These days, interracial marriage is definitely a norm. Many of my friends, roommates, professors, co-workers are the product of an interracial marriage or are involved in one. While there is no stigma today about engaging in and expressing an interracial relationship, that definitely was not always the case.
As seen in this infographic, interracial marriage has doubled in the past twenty years. This is definitely a statistic that I see in daily life and in hollywood. Interracial celebrity couples, such as Paula Patton and Robin Thicke, Hedi Klum and Seal, and the fictional couple of Dr. Cristina Yang and Dr. Preston Burke, from the hit ABC sitcom Grey’s Anatomy, are seen so frequently now, but that definitely wasn’t always the case.
Before this time of interracial harmony, the media portrayed interracial marriage as a source of conflict. Movies like “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a 1967 movie with Katherine Hepburn, address the idea of an interracial couple, but highlight the conflict involved. Modern films, like “Away We Go,” starring John Krasinskli and Maya Rudolph, explore the relationship, rather than the conflict.
The growing acceptance of interracial marriage in the media is also seen in the numbers. As seen in the infographic, every ethnic group has an acceptance rate of over 85% for interracial marriages. Similarly, over half of Americans are accepting of their family members marrying interracially. What a dramatic and reassuring shift from the era of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” of the 1960’s and 1970’s! [Via]
