Williams’s Pregnancy Proves Interracial Couples Still Aren’t AcceptedPosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2017-05-04 02:35Z by Steven |
Williams’s Pregnancy Proves Interracial Couples Still Aren’t Accepted
Fortune
2017-05-03
Erica Chito Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center
 Serena Williams arrives at the Costume Institute Benefit May 1, 2017 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images |
When Romanian tennis captain Ilie Nastase imagined Serena Willams’s baby with her white fiancé Alexis Ohanian would look like “chocolate with milk” last week, his offensive comments were immediately criticized in the media. Williams herself called out his comments as racist on Instagram. Days later Nastase apologized, saying, “That was the first time I had heard about her pregnancy, and my reaction was spontaneous.”
This feud offered the public a glimpse of how mixed race people around the globe are subject to a variety of similarly insulting terms. Nastase may try to pass off his remark as an isolated incident. But in reality, it reflects the continued widespread opposition to and discomfort with interracial couples and multiracial children.
On one hand, mixed race celebrities and interracial celebrity couples like Williams and Ohanian are heralded in the media as examples of a world where race, ethnic background, and color no longer matter. This belief in a post-racial world grew louder after the election of President Barack Obama, who is biracial. Accompanying these proclamations of multiracialism was the notion that opposition to interracial unions was a thing of the past. In addition, we also hear that interracial marriages are on the rise and the biracial population is booming.
Yet a closer look at the statistics tells a different story…
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