“The Tanning of America” has now become a reality, as it was revealed by the Pew Research Center that interracial marriages in the U.S. have climbed to 4.8 million and that a record 1 in 12 couples are mixed.
According to the Pew study, nearly 15 percent of new marriages in 2010 crossed racial or ethnic lines, double the rate from 30 years ago.
Interracial marriages comprise 8 percent of all marriages now, up from just 3 percent in 1980.
What’s even more shocking is that Virginia, the Commonwealth State that once banned interracial marriage, is leading the way in the percentage of marriages between blacks and whites.
Bull Conner is rolling over in his fiery grave.
The Pew study also found that blacks are more likely than ever before to marry whites. Throughout America’s long history, the racial spectrum of acceptance had many different levels when it came to interracial couples.
First, it was illegal and if you were a black man in the 1950s and ’60s looking at white girl the wrong way, you were liable to get lynched. Then it gradually became acceptable but still unusual. However, with each passing year, the face of America has changed and so has the norm.
One of the first married interracial couples to throw the unacceptable mixing of races in society’s face was Richard P. Loving and his wife, Mildred.
Their story was the subject of HBO’s Valentine’s Day viewing, an hour and half documentary that focused on the Lovings, a Virginia couple who were married in Washington, D.C. in 1958. But upon their return to Virginia, the two were convicted under the state’s law that banned mixed marriages.
At the time, interracial marriage was illegal in 21 states and the Lovings were convicted of the felony crime of “miscegenation.” In order to avoid a one-year jail sentence, the Lovings agreed to leave the state and could only return to Virginia separately.
Missing their friends and family, Mildred wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who suggested she get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Two young ACLU lawyers took the Lovings’ case straight to the Supreme Court and on June 12, 1967, the court ruled unanimously in favor of the Lovings, thus setting a precedent decision which resulted in 16 states being ordered to overturn their bans on interracial marriage.
From the Lovings’ struggle in 1958, to the new racial mixed America in 2012, the long fought road for acceptance has culminated into a world where color doesn’t matter – only love.
