This week I chose to read about how we are still living in a society that is not “color-blind”, and how interracial couples are still facing many issues. In 1967, the US Supreme Court invalidated the laws that prohibited interracial marriage. That was less than fifty years ago; that wasn’t very long ago! Today, over 92% of marriages are between people of the same race. This article focused mainly on marriage between blacks and whites, which I found very interesting. The reason this is though, is because marriages between blacks and whites are the least likely combination of interracial marriage. What I also found interesting was that blacks often times disapprove of interracial marriage, but are willing to make exceptions for family and friends. Whites are accepting of interracial marriages, but they tend to disapprove if their family or friends are the ones who are marrying interracially. A huge concern for interracial couples is children. The good thing is, children of interracial marriages are figuring things out for themselves, and creating their own identities, much like normal adolescents and young-adults.
1. http://wearethe15percent.com
This is a really cool website. People from all around send in their own personal photos of their families that just happen to be interracial. There are all kinds of combinations of races that are married with other races, and that is totally normal for them. I think it’s great that there is a website devoted to showing just how real interracial marriage is, and how those families are no different than a same-race marriage. This website was actually inspired to by my next link.
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYofm5d5Xdw
This is Cheerios commercial that was quite controversial when it first aired. It is of a little girl, who appears to be black/biracial, and she is asking her white mother if Cheerios are healthy. At the end of the commercial, we see her dad, who is black, laying on the couch covered in Cheerios. There were loads and loads of people who hated this commercial. They were very disapproving of it, and I was really shocked to hear about that. Cheerios said that they were just trying to depict families are they really are in our current society, which they are correct about. I just wonder why a commercial with a biracial family was so shocking to so many people, especially in today’s society.
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/virginia-parents-walmart-biracial-daughters_n_3313143.html
Perhaps I am just naive, but I was SO shocked reading and watching this story. I didn’t think that things like this still happened! Back in May a white man took his three daughters, who are black, to Walmart. When he arrived home, there was a police officer at his door, telling him that someone from Walmart thought that he had kidnapped the three little girls. His wife is black, and obviously they were both shocked. My dad is white, and my mom is Hispanic. My youngest brother is very white, and my mom is very dark. When he was a baby, she would always get stares everywhere she went. I’m sure people wondered if she was the nanny, or perhaps even kidnapped my brother. I am unaware of these physical differences, until they get pointed out by others. It’s just so crazy to think that it is still so much of an issue that police are even getting involved in certain situations.
4. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/08/nyc-mayoral-candidate-features-interracial-family/
This was a commercial released back in August of mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. There is a young, black boy narrating the commercial, who we come to find is Bill’s son. He is married to a black woman, and has two children. When the Cheerios commercial came out, and there was so much controversy around it, Bill’s wife said she and her family were happy that there was finally a family on television that looked like hers. It’s so great that there are people who are trying to push past the barriers that those in interracial marriages are facing, but it is still unfortunate that they have to deal with those things today.
Families as They Really Are 
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