Treating people with dignity regardless of their skin color is a pre-requisite that of national integration. The United State of America has been struggling with racism for many years now. There have been attempts to fight it by encouraging interracial marriages as a way of improving national integration. The report from Pew Research Centre indicates that people are increasingly embracing mixed race marriages.
More than 22% acceptance of mixed race marriages means that there is a slight improvement in how people view their counterparts from other races. This may be as a result of work of scholars who, from time to time, tried to state the importance of accepting one another regardless of skin color.
The statistics also proves that the 1976 ruling changed the views of different people on interracial marriages. During the four year period of 1967-1970, people began to understand the importance of interracial marriage but due to fear, others still held on to their beliefs. Less than one 1% agreed with the fact that human beings were programmed to follow what others were doing (this is always a life preserving habit).
The number of interracial marriages moved from an insignificant percentage to 5% by the year 2000 even with that nature of human beings. The attitude to blacks also improved at that time due to establishment of international community. However, out of the 77% who said Yes to the relationships between blacks and whites, few were not ready to enter into such relationships because of fear. They needed to resign to the status quo.
The Y generation born after 1976 has a different perspective because they are aware of people like Luther King who spoke as they bubbled with rage at the palpable injustices and inequalities that the Black Americans experienced. As a result, 91% accepted interracial dating. They interacted, fell in love and would easily accept interracial marriage except for a few who still lived in fear and were not ready to compromise their relationships.
From the recent research done in 2005, more people were expected to have a positive attitude because they were approaching global integration where racism was perceived as outdated. From the report, it was clear that 97% of Africans supported interracial marriages. The youth were also interacting with other races in institutions and were getting to know the facts behind racial intermarriages. It was this behavioral change that led to the 34% of positive responses among the youth.
The regional pattern among the westerners had a slight influence on intermarriages. It was obvious that human beings took time to embrace change given the challenges within their communities.
Acceptance could be one of the reasons why only 33% identified with friends and relatives in interracial marriages. The same happened in the Northeast and Midwest with a record of 19%. Further evidence of the life-preserving habit of human beings was shown in the census data done in 2000. Everyone did a common thing as in the case of white husbands marrying Asian wives.
Conclusion
While other strategies have failed to improve integration, interracial marriages can be the fourth wheel towards this effort. Creating a peaceful coexistence is important for the country. Therefore, mixed race marriage is important and should be embraced by everybody. It is only a matter of time (with enough education and awareness) that this global village can generate more relationships from all corners. We started from somewhere. If the trends from these research reports continue then the future generations will win this battle.