Interracial Marriage

Nature of Racial Designation

Contemporary researchers suggest that race is largely a social construction that has little biological significance, despite the societal emphasis placed on race. Seemingly arbitrary and inconsistent boundaries have been established for determining racial heritage in the United States. For example, there are more than 560 federally recognized American Indian tribes in the United States. While the qualifications for membership into these tribes differ, some people of American Indian descent do not qualify for this racial designation unless they have a minimum blood quantum of one fourth. Accordingly, possessing less than 25% Indian heritage is a racial disqualification for group membership, regardless of cultural practices and beliefs.

On the other hand, African Americans have been subjected to a one-drop rule. That is, persons with any degree of African ancestry—no matter how far back the lineage—are considered to be African American, regardless of an absence of cultural beliefs and practices. Amazingly enough, no other racial group in the world is subjected to this one-drop designation, and these differing policies of racial designation illustrate the social influence on defining race.

As these examples illustrate, inconsistent designations of race highlight the arbitrary nature of the definition, even though society subscribes to a strong biological rationale for utilizing racial designations.

Legislative Influences on Interracial Marriages

This adherence to a strictly biological racial designation contributed to U.S. legislation supporting race-based segregation such as the Jim Crow laws, which were enacted in the late 1800s. This legislation was upheld in many southern states into the 1960s when the civil rights movement was initiated. Jim Crow laws stated that it was unlawful not only for White people to marry persons of Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu descent but also for Negro men and women to cohabit (i.e., share the same sleeping quarters) with White persons. Anyone found to be in violation of these laws was subjected to either imprisonment for up to 12 months or monetary fines. In 1967 Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled against the remaining 13 states that upheld the antimiscegenation laws. This ruling initially spurred an uprising of Blacks protesting against White supremacy. Only after the settlement of this uprising did the phenomenon of interracial marriage begin to rise in occurrence.

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