Head, Tom “Interracial Marriage Laws; A Short Timeline History” Web. http://www.civilliberty.about.com/od/raceequalopportunity/t p/Interracial-Marriage-Laws-History-Timeline.htm This article is an interesting history of regulations regarding interracial relationships and marriages. The United States and its Colonial processors had banned miscegenation centuries ago to prevent mixing of races. In 1667 the first British laws was passed in Maryland to prohibit marriage between Whites and slaves. It also mandated enslavement of any White woman who marries a black man. In 1691 Commonwealth of Virginia bans all interracial marriages and if a White marries a person of color, he or she would be exiled. Maryland soon followed suit. In 1780, Pennsylvania repealed such laws to gradually abolish slavery. in 1843 Massachusetts became second state to repeal miscegenation laws. In 1883, “Pace v. Alabama”, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules that state-level bans on interracial marriage do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. constitution. The ruling held for more than 80 years. In 1922, Congress passed the Cable Act, which prohibited marriages between Whites and Blacks and Whites and Asians. In 1964, “McLaughlin Vs Florida” Supreme Court rules that bans on interracial marriages violates 14th amendments. Finally in 1976, Loving Vs Virginia, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned “Pace Vs Alabama”. In 2000 Alabama became the last state to lift this ban.
Judice, Cheryl Yvette “Interracial Marriages Between Black Women and White Men” "Social Issues Surrounding Interracial Marriages" Pg 21 -30 Cambria Press 2008 The author has done research on marriages between Blacks and Whites in America and wrote this book. She has specifically studied the phenomena of Black Women marrying White men. All the research in the early 20th century in interracial relationships focused on Black men marrying White women. This has been studied from psychological perspective and scholars have discussed the dominating Black woman’s character as a reason for black men to go towards white women. A study on interracial couples from 1970 – 1995 suggested that most of those couples similar in social, educational and occupational status, they had met each other during employment and three-fourth had been involved in such alliances long before marriages. The social scientists also discussed an “Exchange model”, where a Black male with higher social status would marry a white female with lower social status, her color being a factor in equating their statuses, or exchanges of status. This model doesn’t hold true in case of Black women marrying White men! Her study focused on racial identity in couples and what it means to be biracial. She also studied that in case of interracially married couples, how the marriage works may include issues related to race. Her study looked into the question how the length of the interracial marriage affected the couple’s view of it.

Golebiowska, Ewa A. “The Contours and Etiology of Whites' Attitudes Toward Black-White Interracial Marriage”
Journal of Black Studies , Vol. 38, No. 2 (Nov., 2007), pp. 268-287 The main purpose of this article was to investigate the influence of racial stereotypes on White’s attitudes towards interracial marriage between a close member of their family and a black person. The article was limited to only Blacks and Whites because the racial divide between these two races are the most tenacious. The author covered the history of interracial marriages in America and discusses the 1967 historical Supreme Court ruling lifting such bans. Interracial couples still face harassment from both, Blacks and Whites. The results of previous researches show that in Whites, who are more educated, less religious, younger and wealthier are more accepting of such relationships and marriages. The author’s research suggested that although the White attitude towards a family member marrying a black person has become more positive over time, however, they are still reluctant accepting a black person in family. This non-acceptance is higher for Black people compared to Asian or Hispanic races. One of the main sources of this attitude is Whites’ negative stereotypes of Blacks as a group. On regional analysis, the younger southerners were more biased than their northern counterparts.

Jacobson, Cardell K. and Johnson, Bryan R. “Interracial Friendship and African American Attitudes about Interracial Marriage” Journal of Black Studies , Vol. 36, No. 4 (Mar., 2006), pp. 570-584

This research based article focuses on the African-Americans’ perspective on interracial marriages. It is important to study their perspective because of scarcity of research about African Americans and secondly because of emotional response on this issue from Whites and some minorities. There is limited systematic evidence available on this, however, social scientists have concluded that acceptance of interracial attitudes is much higher among African Americans than in White community. In 1997 Gallup pole 83% of African Americans approve of interracial relationships compared to 67% Whites. The factors affecting this approval rates are education, gender, age, living areas (i.e. Urban Vs rural living set ups) and also the same old South-North divide. In sum, the researchers expect higher levels of education, higher income levels, being male and living in metropolitan areas to be positively related to African American approval of interracial marriage, while age and living in South could negatively impact these approval rates.

Chito Childs, Erica “Looking behind the Stereotypes of the "Angry Black Woman": An Exploration of Black Women's Responses to Interracial Relationships”
Gender and Society, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Aug., 2005), pp. 544-561 It is important to understand that what the perspective of Black women on this topic is. Interracial marriage and relationship remain a politicized social issue in Black community. Researchers have heavily focused on relationships between Black males and White females. Interracial sexuality has played an important role during slavery era, there is a painful and complicated history attached to Black-White unions in Black community. According to this article, research has proved that there is a strong opposition of interracial marriages or relationships in African American women. She looks at the situation keeping two factors in mind: Shortage of “Marriable Black Males” and low rates of interracial marriages in African American Women. Quantitative research depicts her as “Angry Black Woman”. When she looks at mixed-race families and is supposed to love the biracial children born in her community that remind her of her rejection. Voices of Black women are never included in these studies. Chito Child’s study on college students found out that Black girls would see being with a White partner as betrayal to their community. She also noticed that their non-approval of interracial marriage is more directed towards Black males. When it comes to Black women dating or marrying White men, they don’t see it as a problem. She has also discussed cases of four Black women married to White men and the problems they face from their families and friends.

