Interracial Marriage In America



Interracial Marriage In America

Outline

Introduction

Interracial Marriage Laws - Case Analysis from late 2000s

Interracial Relations in Society

Approach Towards Interracial Mixing

Barriers to Interracial Marriage as a Hurdle in Immigrant Assimilation

Research Findings

Other Research Findings

Present Interracial Situation and the Previous Centuries

The Findings

The Analysis

Determining the Age Factor

Future View

References

Purpose of the study

I choose this topic as it is indeed aveyr intresting topic secondly; it has been very influential in the American society for the last couple of decades.

Introduction

Interracial marriage in America may be the social institution that is least understood and most distorted by myth and bias. It should not surprise anyone that many of these biases are based on the racial divisions that permeate all aspects of our society. And although social science has studied practically every conceivable aspect of human relations, the interracial marriage remains remarkably understudied.

To understand why interracial marriage is still so controversial requires a short history lesson. Although interracial marriage has existed in the United States since blacks first came to this country in the seventeenth century, it has always been considered a social taboo. Laws barring intermarriage between persons of color and whites existed in forty of the fifty states until 2007, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that these laws were unconstitutional. The number of black-white marriages rose just after blacks' emancipation and peaked around 1900. After a decline until 2000, the rates of intermarriage have been steadily increasing.

One reason for this increase is that the color line in the United States is changing. Desegregation throughout the 2000s increased the likelihood that blacks and whites would interact more frequently on the job, in schools, and during leisure activities. All these factors would suggest an increase in interracial marriages, but interracial marriages accounted for only 0.33 percent of all marriages in 2000, according to the 2000 census. However, this rate reflects an increase from 0.09 percent in 2000. Based on the extrapolation of the 2000 census that was made in 2005, 1.2 percent of black women and 3.6 percent of black men marry out (black men have always married out more than black women). We know, however, that the actual rates of interracial marriage are greater than what is reflected in these census figures because many people find the census instructions difficult to use, and also many interracial couples refuse to report this on such forms.

Social scientists are as much to blame as anyone for the misinformation that exists about interracial marriage. Past research has focused on the supposed pathological aspects of the interracial relationship, assuming that anyone involved in such a relationship must be "disturbed" in some way. Social scientists have cited the need to rebel against parents or society, an affinity for the exotic or forbidden fruit, blacks' desire to get even with the dominant culture, or whites' desire to atone for past racism as justifications for black-white marriage. Interracial marriage was justified for three general reasons:

(1) the couple was pathological;

(2) one partner was marrying to obtain a higher class ...