Interracial Marriage in the USA

Today, I read a quite interesting Newsweek article about interracial marriages in the USA.

June 12th: Loving vs. Virginia. Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred, his black wife, got married in 1958, in Washington D.C. BUT: In Virginia there was a statute barring whites from marrying non-whites ( maybe this finally is a politically correct word ;)). So on June 12th, the Supreme Court ruled that Virginia couldn't criminalize this marriage, the statute was knocked down, and with it many similar statutes in other US States.

And what once seemed so radical is commonplace now. Nice to hear, isn't it?

According to the census bureau, there were 65 000 interracial marriages in 1970, and the number amounted to 422 000 in 2005. In 2005 there were 59 million married couples, 7% of them interracial.

The result of this tendency, and the fact that immigrants from all over the world are coming to America, is a 21st century America that is more diverse than ever.

“The racial divide in the U.S. is a fundamental divide. ... but when you have the ’other’ in your own family, it’s hard to think of them as ’other’ anymore. We see a blurring of the old lines, and that has to be a good thing, because the lines were artificial in the first place.”

Sounds great, doesn't it? But of course, there will always be people who are against such relationships...

What I considered rather shocking was the fact that a university in South Carolina didn't drop it's ban on interracial dating until the year 2000. Can you imagine that? How can anybody expect today's young people to be open-minded and tolerant if things like that happen in universities???

Not shocked enough? Well, I've got something else for you! When Alabama wanted to remove it's ban on interracial marriage in 2001, 40% of the people were against it.

Considering all this, it's no wonder that multiracial families are often confronted with problems, if not to say hate. Taunts, crossburnings and threats happen from time to time, not too often. The problems biracial families are having are more nuanced. Kids that are being asked what they are doing here, black adults that can hardly find any white friends. And sadly enough, not even the families accept the decision of their, lets say kids, to marry somebody from another race. And it's not only the whites that don't accept a black person in their families, it also happend vice versa.

Lets face the facts: Racism is, and always will be, a big issue in a meltingpot like the USA, and also everywhere else.

But it's good to know that there are people who face the challenge and just do what their hearts tell them :)

Oh I'm such a romantic soul... :)