INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

Interracial Marriage: Caucasian and African American

Abstract

In this study we try to explore the concept of “interracial marriage” in a holistic context. The main focus of the research is on “interracial marriage” and the study analyzes the different dimensions representing the intermarriages of “Caucasian and African Americans”. The research also analyzes many “factors that have significant influence on interracial marriages” and tries to gauge their impact on “the historical events and in the current scenario”. Finally the research describes various arguments that are in favor of the interracial marriages and the ones that oppose them; in addition, the study strives to provide a platform for the future researchers.

Table of Contents

Introduction4

The History of Caucasian and African-American Marriages5

The Contemporary Caucasian and African-American Marriages6

Factors Affecting the Interracial Marriages9

Apprehension about Interracial Marriage12

Arguments Favoring Interracial Marriage12

Arguments against Interracial Marriage13

Conclusion14

References15

Interracial Marriage: Caucasian and African American

Introduction

Anxieties about interracial marriages ran high as slavery was abolished and the possibility for a new, more egalitarian, political order arose. Two Democratic newspaper editors sought to capitalize on these anxieties by secretly publishing a pamphlet extolling the virtues and benefits of interracial marriages, coining the word miscegenation to refer to the practice. Although the plot failed, the term quickly became part of the public lexicon, and despite an intense constitutional struggle in the early post-bellum years, bans on interracial marriage were passed and upheld across the South. Through the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, these bans spread into the western states as well.

Bans on interracial intimacy took different forms. Some states, such as Alabama, broadly criminalized attempts at intermarriage, interracial adultery, and interracial fornication between blacks and Caucasian as felonies, and the courts interpreted these bans to bar sexual relationships that paralleled legitimate same-race marital relationships. Other States made interracial marriage between blacks and Caucasian a serious crime; but, left interracial fornication at the level of a misdemeanor offense. Several States of the world often incorporated a bewildering array of racial groups in their injunctions against interracial intimacy between Caucasian and the blacks; but, some states also barred marriages between Caucasian and blacks. Through the first three decades of the twentieth century, cultural and legal definitions of race increasingly moved toward eliminating the broad array of terms for mixed-race individuals in favor of a limited range of rigid categories. The category of mulatto gradually disappeared in favor of a strict separation between black and Caucasian, with those formerly considered to be mulattoes reclassified as black.

The bans on interracial marriage fell to judicial attack, first in California's 1948 state court that such bans violated the Fourteenth Amendment and then nationally in 1967. In conjunction with this, however, state legislatures had been removing bans in the 1950s. Although further judicial action was necessary to enforce the legislation, by 1970 the legal struggle essentially over regarding interracial marriage. Social acceptability of interracial relationships required more time, and even in the early twenty-first century marriages between blacks and Caucasian. Controversy over race mixing arose again over proposals to add a mixed-race ...