This dramatic change represents a rare moment of racial progress that is equally accepted by the majority of white and black Americans. But it also demands questions that are rarely asked:
Why Americans are interracial marriages when other racial issues like affirmative action and integration are fiercely contested. Have you reached a consensus about?
Interracial marriage is seen differently from other racial issues
This question as interracial marriage is back in the news Has taken on a new urgency. Recently, people around the world have celebrated "Rubbing Day," the 55th anniversary of the rubbing decision, which declared the ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional.
A recent Supreme Court ruling also raises new questions about interracial marriage. Some legal experts say that a conservative majority of the High Court recently used to overturn the Roe v. Wade case in the Dobbs v. Jackson judgment could be applied to overturn the Loving v. Virginia case. It warns of the same legal basis.
But concerns about the sustainability of interracial marriages are:
There was a time when interracial couples and their children had to hide embarrassedly, but no longer.
Last week Ketanji Brown Jackson did so while standing next to her husband, the first black woman's Supreme Court of Justice, who is white. His race wasn't even mentioned in the story of her taunts.
So how did this big change in acceptance come about?
Funderburg says the difference between an attitude towards interracial marriage and other racial issues such as voting rights is one word. It's accessibility.
"If people are just an abstract concept for you, you can dehumanize them," she says. "Affirmative action, voting rights. These are issues that can be depersonalized. But you can't depersonalize your cousin's husband at a barbecue asking you to give ketchup. When love is on your face, you can dismiss it , It's hard to take the opposite position. "
In one of his most famous studies, Allport conducted a survey of white soldiers who fought with black soldiers during World War II. He found that in companies with both black and white platoons, white soldiers hated blacks much less than white soldiers in isolated units.
However, Allport found that it was not enough for whites and non-whites to simply know each other. Other conditions had to be met, such as personal interaction, equal status, and both groups sharing common goals. Allport's findings, reproduced by civilians in various situations, proved that hatred and racism were due to lack of contact or physical proximity.
Why Many White Americans Are Not Threatened by Interracial Unions
May Many White Americans Accept Black and White Marriage Another possible reason is that they say that some scholars do not recognize it as a threat to their status or financial well-being.
Wasou states that interracial marriage is now widely accepted by whites as it is not perceived by many as a threat to economic or political power.
Similar movements occur in public schools. When a small number of black students enroll in school, many white parents withdraw their children for fear that they will be poorly educated or their test scores will begin to decline.
"Recognizing legal equality is often easier to achieve than the problem of trying to achieve material or political equality, where it is of great value to be assigned. There is something, and people feel the real thing as well as the loss of some symbols, the loss of power, or the sense of threat to their material well-being, "says Wasou.
Problems like affirmative action are a classic example of that dynamic, he says.
"Affirmative action is more demanding of the majority of whites than something like interracial marriage, because if these people get married, I deny myself the opportunity. I don't feel like I'm there, "says Wasou. "Giving people the legal right to marry does not cost significant money to those who had that right but denied it to others.
" There is a sense of loss and change in social order, but different people were previously unable to marry races, but now they can. Biased people are not threatened with wealth in a meaningful way.
Still, many challenges remain for interracial couples
Interracial couples are more common in the United States today. But there are still challenges for them and their children.
In 2013, Cheerios pulled comments from the YouTube page after the serial brand ran the television. A commercial featuring interracial families and their daughters. An ad was triggered that included a "racial slaughter" warning and a viewer who was fed up with commercials and said "want to vomit."
"Without love, I wouldn't have existed," she said, referring to the Supreme Court's ruling that paved the way for her parents to marry. "But on June 12, 1967, when the case was decided, the world did not magically accept interracial couples," Wells says. "There are still people who believe we shouldn't be here."
After she got married recently, Wells posted a photo of her father walking down the aisle on Facebook. Did. A white Facebook user, assuming she is clearly white and her father is her husband, posted:
Wells says she always encounters strangers who are free to touch her hair and ask disturbing questions about her racial identity.
"That's exactly this constant-they want to put you in the box," she says. "They want to be able to understand who you are and where they came from."
"If I were a book like this when I was a kid, part of the conversation with my parents would have been a little easier." She says.
Questions unanswered in polls
Despite the experience of people like Wells, dramatic changes in polls on interracial marriage It's hard to be encouraged by. Not long ago, black men could be lynched to play with white women in public.Frown at an interracial couple.
The same dynamics that occurred in interracial marriages can shift to problems of other races. A recent Supreme Court decision that eradicated the voting rights law and weakened the gun control law.
"I think this statistic shows the power of my personal experience of eliminating prejudice and dismantling hatred," she says. "But we're looking at this statistic at a time when the number of rights I thought was solid and sacred was reversed. That to a complete dismantling of the entire range of civil rights. Propulsion is underway in so many areas. America. "
This is a question not answered in modern polls.
Currently, more White Americans are welcoming blacks to their families, but many are not yet willing to accept blacks in their neighborhoods or public schools.
Unless there is little contact between white and non-white Americans in these situations, the power of personal experience to eliminate prejudice remains meaningless. Unless there is a more personal relationship between whites, blacks, and others in these spaces, we will continue to live in the paradox created by the determination of love:
American personal Life is more integrated than ever. But in the public sphere, when it comes to issues such as political power, housing, and education, some White Americans live according to the motto that led their predecessors to the era before the beloved decision.
"No race-mixing allowed."