Yesterday, June 12, marked the annual celebration of Loving Day. This event commemorated the 1967 Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated the state’s Racial Integrity Act that prohibited interracial marriages. Notably, Virginia’s law was only one of many state interracial bans. In the mid-twentieth century, 30 states had some form of mixed marriage prohibition, all struck down by Loving in one fell swoop. In this momentous decision, the Court paved the way for all Americans to determine their intimate associations without regard to race.
More than forty years later, interracial intimacy—dating, cohabitation, and marriage—continues to go against the norm, rather than be a part of it. The 2010 Census reports that less than eight percent of all marriages are between people of different races, with slightly higher rates for cohabitating couples. Multiracial people remain a very small part of the national population, just under three percent in 2010.
Why has the world, interracially speaking, resisted change? Arguably, the passage of four decades would change the face of the nation. That Hallmark-worthy dream of a post-racial America is the welcome hope of Loving Day. It champions the swirl of multiracial families and celebrates the freedom of individual choice. It is a beautiful fête of the pastel, the blended, and the all-encompassing beige.
It is true that these numbers have increased since the day that Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter tried to marry in their home state of Virginia. The state Racial Integrity Act of 1924 prohibited mixed marriages in an effort to maintain racial purity, namely white racial purity. This state-sanctioned eugenics scheme aimed to separate “white” from “colored” by ensuring that whites reproduced only with other whites. Everyone else, black, Native, Asian, and Hispanic, were beyond the pale. Literally.
However, the Loving case was not the Moses that parted the racial sea, ushering in multihued phalanxes of diversity. In a modern world where people are free to make their own choices, partner selection has not changed much. Of course, a single case like Loving is not going to convert every American into the Temple of Miscegeny, and mandate interracial kumbayahs for everyone of dating age. In the same way that the legalization of gay marriage would not unearth a wellspring of same-sex desire, a change in law does not automatically transform personal preferences.
Even the best-intentioned, blue-stated people tend to self-segregate. A recent study by the Russell Sage Foundation noted that northern, liberal cities fill the “most segregated” list. And in the close-quarters of diverse college campuses, students stick to their own. The fact that “interracial dating” is still an issue demonstrates a lingering, palpable belief in the authority of racial boundaries.
Vestiges of discriminatory laws affecting housing, education, and most intimately, marriage, make daily impacts on our contemporary lives. Even today, our neighbors, classmates, and loved ones are largely contoured by race. This lingering spectre of antimiscegenation law is like an uninvited ex—it keeps popping up when least wanted, and the painful memories die hard. South Carolina and Alabama repealed their dead marriage laws by a slim margin in 1998 and 2000, respectively. A justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to marry an interracial couple—in 2009. And half of Americans remain suspicious of Barack Obama’s ethnicity.
Decades later, news media constantly remind us that interracial marriage is at an all-time high, and that increasing numbers of Americans self-report multiple races on the census. Ideological millennia have passed since Strom Thurmond’s fiery speech about “the nigra race” in Southern churches, homes, and pools. We no longer fear the segregated Woolworth counter, the firehoses in Alabama, or the sting of blatant “whites only” signs. We call ourselves “post-racial.”
Do we really make independent choices about intimate relations? “It’s not about color,” some might typically say, “it’s about economics/geography/preservation/NASCAR.” Even when these variables of convergence are the same and the people are different, the pink elephant of race stomps on the possibility of uninhibited association. It’s impossible and short-sighted to ignore it.
Prohibitive schemes like the Racial Integrity Act achieved their goal—to maintain racial boundaries by way of legal and social stigma. They shaped family formation, solidified racial mores, and ultimately directed personal choice—all with the force of law. So if Loving Day marks a liberation from antimiscegenation law, it represents an ongoing struggle to eradicate the divisive legacies of the past. On a daily basis, we live with these ghosts.
The figure of 3% individuals of mixed race is simply wrong although it may be derived from self classified Census data. Most Mexicans, Central and South Americans are mixed Native American and Caucasian. Many of us also probably saw the PBS show hosted by Henry Louis Gates in which he did blood tests to demonstrate that most African Americans are of mixed blood. He is half black and half white and Oprah is 1/8 Native American and 7/8ths black. My wife is Puerto Rican and we go there often, we both are certain that at least 85% of the island population and mainland Puerto Rican population is racially mixed. I believe that blood tests have bern done that bear this out. The truth is that most people who are mixed prefer to self classify as one race or another for a variety of reasons. Why that happens is a subject for another post.
Posted by: Bill Turnier | June 13, 2011 at 07:05 PM