Multi-ethnic marriages in the South: a racy matter?

While catching up with an old friend recently over coffee, the conversation eventually turned to the topic of her sudden break up with her boyfriend. She would have been dating him for five years now, had the relationship continued. The end of the relationship, she admitted, was rather expected, seeing as they "could never have gotten married anyway, with the whole interracial thing and all."

She is of English and Dutch descent, and grew up on a farm in Tennessee before moving to California for college. His family is originally from Bolivia, and he was born and raised in Massachusetts. They met in college, began dating, and the rest was history.

That is, until after a visit home one Thanksgiving, when her parents revealed misgivings about the relationship on account of his ethnicity. It wasn't so much that they didn't approve of his ethnicity, she explained, as they were concerned about the hostile treatment directed towards them should the two of them get married. As the story goes, the relationship ultimately ended over these racism issues.

In this day and age, where we pride ourselves on the advanced progress of our society and it's forward thinking, this might be surprising. In fact, it wasn't until 1967, after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia , that anti-miscegenation laws were finally held unconstitutional. It is an unsettling notion, but a quiet reminder that erasing the laws from the books does not mean that with it, all racism would also disappear.

In a New York Times article written as part of a series exploring mixed-raced Americans, the message was more optimistic. It reported an increasing number of interracial couples in the deep South and a shift away from the notion that such relationships were taboo. Specifically, a 2010 census, reports a trend of increasing mixed-race populations in the South and in parts of the Midwest, exceeding demographer estimations.

One sociologist and demographer, William H. Frey, considers any mixed-race population increases were impressive when it comprises over 50 percent of the total population:

The fact that even states like Mississippi were able to see a large explosion of residents identifying as both black and white tells us something that people would not have predicted 10 or 20 years ago.

Additionally, the increases are not simply due to increased travel or immigration. Mississippi, for example, has not witnessed much of an increase in overall population over the decade, growing by only 3.8 percent since 2000. According to the American Community Survey, however, in the last decade Mississippi has had the highest growth of mixed marriages. What this suggests, demographers predict, is that the increase in interracial marriages are real, and not simply due to newcomers into the state.

But are the numbers in fact accurate? Some demographers and sociologists attribute the increasing number of interracial marriages in the South to "shifting images" and changing attitudes towards diversity. Professor Matthew Snip brings up an additional explanation of the dramatic increase in numbers -- reporting accuracy:

People have had an entire decade to think about this since it was first a choice in 2000. Some of these figures are not so much changes as corrections. In a sense, they’re rendering a more accurate portrait of their racial heritage that in the past would have been suppressed.

Yet another reason attributed to the change is the location of areas increasing in interracial couples. In Mississippi, for example, the increases are highest in port towns, usually along coast lines, which is considered more liberal than the rural areas. Additionally, the "most common mix is black and white -- historically and today the two groups least likely to intermarry" due to social and economic distance between them.

In states like California, there was not as high of an increase in interracial population reported, but this is because a significant amount of the total population is already comprised of mixed race people. Similarly, Hawaii has the highest mixed-race population at 23 percent, predominantly a mix of Asian and white and native Hawaiian. To many interracial couples, whether a diverse population exists is determinative of where they choose to settle down and raise their families. In Mississippi, many of these couples complain of "enduring racial inequities."

Part of the difficulty in assessing the numbers is the lack of statistics. It wasn't until 2000 that the first comprehensive accounting of interracial demographic data were reported and made public. In the meantime, however, what has been reported indicates a surprising leap in interracial couples in the South. If indeed this reflects a shifting perception away from historical racism, it takes us one step closer to the world Richard and Mildred Loving sought -- a world where one can love freely.