Mixed Race Studies

How Are We Still Debating Interracial Marriage in 2022?

The New York Times
2022-03-25

Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist

“You would be OK with the Supreme Court leaving the question of interracial marriage to the states?”

“Yes,” said Senator Mike Braun of Indiana while fielding questions from local media on Tuesday. “If you’re not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you’re not going to be able to have your cake and eat it, too,” he said. “That’s hypocritical.”

Braun walked this back, of course, undoubtedly aware of the damage it could do if he let it stand. “Earlier during a virtual press conference, I misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage,” he said in a statement to NBC News. “Let me be clear on that issue — there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities or individuals.”

As damage control goes, this was unpersuasive. It’s not just that the questions he originally answered were clear; it’s that Braun’s answer was consistent with what he had said throughout the news conference. His argument to reporters was that the existence of certain rights, and the particular shape they take, was best left to the states. He used abortion and marijuana legalization as examples. It was then that a reporter asked if this applied to interracial marriage…

Read the entire article here.

White Purity, Black Sexuality, and Their Roles in America’s History of Racism

Center for Brooklyn History
2020-12-18

In her new book, “White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America’s Racist History,” historian Jane Dailey places white fear of Black sexuality and interracial sex at the center of America’s history of racism.

Dailey brings into sharp relief how white focus on safeguarding purity fueled centuries of brutality and structural racism. Historian Nell Painter looks at the nineteenth and twentieth century south through an intersecting lens. Her book “Southern History Across the Color Line” brings to the surface the many ways in which the lives of southern Blacks and whites were thoroughly entangled. Join these two thinkers as they reflect on the white American psyche, the messy tangles between races in the south, and the throughline that brings us from Emmett Till, to Loving v. Virginia, to the racism that continues today.

White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America’s Racist History

Basic Books (and imprint of Hachette Book Group)
2020-11-17
368 pages
Hardcover ISBN-13: 9781541646551
eBook ISBN-13: 9781541646544
Audiobook Downloadable ISBN-13: 9781549157721

Jane Daily, Associate Professor of History
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

A major new history of the fight for racial equality in America, arguing that fear of black sexuality has undergirded white supremacy from the start.

In White Fright, historian Jane Dailey brilliantly reframes our understanding of the long struggle for African American rights. Those fighting against equality were not motivated only by a sense of innate superiority, as is often supposed, but also by an intense fear of black sexuality.

In this urgent investigation, Dailey examines how white anxiety about interracial sex and marriage found expression in some of the most contentious episodes of American history since Reconstruction: in battles over lynching, in the policing of black troops’ behavior overseas during World War II, in the violent outbursts following the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and in the tragic story of Emmett Till. The question was finally settled — as a legal matter — with the Court’s definitive 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, which declared interracial marriage a “fundamental freedom.” Placing sex at the center of our civil rights history, White Fright offers a bold new take on one of the most confounding threads running through American history.

Being mixed-race in the age of BLM

The New York Daily News
2021-06-12

Tanya K. Hernández, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law; Associate Director & Head of Global and Comparative Law Programs and Initiatives
Fordham University School of Law, New York, New York

Protesters march for the sixth consecutive night of protest on September 7, 2020, following the release of video evidence that shows the death of Daniel Prude while in the custody of Rochester Police in Rochester, New York. (MARANIE R. STAAB/AFP via Getty Images)

Today marks the 54th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia, the landmark Supreme Court decision that invalidated interracial marriage bans in the United States in 1967. Interracial marriage has been legal across the nation for nearly half a century, but the children of mixed-race marriages and other interracial unions are still subject to many other types of discrimination that their parents and ancestors faced. The persistence of such bias shows that while courts have may have remedied the bias behind interracial marriage bans, but they remain unable to blunt the continued vibrancy of white supremacy in the United States.

In my book, “Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination,” I found that mixed-race arrestees describe their experiences of racial profiling and police violence in much the same way that single-race identified non-whites do. Thus, like George Floyd, the African-American man killed in 2020, by police officer Derek Chauvin, multiracial people can also experience being viewed as so inherently suspicious that they warrant out-sized interventions based upon their non-white racial appearance…

Read the entire article here.

Ep13 – Loving v. Virginia

Salacious History: Sex. Romance. Infamy.
2019-10-16

Sarah Duncan, Host

At 2am on July 11, 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were ripped from their beds in the middle of the night and thrown in jail. Their crime? Being married to someone of a different race. On today’s show, we get the background on the Lovings’ relationship, a brief history of miscegenation law, and how the Loving’s legal battle changed the United States forever.

Listen to the episode (00:25:26) here. Download the episode here.

Fear of a Multiracial Planet: Loving’s Children and the Genocide of the White Race

Fordham Law Review
Volume 86, Issue 6 (2018)
pages 2761-2771

Reginald Oh, Professor of Law
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland, Ohio

Part I analyzes the Loving decision striking down antimiscegenation laws and examines the segregationists’ justifications for antimiscegenation laws. Next, Part II explores the historical opposition of white segregationists to interracial marriages, families, and children and argues that the principle and practice of endogamy is a central feature of Jim Crow segregation. Finally, Part III examines the present ideology of white nationalism and shows that white nationalists oppose interracial unions and families for some of the same reasons that white segregationists opposed them. Specifically, white nationalists oppose interracial families because they are one of the main factors contributing to the so-called genocide of the white race.

