Interracial Relatioships

INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS

BY CHELSEA STUCKI

Introduction:

I. Interracial romance has been a point of dispute in America since the first English settles established colonies in the seventeenth century. In 1664 Maryland banned interracial marriage because people questioned whether or not the offspring of a black slave and a white person would be considered a free person or property.

Anti -miscegenation laws were introduced the following years by Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, these laws banned interracial marriage. In 1691 Virginia outlawed interracial couples and labeled their children as “that abominable mixture and spurious issue.”

When slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, many southern states instituted what were known as the “Black Codes.” In addition to stripping freed slaves of most of their newly acquired rights, these codes continued the prohibition of marriage between whites and blacks. This was based on the commonly held notion that Africans, and Native Americans as well, were inferior races and interbreeding would pollute the white gene pool. When Congress tried to override at he “Black Codes” by issuing a series of laws from 1866 to 1875, he Supreme Court declared most of the legislation void and upheld the southern states’ right to outlaw interracial marriage.

II. Miscegenation in American history

Anti-miscegenation laws did not keep everyone from crossing the color line. Before the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, many white slave masters secretly took advantage of black women, with whom they fathered scores of children.

Famous African Americans such as W.E.B. DU Bois, Booker T Washington, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Frederick Douglass were of black and white ancestry .

Not all African Americans wanted to be absorbed however. “We have not asked assimilation; we have resisted it,’ said W.E.B. De Bois. “Its has been forced on us by brute strength, ignorance, poverty, degradation and fraud.” De Bois also condemned white America’s hypocrisy when it came to miscegenation. “It is the white race, roaming the world, that has left its trail of bastards and outraged women and then raised holy hands and deplored ‘race mixture.”

III. Increased prevalence of interracial romance

Since the Supreme Court struck down the last of America’s anti-miscegenation laws, the number of interracial marriages has more than tripled. According to the Census Bureau, the number of mixed race marriages rose from 300,000 in 1970 to 1.2 million in 1990. Between 1960 and 1990, the percentage of African American marriages involving a white spouse more than tripled. According to recent statistics, 65 percent of Japanese Americans marry outside of their race and 75 percent of Native Americans marry someone of a different ethnic background.

The incidence of interracial dating among American youth has increased more dramatically. According to some recent studies, as many as 57 percent of teenagers have dated someone outside of their race. An additional 30 percent have indicated that they would consider dating outside of their race. Many credit the rise in immigration and racial integration, which have increased the amount of contact that young adults have with people of different racial backgrounds, with the growing prevalence of interracial dating and marriage. Also, as a result of being raised during the civil rights era in the 1960’s, many of today’s parents have as much more liberal attitude toward interracial dating. However, although the Census Bureau statistics indicate rapidly growing acceptance of couples