of a different race, but the biggest leap in interracial marriages between 2008 and 2012 occurred among African Americans, which have been historically the most segregated racial population.

Western states with large Asian and Hispanic populations were most likely to have mixed race couples with the South, Northeast, and Midwest following behind them. The study highlights a demographically diversifying United States where interracial marriages and multiracial children are breaking down stereotypes.

Brief History

In 1691 Virginia passed a law forbidding free blacks and whites to marry; Maryland followed in 1692, marking the first time in American history that a law restricted marriage partners solely on the basis of race and not class or condition of servitude. The laws expanded to include the other eleven colonies, and after the Revolutionary War similar laws were passed in the states and territories, which also affected Asian immigrants. In 1863 American journalists invented a new word—miscegenation—to weaken the abolitionists’ debate and exploit fears of blacks and whites marrying. After Reconstruction, six Southern states, including Texas, South Carolina, and Alabama, legalized interracial marriage for several years until conservative white Democrats took over the South in the 1870s and reinstated antimiscegenation laws.

Between 1913 and 1948, thirty out of the existing forty-eight states enforced antimiscegenation laws, with only Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia not enforcing them. In the 1883 case Pace v. Alabama, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama antimiscegenation statue did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law to all citizens. The court ruled that the law treated both races equally, because both blacks and whites received equal punishment for breaking the Alabama antimiscegenation law. The 1883 Supreme Court ruling lasted until 1967, when the court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that antimiscegenation laws are a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruling nullified the miscegenation laws, but it took time for the changes to be enforced. South Carolina did not officially amend its state constitution to remove miscegenation laws until 1998, and Alabama’s laws stayed on the books until 2000. Social attitudes reversed just as slowly despite media attempts to portray interracial marriage in a positive light. When Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a 1967 American comedy drama starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Hepburn, appeared in theaters, interracial marriage bans had just been struck down for sixteen states. The movie portrays the reactions of a young white woman’s parents to the news that she is engaged to an African American man.

Interracial Relationships Today

In 2010, more than a half century after Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and the revocation of antimiscegenation laws, a Louisianajustice of the peace in New Orleans denied a marriage license to an interracial couple, claiming concern for their future children. But this is no longer the norm; interracial couples are common in all socioeconomic sectors as of the twenty-first century and are as visible on television and in the movies as they are walking down the street. The 2010 United States Census revealed that 26 percent of Hispanics, 31 percent of Asians, 16 percent of African Americans, and 9 percent of whites married outside of their race.

Because the first multiracial population statistics were collected in 2000, the 2010 Census gave demographers to the opportunity to make first-time comparisons using a mixed-race group whose composition had been unknown for generations. The data revealed a predominantly young multiracial population and that among races, American Indians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders are mostly likely to report being from more than one race and African Americans and whites are the least likely to report multiracial origins.

The 2010 Census statistics showed a significant change from 2000: black and white is the most common racial combination. This is in opposition to 2000 when it was white and “some other race.” People of Hispanic origins often include themselves in “some other race,” because the government considers Hispanic to be an ethnicity and not a race. Altogether, the 2010 Census revealed fifty-seven racial combinations. Of the people who described their relationship as including more than one race, most of them chose one of four combinations. About 20.4 percent people marked black and white; 19.3 percent chose white and “some other race.” Asian and white was the third most popular combination, and American Indian and white the fourth most popular. The four combinations accounted for three-fourths of the total mixed-race census numbers. By 2013, the multiracial population among US children had risen to 4.3 million from 3.4 million in 2000, making it the fastest-growing youth group in the United States.

The 2015 Pew Research Report noted that about 12 percent of all new marriages in the United States in 2013 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other, nearly double the 6.7 percent figure in 1980. The report also revealed a wide variance in gender patterns in intermarriage, noting that 25 percent of black male newlyweds in 2013 married outside their race, compared with only 12 percent of black female newlyweds. In 2013, 37 percent of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race, compared to just 16 percent of Asian male newlyweds. Similarly, 61 percent of American Indian female newlyweds married someone outside their race that year, while 54 percent of American Indian males did so. There was no measurable gender variation between white newlyweds.

Asian Americans have been reversing the interracial marriage trend and choosing their mates from their own expanding community. The 2010 Census data shows that at 28 percent of newlyweds choosing a non-Asian spouse, Asian Americans still had one of the highest interracial marriage rates in the country. However, a surge in immigration from Asia over the preceding thirty years increased the pool of eligible partners among Asian Americans. More Asian Americans marrying each other also inspired a resurgence of interest in Asian languages and ancestral traditions.

Although young adults view interracial relationships more favorably than did older generations, they appear more inclined to date interracially than to marry out. In 2011, the Council on Contemporary Families reported that almost 90 percent of millenials—those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s—approved of interracial dating and that about half of all Americans had dated someone outside their racial or ethnic group.

Bibliography

Johnson, Kevin R., ed. Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader. New York UP, 2003. Print.

Kennedy, Randall. Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption. Rev. ed. New York: Vintage, 2004. Print.

Parker, Kim, et al. Multiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers. Washington: Pew Research Center, June 2015. PDF file.

Pascoe, Peggy. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.

Root, Maria. Love’s Revolution: Interracial Marriage. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2001. Print.

Sharfstein, Daniel J. The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America. Rpt. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

“2010 Census Shows Interracial and Interethnic Married Couples Grew by 28 Percent over Decade.” Census.gov. US Census Bureau, 25 Apr. 2012. Web. 7 Aug. 2012.

Volker, Thomas, Joseph Wetchler, and Terri Karis. Clinical Issues with Interracial Couples: Theories and Research. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print.

Wang, Wendy. "Interracial Marriage: Who Is ‘Marrying Out’?" FactTank. Pew Research Center, 12 June 2015. Web. 21 July 2015.

Wang, Wendy. “The Rise of Intermarriage: Rates, Characteristics Vary by Race and Gender.” Pew Research Social & Demographic Trends, Pew Research Center, 12 Feb. 2012. Web. 7 Aug. 2013.

Yancey, George Alan, and Richard Lewis, Jr. Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.