Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 12, 1993 TAG: 9302120044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
NUMBER OF INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES DOUBLES IN 12 YEARS
The number of interracial couples in America nearly doubled in the past 12 years, and now more than one out of every 50 marriages crosses the boundaries of race, the government says.There were 246,000 black-white couples last year, nearly four times the number in 1970, the Census Bureau said.
An additional 883,000 couples represented marriages between whites and other races, such as Asian, Pacific Islander or American Indian; 32,000 were between blacks and other races; and there 1.2 million couples that mixed Hispanics and non-Hispanics.
The bureau counted only married couples, so the numbers do not account for interracial couples who haven't wed.
It has been 26 years since the Supreme Court struck down all state laws outlawing mixed marriages.
Even so, many Americans still seem fixated by interracial romance. Mixed-race couples are a staple on daytime television talk shows, and there's even still an occasional cross-burning at their homes or other acts of racial prejudice and hatred.
But most the nation's 1,161,000 interracial couples find their lives aren't much different from everyone else's.
"Interracial marriages, biracial children, folks that date interracially - it's a very normal thing," said Yvette Walker of Oak Park, Mich.
"The biggest problem we have is paying off our credit cards," like many other families, said her husband, Daniel Hollis.
She's black, and edits a magazine, New People, for interracial couples. He's white and works as a courier.
Walker said the couple occasionally runs into small acts of prejudice, such as a dirty look or a muttered racial slur.
Her husband added, "They feel like there could only be a neurotic attraction between a black person and a white person. They couldn't just be in love."
Robert Bates and Carmen Melecio of Oak Park, Ill., are a couple of 14 years. He's a union lawyer and black, she's a secretary and Hispanic. They find their racial and cultural differences now mean little to their friends and family.
"There may have been some familial resistance to begin with, but that was very early in the relationship," Bates said. "I think her family needed to see I was the real article. Once her family saw that, then everything else became unimportant."
Bates, 41, said as a college student he encountered criticism from other blacks for dating outside his race. "You feel so much under attack that you need to close ranks and circle the wagons," he said. "When you see someone on the surface appear to break ranks, that appears frightening."
Mixed-race couples have problems with the broader community because their marriages force people to discard stereotypes, said Maria P.P. Root, a Seattle clinical psychologist and author of the book "Racially Mixed People in America."
"Interracial marriage makes it hard to know who is who and what to think about people," she said.
Black-white marriages are most likely to face prejudice, she said. "White-Hispanic or white-Asian - you don't see the community uproar as much."