When we think about interracial marriages today, we don’t think twice about people of different races being together and creating biracial children. Though not even 50 years ago, marriages of different races were banned in 13 states. Years prior when the Civil Rights Act of 1967 was enacted, the separation of colored people and white people had just become permitted. With this new societal change, the romantic union of people with different skin colors was a highly futuristic idea that was not widely accepted. With racism still running rampant, states like Virginia still upheld their anti-miscegenation laws which forbid interracial marriage. The previous precedent, Pace V. Alabama of 1883 was voted as constitutional under the notion that both black people and white people were punished equally for participating in an interracial marriage. A Virginia couple, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving had wished to get married but as stated in Virginia law, a white man could not marry a black woman under the reasoning of upholding racial integrity and prohibiting interbreeding. While trying to go through a loophole, they had decided to wed in Washington and come back to Virginia though when they arrived they were arrested and put on trial where they were sentenced to a year in prison. Under the guidelines that the couple left Virginia, the trial judge suspended the sentence for 25 years. When the case went to the supreme court, they ruled in Loving’s favor and stated that, “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the state” and overruled the prior supreme court case.
*Mildred Jeter & Richard Loving
According to this article, since 1967, only 3% of marriages in America were interracial and by 2017, the percentage rose to 17%. Biracial babies have also multiplied from 5% to 14% as 1 in 7 babies will be multiethnic. The culmination of societal changes has been the prevalent factor affecting the rise of marriages among different races. As America grows farther away from discrimination and white supremecy, the rejection of those old fashioned prejudices becomes more adopted by the newer generations. As reported by this article, 53% of millennials and gen Z believe that interracial marriages is good for society which is 23% higher than the baby boomer generation which consists of individuals born from 1946 to 1964. As more race-based issues are brought to the surface, ideas and beliefs adapt and reform to more tolerant and liberal societal norms.
Through the lens of the Diffusion theory, the pioneers of interracial marriages would be charactarized as those who challenged anti-miscegenation laws in Pace V. Alabama of 1883. The early adopters would be Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving whose story finally made it legal to marry another race. As people became more comfortable with the togetherness of blacks and whites, this era would be characterized as the maturation phase as, “Only about a third of Americans viewed intermarriage as acceptable in 1986” according to this article. With even more people accepting the idea of multiethnic marriages, America has entered the saturation point in 2021 as a study reported that 94% of Americans support interracial marriages. Although, diversity among couples becomes more and more unusual along with biracial babies, Americans still has to trail the long tail of the graph to make up for the 6% of society who is not tolerant.
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