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 2021 showed that 19 percent of first marriages in the United States in 2019 were interracial, a significant rise from under 1 percent in 1970. Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans 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 the most likely to have mixed-race couples, with the South, Northeast, and Midwest following behind them. The study highlighted 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 Black and White people from marrying. 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. In the 1883 case Pace v. Alabama, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama antimiscegenation statute 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 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 a Black 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 Louisiana justice 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 White people married outside their race.

Because the first multiracial population statistics were collected in 2000, the 2010 Census gave demographers 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 were the most likely to report being from more than one race and African Americans and whites were the least likely to report multiracial origins.

A 2021 Pew Research report noted that about 19 percent of all new marriages in the United States in 2019 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other, more than double the 6.7 percent figure in 1980. Among all marriages, 11 percent were interracial. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2015 the largest share of intermarried couples included one Hispanic spouse and one White spouse.

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 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 millennials—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. In 2021, Gallup published a poll showing that approval of interracial marriage throughout the United States had reached 94 percent.

Bibliography

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