Interracial relationship - Essay Example

In the end, the fact remains more interracial relationships are becoming the norm. America can fight or embrace the trend, but it is happening all over the country. Interracial couples and mixed children have unique challenges to face and overcome due to outside influences. Since 1960 the number of interracial couples in the United States has increased more than tenfold, to 1.6 million, including marriages involving Hispanics. Such unions now account for about 4 percent of U.S. marriages, a share that is expected to mushroom in coming years and that is already offering powerful evidence that many Americans are jettisoning old prejudices as never before.

(Fletcher 1998:A1) As the rise in interracial relationships becomes more evident, more and more Americans have become accepting, but old prejudices die hard for some. Not just whites, but blacks, Latino, Native American, Chinese, and so forth are against interracial relationships. Prejudices have a lot to do with the opposition, but the mentality of marrying in one’s culture is deeply ingrained. Once upon a time in the United States interracial couples did not face just prejudice, but the law as well.

For example a couple in 1958 were married. Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, got married in Washington D.C. (Alousie 1998). The two got married in Washington, because it was illegal to marry in their native Virginia. When they came back to Virginia the couple was arrested. Since 1924 Virginia had a law that forbid interracial marriages (Alousie 1998). The law in Virginia stated: 2 The law made it a crime not only to enter into an interracial marriage in the State of Virginia, but it also criminalized interracial marriages outside the state with the intent of evading Virginias prohibition.

3 Furthermore the law stated that children born out of such a union were deemed in the eyes of the State to be illegitimate and without the protections and privileges accorded