Can We Stop Trending Interracial Marriage, Please?

In a recent story about the decline of interracial marriages in the U.S., AP reporter Hope Yen completely loses me with her lead sentence: "Melting pot or racial divide?" The story centers on whether the fact that there are fewer people crossing racial lines to find wives and husbands signals something racist about our country. My answer? Probably not.

Here are the facts: 8% of marriages today are interracial, compared to 7% in 2000. Asian-American and Hispanics are intermarrying more now, and black people have also become more likely to marry white people. Overall, 4.5 million Americans are in an interracial marriage.

I don't think that this is cause for alarm — or, as Yen puts it, that it "belies notions of the U.S. as a post-racial, assimilated society." Mainly because I don't think it's accurate to see interracial marriages and relationships as "trends." Regardless of the political climate, people have long maintained relationships with people of different races. Yes, those numbers go up and down, but they're ultimately about people who've found common ground and want to build on it, a fact that's diminished by focusing too much on how they're part of a so-called "trend."

Secondly, an abundance of interracial relationships is not necessarily a sign of a healthy racial climate. That would assume that every person who sustained an attraction to someone of a different race was magically absolved of racism, which isn't true at all. History is littered with people with racist tendencies who had no problem crossing race lines to satisfy their desires. Just look at Thomas Jefferson, Strom Thurmond and Bill Maher. No, having a wife or mistress who's not of your race does not make you racially enlightened (read a round-up of perps who've tried similar tactics over at Racialicious).

What's more, do interracial relationships necessarily mean assimilation? It's a nice idea, but people don't stop "seeing" race when they get married — cultural, religious and value-based mores don't simply go away. People who advocate dating and marrying interracially just for intermarriage's sake usually aren't "seeing beyond race" — they're just ignoring the cultures (often non-white) that don't matter as much to them. It's a pernicious mentality that assumes people of color should want to be in relationships with white people — and that if they don't, they're racist.

But I do think a decline in the rise of interracial relationships means we're seeing increasingly segregated institutions, from schools to neighborhoods. That, though, doesn't necessarily mean we've become a more racist country: self-segregation is not inherently racist and, again, happens every day in churches and at colleges. If what Juan Thurman (a Hispanic man interviewed for Yen's story) says is true — that he married a white woman because there were no Hispanic women in his college honors classes — then the bigger issue isn't, "Why aren't we getting in bed with other races?" but rather, "Why aren't all races better represented at the middle and top rungs of our society?"

Photo Credit: 3rdeyek