Yen, Hope; “Interracial Marriages in US Climbs To New Heights, Study Suggests” Web. Feb 16, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/16/interracial- marriage-in-us_n_1281229.html

A Pew Research Center study suggests that in the wake of Asians and Hispanic influx in US, Blacks are more likely than before to marry Whites. The interracial marriages in US have jumped up to 4.8 million, a record 1 in 12. It is important to note here that Whites do not include people from Hispanic descent. This fact, on one hand, positively reflects upon race relationships in America, and on the other hand raises concerns on blurring color or racial boundaries. A new generation of mixed race children have changed the meaning of race altogether. According to Census data, multiracial Americans are a relatively smaller but a fast growing population. Broken down to gender, Black men are twice as much as more likely than black women to marry outside their race. Regionally speaking, the top three states with highest Black-White marriages were, Virginia, North Carolina and Kansas.

Zhang, Yuantin; Hook, Jennifer Van and McBride-Murry, Velma “Marital Dissolution among Interracial Couples”, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Feb., 2009) (pp. 95-107)
Page Count: 13 Interracial marriage has long been a subject of interest and controversy in America. Primarily, two theoretical frameworks have guided this research; the first concerns the role of homogamy and the second involves ideas about ethnic convergence of divorce propensities. Increases in interracial marriage have been interpreted as reflecting reduced social distance among racial and ethnic groups, but little is known about the stability of interracial marriages. The researchers used six panels of Survey of Income and Program Participation (a sample of 23,139 married couples), they found that interracial marriages are less stable than endogamous marriages, but these findings did not hold up consistently. After controlling for couple characteristics, the risk of divorce or separation among interracial couples was similar to the more-divorce-prone origin group. Although marital dissolution was found to be strongly associated with race or ethnicity, the results failed to provide evidence that interracial marriage per se is associated with an elevated risk of marital dissolution.

Carroll, Rebecca “In Appreciation of The Lovings: 45 Years of Legal Interracial Marriage” Ebony Magazine . June 12, 2012 This is the story of Rebecca Carroll, an African American woman, who is happily married to a White male, Chris Bonastia. She tells her story that she had always wanted to be with a black man and have a black family because that would validate her Blackness, let her reemerge as a strong black woman and would complete herself. She longed for such a life because she was raised in a White family and have been to all-White schools all her life. She dated Black men and finally found a man who she wanted to marry, and was very happy to be with him until his Pregnant girlfriend showed up on Rebecca’s door, a White woman! In her words, she was willing to be lied and cheated to and be undervalued just because she could come back home at night and look at her black husband and children and feel whole. Her life took another turn when she met her husband-to-be. She says, they never planned to fall in love or marry and neither did Richard and Mildred Loving did in 1967, whose fight for legal right to marry helped change fates of scores of people. Rebecca and Chris are now happily married for 7 years and look forward to spending rest of their lives together.

Markson, Gillian “Interracial Marriage and How It Affects Childern” Web. June 17, 2006 www.families.com/blog/interracial-marriage-and-how-it- affects-children This article tries to bring up the consequences of interracial marriage on their biracial children. The author explains that the issues between the couple are not as adamant as the problems or confusions their children face. This is mostly not due to their non-approval of the situation, but their lack of understanding. These kids are usually ridiculed or teased in schools by other kids because to them, these biracial kids are strange. A children’s first reaction to something different is to think that its “weird” or “strange”. The children often become victim of bullying. They do not know how to defend themselves or how to deal with it, so they usually end up feeling ashamed of his family. In addition to this there are many children who are raised in racist homes and this has a huge impact on their social behaviors when they interact with other children. They do not understand this difference unless they are educated about it. The best course, however, is to talk to your children. Your child must understand that there is nothing wrong in an interracial family. Only we can prevent our kids from taking abuse in school and throughout their lives.

Henry, Alissa “Betting on a Baby; Why Interracial Couples Are Expected To Have Pretty Babies”, Web. Sep 19, 2012 http://www.uptownmagazine.com /2012/09/interracial-couples- have-pretty-babies/

In this article the author makes a point that whenever two people with different races marry, other people, even strangers start commenting and expecting that they are going to have the cutest babies. According to her, a lot of babies resemble their mothers or fathers or neither of them. Even if two perfectly attractively people have a baby, he is not guaranteed to be the most beautiful baby on earth and same is true if two not-so-good-looking people have a child, he is not guaranteed to be the ugly duckling. She believes that such remarks are racist in nature and puts the woman (mother-to-be) in a big psychological pressure even before conceiving. The author also believes so because she is a Black woman and her husband is White, such a comment sounds offensive to her. To her it is as if people are telling her that Black children are not beautiful or cute, and her children will be pretty because they would most probably be racially ambiguous. She says that all Black couples have pretty babies everyday!