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interraciallife.com article

Interracial relationships are on a steady rise

Post date: 2017-04-24


It's often said that love is blind. But it doesn't need to be.

Interracial relationships are on a steady rise. It's been less than 50 years since blacks and whites have been able to legally marry, thanks to the Supreme Court, and 15.1% of new marriages in 2010 were between different races or ethnicities. This brings the share of all interracial or interethnic marriages to a historic high of 8.4%, according to Pew Research Center data. Compare that with 1980, when less than 7% of new marriages took place between interracial couples and the share of overall marriages was just 3%.

Growing numbers have come with growing acceptance. In 1987, Pew found that only 13% of Americans completely agreed that interracial dating was acceptable; that share grew to 56% in 2009. Young people are even more open-minded: Roughly 9 in 10 millennials said they'd be OK with a family member marrying someone of another race or ethnicity.

But the significance of the change goes beyond simple acceptance. When Pew asked about the impact of interracial marriage on society, 43% of Americans said more intermarriage has been a change for the better.

Interracial relationships aren't a panacea to end racism, of course; nor can any type of relationship be over-generalized as better than another. But interracial relationships can actively help make America a more diverse, accepting place. Here's how.

The more visible high-profile interracial couples are, the more normalized they become.

Witnessing interracial couples in pop culture won't immediately rid Americans of racist ideas, but it helps. Notable fictional examples include Olivia and Fitz on Scandal and Mindy and Danny on The Mindy Project, while the persistent presence of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West on our magazine covers show how it's done in real life.



Too often, on-screen interracial relationships are limited to the pairing of a white person, usually a male, with a woman of color, ignoring the fact that other constructions do exist. But the representations we do have can help move the ball forward. Just as negative racial portrayals contribute to negative stereotypes, more positive visibility for cross-race couples in media makes a difference. We learn through seeing and observing models, as psychologists have shown; the fancy scientific term is "social cognitive theory."







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