Read the entire article here.

In Celebration of Loving Day: Raising Multiracial Kids

PBS Parents
Expert Tips & Advice
2018-06-12

Marj Kleinman

One year ago today, I met six-year-old Mattie (below) at a Loving Day event. Families had gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 landmark Supreme Court decision that made interracial marriage legal across the United States.

Between blowing bubbles and dancing, Mattie told me: “Today is a special day and it doesn’t matter if you’re black, brown or any other color; it’s just about your love.”

Her dad, Allen, shared, “It’s important to be here because we want the future to be brighter, safer and more diverse for them. We want to show them that that exists now and make it more commonplace going forward.”

In the last 50 years, the number of interracial marriages has increased dramatically — as has public acceptance of these marriages. Yet parents still face a variety of challenges around raising multiracial kids. Allen and his wife, Kelly (with their kids, below) said that they sometimes face stares and the question, “Is that really your child?”…

Read the entire article here.

Fact and Fiction in Mixed-Race Marriages

Talking Apes: How natural selection reprogrammed the brain for language
Psychology Today
2017-07-30

David Ludden Ph.D., Professor of Psychology
Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville Georgia

“Virginia is for lovers” may be the state’s travel slogan, but 50 years ago one couple was banished from the state for committing the crime of getting married. Richard Loving, a man of European descent, had fallen in love with Mildred Jeter, a woman of African and Native American origins. They wanted to marry, but Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws forbade mixed-race marriages. So they crossed the Potomac and said their vows in the nation’s capital, which had no such restrictions.

When they returned home, Mr. and Mrs. Loving were arrested. Instead of going to prison, the couple agreed to leave the state permanently. With the help of the ACLU, the Lovings sued the Commonwealth of Virginia. However, it wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. At that time, 16 states still had such laws on the books.

Since then, the number of mixed-race marriages has increased steadily. In 1970, just three years after the Supreme Court decision, surveys showed there were about 900,000 mixed-race couples living in the United. Three decades later, studies showed a five-fold increase to 4.9 million. These numbers include not just black-white marriages but rather all biracial couplings—any mixture of black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American—and regardless of whether the pair is legally married or cohabiting.

Ironically, Virginia now has a higher percentage of black-white marriages than any other state. So maybe now Virginia really is for lovers after all…

Read the entire article here.

Tanya Hernández Appears on Howard Jordan Radio Show

Fordham Law News: From New York City To You
2017-06-12

Tanya K. Hernández

Professor Tanya Hernández appeared on the Howard Jordan radio show where she discusses the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

“…Pew research center report that came out in May 18th … one data point in particular pointed out was that since this 1967 decision that intermarriage rates amongst newlyweds had increased five times…and the driving force behind the increase [five times]are Latinos…Latinos marrying whites, it represents 42% of intermarriage in United States…The data point doesn’t tell us about what kind of Latinos?…We have racial identity as well… To tell me Latinos are marrying whites does’t tell me anything about racial progress…”

From Loving v. Virginia To Barack Obama: The Symbolic Tie That Binds

Creighton Law Review
Volume 50, Number 3 (2017)
pages 641-668

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Jasmine Kelekay
Department of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

I. INTRODUCTION

The year 2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which declared anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional. For many, the Loving decision represents a symbolic turning point in the history of United States racial politics. Some even celebrate the Loving decision and the argued subsequent “biracial baby boom” as the beginning of a post-racial United States. Indeed, statistics indicating that fifteen percent of all new marriages are interracial and polls suggesting that a majority of Americans today approve of interracial marriage are cited as evidence of the erosion of racial boundaries and tensions. For many, the 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama, the offspring of an African father and European American mother, as the forty-fourth President—and the first Black President—of the United States similarly marked a symbolic victory affirming that racism has finally been overcome and the United States is a truly post-racial society. However, the year 2017 also marks the end of Obama’s presidency and—importantly—the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Consequently, we are not only forced to examine this critical juncture in the history of United States racial politics, but are also required to critically examine the past fifty years and ask the following question: to what extent have the symbolic victories of Loving and the election of Obama been imbued with aspirations that have yet to be fully actualized? Loving and the election of President Obama are undoubtedly important milestones in the history of United States jurisprudence and racial politics. Yet a careful analysis of interracial marriage trends, the politics of mixed race identity, and the waves of backlash against Obama’s presidency—which range from contesting his legitimacy and opposing his political efforts to explicitly racist rhetoric and the recent election of Donald Trump as President—suggest that the post-racial potential promised by Loving has remained more aspirational than actualized. Accordingly, in order to understand the legacy of Loving, we must think critically about interracial intimacy and contemporary United States race relations, taking into account the persistent inequities imbedded in the United States racial order and the continued relevance of anti-Blackness in the struggles for a more egalitarian society.

Read the entire article here.