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Minorities (especially African Americans) and whites in the United States have witnessed a large amount of social and cultural assimilation after the tumultuous civil rights movements of the 1960s. To an arguable extent; however, a lot of the desegregation has been cosmetic rather than contextual. For instance, the days of white men painted in black ash and makeup in television is long gone (though the practice of white men portraying Asians is still alive and well – see Genghis Khan on USA network), and the idea is even offensive to many, but if television networks were to put too many real black men on the air, they would be fighting an overwhelming trend of low ratings (compared to shows that are predominantly white). This phenomena suggests to the networks that though minorities are not to be looked down upon, they are not exactly marketable. Given this, has desegregation really changed the views of people that much? Many will say that the truth is subjective and by and large, it is. But the reality is that though there are still hurdles, America has made a lot of progress in the first stage of sociologist’s Gordon’s stages of assimilation, which is cultural assimilation. The second stage, structural assimilation has also seen vast improvements, as well as the third (marital assimilation), and forth (identification assimilation: very limited). However, as implied before, a lot of the improvements have simply been cosmetic. Interracial relationships, the focus of this paper, have not been a recent trend. As early as colonial America, there have always been romantic relationships between blacks and whites, though they have not always been benevolent and affectionate as they are now. In a survey done by Princeton University, 50% of whites have dated or would date interracially vs. 40% of minorities have said they have dated interracially or would date interracially. As for marriage, the approval rating is dramatically lower. In 1980 a survey asking whether the individual would support anti-interracial-marriage laws, (like the ones that were still written in Alabama state law as late as 1999) results showed that 30% of whites and 18.3% of African Americans favored such a law.
Approximate Word count = 1355
Approximate Pages = 5.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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