White Men/Black Women; Black Men/White Women -- What’s the
World Coming To?
Does anybody still care if
blacks and whites become lovers or spouses?
Fifty-one years after
the Supreme Court voided laws against interracial marriage, are
interracial romances even a curiosity?
We explore the questions through three sets of eyes.
Rob Writes
“His color means
little,” she said. “It’s how considerate he is, his thoughtfulness, the way he
makes love to me, that matters.” A white woman friend gave me that response
recently when I asked her about her relationship with a black man. She and her
partner aren’t married, but they’ve lived together five years and behave toward
each other and the world as a married couple.
One in six new marriages in America involve people from
different races. Between 1980 and 2017, the percentage of blacks marrying someone
from a different race rose from five to 18 percent. Opposition among whites to
a family member marrying someone black dropped from 31 percent in 2000 to ten
percent today. Television commercials for car insurance, food, banks, and other
products and services now feature black/white couples.
My friend and her partner, therefore, reflect a trend, but
their union doesn’t win uniform acceptance. “Two couples stared at us
recently,” she told me, “like we were exotic creatures at the zoo. One couple
was white, the other black, past middle age. Maybe that’s the dividing line. I
can’t say we’ve gotten that response from younger people.” Pew research, for example, shows people over
50 are twice as likely to see interracial marriage as a “bad thing” as people
under 30.
Scholarly research and polling reveal much about interracial
coupling in America:
- People living in cities intermarry more than those residing in rural areas.
- Republicans are twice as likely as Democrats to see interracial marriage as a “bad thing.”
- Qualitative studies show many white Americans still regard dating and marrying someone black as “strange” or “weird.”
- In one 2017 survey, 20 percent of black respondents said mixed marriages are “bad for society.”
- Twice as many black men marry white women as black women marry white men.
- Divorce rates for interracial marriages are about ten percent higher than for same race couples, but up to 44% lower for black woman/white man couples.
One virtually unexplored frontier remains: POLITICS. The nation has minimal experience with interracial
relationships among the political elite. Only a few high ranking elected
officials are involved in mixed marriages – New York Mayor Bill
DeBlasio and his black wife, Chirlane McCray, and Utah Congresswoman
Mia
Love and her white husband, Jason Love, come to mind. Michigan Republican
senatorial nominee John James’s
wife, Elizabeth, is white.
This may change. California Senator Kamala Harris, a
black woman whose husband, Douglas Emhoff, is white, looks like she’s running
for President. If she runs and makes
head way, presumably some people will take note of her interracial marriage.
Senator Harris, therefore, could challenge the conclusion Janet
Langhart, a black woman, reached when she became involved with then
Maine Senator William Cohen. Langhart
told Cohen she wouldn’t marry him while he remained in elective office because
she feared voters would punish him. Langhart and Cohen married, but only after
Cohen announced his departure from the Senate. He served as Defense Secretary during
Bill Clinton’s second term.
I find the research and the attitudes reported interesting,
but relationships are really about love and dedication to another person. As someone involved in an interracial
relationship, I’d like to know what difference it makes to anyone with whom I
share my affections. But, then, I don’t understand many things about the world.
Woodson Chimes In
“Miss Walker! Miss Walker! Miss Walker! There’s a white woman outside!” my
first grade classmate
(and cousin)
By my 1967 enrollment at historically black Arkansas
AM&N College, things had changed. We “coloreds” started calling
ourselves “black” and demanded treatment equal to whites. That included the
right to marry interracially. Along with
my more militant brothers and sisters, I felt we’d been oppressed by whites
and, therefore, couldn’t marry one. My
radicalization committed me to “Black Nationalism,”
Pan Africanism” and other racial group formulations evidencing solidarity with
people of color worldwide. I viewed
marrying a white person as betraying the movement.
My later reintroduction to the Christian religion
of my birth caused me to reexamine that principle. Christianity told me “there
is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white; old thing
s are passed away; all
things are made new.” Martin Luther King,
Jr. admonished me to judge men and women by the content of their
character, not the color of their skin. Other religions – Islam,
Buddhism,
Hinduism,
the great religions of Africa -- each taught the oneness of all humanity. My five years of law school and law practice
in multi-ethnic Minnesota helped convince me I should cling less to tribal
beliefs and recognize that of the 2.7 billion inhabitants of this planet, the
choice of who one loves is nobody’s business but their own.
Henry Says
If romantic relationships uniquely define our lives, logic
