Interracial marriage between Black and White Americans does not make up a very large percentage of the total number of marriages in the United States. But the impact of the these marriages on society--as well as on the participants and, especially, their children--is much greater than numbers might suggest. The level of racism in America--which is largely responsible for the small number of Black-White marriages in the first place--has declined considerably in recent decades. But racism persists at outrageous levels and the children of interracial marriages will suffer from it no less than the children of African-American families. A discussion of the effects of interracial marriage on children will follow a brief description of the state of interracial marriage in America; including a summary of forces that worked against it in the past, the demographics of such marriages today, and social factors that affect and are affected by interracial marriage.
Marriages between Blacks and Whites were forbidden in all or some portions of the United States as late as 1967. In addition to legal restrictions there were also those who claimed that their biases could be backed up with religious prohibitions against such unions. Mills cites, for example, the frequent claim that in the Bible (at Numbers 12:1) Moses was spoken against because he had married an Ethiopian woman. The fact that Moses' critics were later punished with leprosy was, Mills says, "never added" when the subject was discussed among those opposed to interracial marriages (214). Interracial unions of many types had, of course taken place in America over the centuries--not the least of them the forced sexual unions of masters and slaves which resulted in the so-called miscegenation of the United States' African-descended population. But it was not until 30 years ago that all laws against them were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Such marriages had been ...