Interracial RelationshipsEssay Preview: Interracial RelationshipsReport this essayInterracial RelationshipsStatement of the ProblemInterracial relationships have commonly been frowned upon by society and even illegal at times throughout the history of the world. The question that will be answered in this report is concerned with the broad spectrum of social problems and qualms with interracial relationships, and how members of interracial relationships overcome those problems.
Review of LiteratureAs controversial as interracial relationships and marriages are and have been, they are much understudied. One of the articles that were used even states that they are understudied and can’t give a valid explanation as to why. A recent as 1970, only approximately 1 out of 1000 marriages was interracial. By the early 21st century, there were approximately 1.6 million interracial or interethnic marriages, making up 3% of all marriages (JSPR 66).
Even though they have become more present, American society has historically been less accepting of interracial relationships. As early as the 1600’s, legislation has been enacted to ban Black-White relationships and most of this legislation existed up until 1967. The last state to repeal these types of laws was Alabama, back in November of 2000 (JSPR 66). Even today, many researchers regard interracial relationships as “dysfunctional” and not relevant enough to study, even though there is little evidence to support such assumptions.
There are several different theories as to why couples get together including similarity, proximity, reciprocal attraction, mutual reinforcement, and misattribution of arousal. These are inherently seen in normal couples as well as those in interracial relationships. The most common difference between the two though is the introduction of the caste theory, a derivative of exchange theory. The theory suggests that someone of a certain ethnicity trades aspects of their ethnicity, based on their own social status, for a different resource, such as beauty or higher education. “African Americans are believed to be at the bottom of this U.S. hierarchal caste system and marry Whites to escape a poor financial and social situationвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ (JSPR 67). As there is some evidence to back the last claim, there is more evidence to support the fact that interracial couples place more importance on nonracial factors, such as similarity and common interests, as reasons for becoming involved with one another.
The major problems encountered by people in interracial relationships are those of stares from others, stereotypes, family opposition, and mistreatment by restaurant staff, real estate agents, retail clerks, hotel managers, and coworkers. Partners in interracial relationships also report receiving obscene phone calls, hate-mail, and vandalized property… (JSPR 68) Another major problem they experience as a couple is the fact that they are pressured by their family and friends not to get married, and if and when they do get married, they find the number of their social networks shrink.
It has been determined that interracial couples commonly get divorced moreover than intraracial couples; whether this has to do with the ethnic barriers (language barriers, differences in sexual scripts, and/or conflicting childrearing perspectives, etc.) has yet to be determined. Researchers have been unable to explain why the differences in divorce rates between interracial and intraracial couples exist.
A lack of similarity or compatibility, along with a lack of communal support from family and friends, has been determined to cause many problems in interracial relationships. In fact, researchers feel that looking through exchange theory, the decreased benefits and increased costs of interracial relationships should result in less satisfaction for both members of the relationship (JSPR 68)
Research MethodsFor my research on this topic my main approach to the position of finding information on my topic was I interviewed a few different people through e-mail. The reason I chose e-mail is because it allowed me to attain the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time, without having to place a time constraint burden on the respondents. All of the respondents are acquaintances of mine; a few even being relatives of mine. The interviews were informal in nature, as the respondents were interviewed through e-mail. The interviews consisted of a few, open-ended questions that the participants could answer on their own time.
The first of my interviewees is my Uncle Brian. He works as a head supervisor for Comcast Cable Company and is at anytime in charge of 20 or more people. He is half Mexican and half African American, and married into the family through my Aunt Jessica, who is a predominately white, Italian woman.
The second of my interviewees is my Grandfather Dominic. He is 5 years retired from his 20+ year employment within the New Jersey State correctional system. He is my Aunt Jessica’s step-father, but has always treated her like his second daughter (his first being my mother).
The third person that I sent the email to was my friend Josh. He is half Puerto Rican and half White, with his father being a darker-skinned, full blooded Puerto Rican male and his mother being a very light-skinned Caucasian woman. He is more Puerto Rican than he is white, and is currently dating a white girl named Rachel.
The questions that I asked in the e-mails are:Have you or anyone you know ever been in an interracial relationship?If so, please describe the situation.What are your feelings about the relationship?Has there ever been a time where you thought the relationship wouldn’t work, or actually hoped that it wouldn’t work out?Have you noticed any weird looks or remarks from other people concerning the interracial couple in question? If so, please describe.AnalysisThe interview with my uncle helped me understand a lot of problem that interracial couples face and how they deal with them. As mentioned before, he is half Mexican and half Black, and he inherited the “Mexican hot-headedness” I guess you could call it. He’s the nicest person in the world if you treat him how he feels he should be treated, which is with the respect that one would normally give another. He
s a little Hispanic, and there we have it!
I would like to thank you very much all for taking the time to read this!
My sister and I were on our second wedding night, where I learned that the black guy who was going to the party got kicked out of her home. She had a story about a black woman who had the honor of getting kicked out of her neighborhood and going into a secluded area when her husband started beating on her and hitting her, screaming at her for not moving a step or standing up for herself in that situation, especially in that situation where there is a high black population in every neighborhood? I thought I knew what my brother was talking about. In this instance, my brother and I just said fucker. We all went for a while and we realized that our brother is being really mean, but he never bothered to even talk any more to her.
I did some research on different neighborhoods, but I always came to the conclusion that, if you have any mixed-race neighbors, you are one of them. This was actually true in other communities too. Even though I didn’t go to great lengths to find out the truth, I felt safe and secure in my home and neighborship and it seemed like that only made sense. I decided to write this post for all of you out there:I am sure you have all been wondering about how to tell this story to other people at multiple points, but unfortunately I couldn’t. These questions are from a separate survey I conducted for a very different website, a couple of years ago. In my first year of living in my home district, I lived only about 1,000 square feet on a small parcel of land, but there was so much parking that I couldn’t find enough for my three kids/three years old on their small street. You can learn more about that here . If you are a person thinking about interracial relationships and can relate to your neighbors, you are going to want some help for your own mental health.If you have anything to share about this topic that makes sense to other couples, please feel free to visit my home area:We just recently moved to a new apartment in my new neighborhood. My children are two, my husband and I, and we both live in an apartment we called “Pizza Junction” and our kids were always out and about on the street. I have a couple of kids and a friend, so she’s the parent of my kids, so I love having different types of parenting in her house. There’s been quite a few discussions on social media lately about my kids, many of them were talking about how cute they were in each other’s families who they thought looked up to on Instagram. I decided to write a column about this topic because I want to help other people who live in the same building as my kids. Please feel free to let others know about this story from the comments section at the bottom of this post, or post to Facebook here , or send them a message, like this post or post your photos of you.My husband thinks that all gay dads don’t look a lot like their straight siblings, and he does. I think it helps a