Racial Patterns in Dating and Marrige

Hope A. Shelby Shelby 1 Soc 290 Professor Doyle 5 November 2012 Racial patterns in Dating and Marriage Just four decades ago On June 13, 1967, President Johnson nominated a then United states Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American named to U. S. Supreme Court. Although, a mere months earlier Thurgood suffered an indignity that today seems not just outrageous but almost incomprehensible. He and his wife had found their dream house in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D. C. but could not lawfully live together in that state: he was black and she was East Asian. Fortunately for the Marshall’s, in January 1967 the Supreme Court struck down the anti-interracial-marriage laws in Virginia and 18 other states. And by the end of 1967 these laws were just leftover scraps from an extinct era. While this topic sits extremely close to home because, I myself, have married outside of my race. Together for 10 years, and married for a year we have seen leaps and bounds in just the last decade of what has progressed with racial patterns in dating and marriage.

Although times have drastically changed in the past 4 decades from when Thurgood was dealing with his personal struggle, we still see a lot of work a head of use separating all racial and cultural stereotypes that surround dating and marriage. We can currently see that Interracial marriages in the U. S. Is still quite rare. Shelby 2 For example, data from the 5% sample of the 2000 Census reveal that among married African Americans, 94% are married to other African Americans (“Census Bureau 2000”). Members of other races I found are also unlikely to marry outside of their own group.