Ebony & Ivory [Race and Politics: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967)]

When Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) was filmed, miscegenation was illegal in 17 US states. Miscegenation is the mixture of a white person and another race, often used in the context of cohabitation, marriage and sexual intercourse. In the movie, Joanna, a liberal white female, brings Dr. John Prentice, a successful and educated black male, home to meet her parents. Through a series of conversations and arguments, the families recognize the mutual love the couple shares and overlooks each's physical differences. Later that year the Supreme Court decision, Loving v. Virginia (1967), ruled anti-miscegenation as unconstitutional.

Are we still racist today? What's changed between now and then?
Interracial couples struggled from the start and some researchers argue they still do in the 21st century. In "'My Daughter Married a Negro:' Interracial Relationships in the United States as Portrayed in Popular Media, 1950-1975," a political scientist and wife in an interracial marriage named Melissa Magnuson-Cannady (2005) discusses the continuity and change between the 1950’s to the 1970’s regarding miscegenation. She explains that laws prohibited interracial marriage to "...ensure the superiority and purity of the white race..." Even after laws changed in 1967, mixed couples still received dirty looks in public and often kept relationships secret from family members and friends. Magnuson-Cannady explains that (surprisingly) the Catholic Church was one of the first to openly voice approval for miscegenation. In, "Guess Who's Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century," Roland G. Fryer Jr. also recognizes Christians, in addition to military veterans, as accepting. Fryer suggests that from cultural experience and limited options abroad, veterans are more open-minded about various backgrounds. 

Magnuson-Cannady also mentions Renee C. Romano, who in the 1990's, proposed that whites happily integrate with blacks for school and work, but still greatly disapprove of mixed dating. Although I was only a child, and in liberal New Jersey, I never felt discouraged from befriending and dating black men. Unfortunately, statistically many others do, and perhaps unconsciously, separate from different ethnicities. For example, in, "Guess Who's Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century," Roland G. Fryer Jr. analyzes the lack of integration between races in more intimate social aspects, such as during religious worship, school lunch and neighborhoods. Fryer also reports the most common mixed relationships: Asian women and white men, then white women with black men. In high school, I dated a half-Japanese and half-Irish boy who embraced his two cultures. Although he did not suffer socially, it seems mulatto children face difficulty more frequently than other mixes. Lunch tables at my school were certainly segregated to an extent, but outside of the cafeteria, in the hallways and at social outings, parties were quite mixed. 


In, "The Contours and Etiology of Whites' Attitudes Toward Black-White Interracial Marriage," researcher Ewa Golebiowska (2007) evaluates whites’ attitudes on interracial marriage between a black person and a family member. Golebiowska reports that age is the major determining factor on how a person feels. Younger people are more likely to support interracial marriages while older people are less likely. Thus, perhaps racial discrimination is continually fading out. Modern disputes seem to focus more on same sex marriages rather than interracial ones.

To sum up, although most of society is generally accepting of complete integration and some even fond of interracial couples, some still prefer to keep interracial couples out of their own families, churches and friendship circles. I feel privileged to have grown up in an accepting state where racism was never an issue. Even more so, I feel honored to attend such a diverse and open-minded university where every classroom is colorful.