Were black-white marriages still taboo in 1980s/early 1990s America?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was born in 1990, so as long as I’ve remembered only exceptionally bigoted people and some old people are against black people and white people marrying each other. In the 21st century, it’s probably more often seen as a good thing than a bad thing, or at the very least a neutral thing for people of two different races to date and marry.

What’s interesting is that briefly before I was born, and even shortly after I was born, apparently this wasn’t the case. According to Gallup, only 38 percent of American whites approved of black-white marriages in 1983, and that only rose to 45 percent by 1994 (before abruptly climbing to a fairly respectable 61 percent in 1997).

This means that over half of white people between 18 and 64 were against black-white marriages in the 1980s, and roughly half of white people 18-64 remained against them in the early 1990s! This seems shocking, but then I remember that 1980 is only 13 years after Jim Crow, and even 1990 is only a single generation removed.

Speaking from experience, if a young white person (let’s say between 15 and 30) dated a black person (or a Mexican, Asian, etc) back in the 1980s or even the first half of the 1990s, could they expect not only their grandparents and parents to disapprove, but even many of their peers? Or were people under 30 already fairly advanced on racial issues back then?

What do you think caused the change in white opinion from being mostly against interracial marriage in the 80s, to being mostly for it by the late 90s? Was it simply older people dying off and younger people being born, or was there a significant improvement of the perception of black people in the eyes of whites during the 90s?

It seems to me like during the 90s, black people become a lot more visible in popular culture. Pop music became dominated by black R&B and hip hop, you had black TV shows like Family Matters and Fresh Prince, popular black models like Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell, and highly respected public figures like Oprah Winfrey. All this would have contributed, I would imagine, to making black people seem more like fellow human beings and less like the “other” to white Americans.

So I’m inclined to think that over the course of the 90s in particular, whites went from still being pretty racist to blacks in the early 90s to being largely non-racist by the late 90s. I couldn’t imagine a black president in 1989 or even 1993, but it’s pretty easy to imagine one in 2000.

2

I was born in 1967. I have never been against mixed race marriages, but I know there was a time when you could expect everyone to comment upon it if you were in one, even if the comment was “How cool!” Now, really, no one thinks much about it, and that’s not perfectly true, it’s just true compared to how much people rubber-necked a mixed couple in 1990. Sometimes there was approval, but people felt they had to voice their approval, sort of like there was a time if you were a woman in a profession, everyone had to comment, even if the comments were often positive. You got tired of hearing them, good or not.

I casually dated a black man in the mid-1990s, and my cousin married one (he was Israeli and Jewish, and she got VERY tired of people thinking he couldn’t be Jewish) more than 20 years ago. She talked about it being easier now, because it is more common, but oddly, some people assume it is a recent marriage, and ask if it’s her second marriage (her children are mostly grown). I was never going to marry the guy I dated, and we both knew that, which is why I say “casually” dated. He wasn’t Jewish, and was one of the few non-Jews I dated. However, we didn’t break up because of racial issues. He went to away to grad school, and so it just ended. It wasn’t the kind of relationship we would have pursued long distance.

Anyway, we didn’t hear any of the disapproval, though I’m sure it was out there; I swear we felt it sometimes. But even hearing constant positive comments can’t be tiring.

We see lots of mixed couples at the preschool where I work, and a few parents who are biracial. We live in an apartment complex that is nicely racially mixed, and there are several mixed-race couples. Indianapolis has plenty of mixed race couples at all socio-economic levels. If I tried to comment on every one I saw, I’d be out of breath. Honestly, I don’t think I notice them anymore, really, unless there’s some reason to, like if NPR has just done a story. Then I start seeing how many there are for the next day or so, until they fade into the background again.

The reason I notice in the preschool is that we have to sunscreen the kids, so I’m very aware of how light or dark all the kids’ complexions are.

3

The OP is asking for opinions and belongs in IMHO rather than General Questions. Moved.

samclem, moderator.

4

It was very common for people to say they weren’t opposed, just worried about the potential difficulties for the couple and any children, and generally feeling awkward about how to respond. How much of that was concealed racial hostility, or a more generalised social anxiety, is anybody’s guess.

I’m not sure how much one can extrapolate, but a couple of examples from the 60s of WASP-y people getting all in a tangle about it would of course be the movie Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, and for a transatlantic comparator, there’s a monologue by Joyce Grenfell of a mother flying to visit her son in America, who’s about to marry a black woman, with the constant refrain “I do hope I get it right” - but nowadays it might be seen as a bit patronising.

Another anecdotal case in point: my niece married a South African of Indian heritage, and when my parents were showing the photographs to a German couple they regularly met on holiday in Austria (impeccably liberal academics on the face of it), the first thing the German wife asked “Do they have any problems?” (and the question was politely ignored).

I suspect the answer to the OP is, partly older people dying off, and partly people just getting more used to the idea.

5

There are still plenty of people in America who lose their shit over the appearance of interracial couples in commercials (e.g. that Cheerios ad). However, the fact that advertisers keep making ads with interracial (and, increasingly, same-sex) couples is a pretty good indicator that those people are a dwindling minority.

I see plenty of interracial couples IRL but then I live in a large multicultural city. My in-laws, who are from Nebraska, are still shocked to see them when they visit.

6

I was born in 1960, and raised in the Nashville, TN area. Most guys my age had the “a pretty girl is a pretty girl” attitude – they didn’t care if she was white, black, asian, or whatever. I dated a black girl when I was in college, and no one cared too much. Perhaps a comment or two, but nothing major. My mother liked her, and her father liked me. So most people of my parents’ generation didn’t care too much, either…

7

You do know that there are many black people who also disapprove of inter-racial marriages don’t you?
I have several black friends who are totally against inter-racial dating and marriages. More of my black friends disapprove of it than the white ones do.
I have black friends that I can’t even go into their neighborhoods, not just because I am not welcome (safe) there, but because of the shit they would have to face for bringing me there.
Where I used to live (Baltimore) you will see the inter-racial couples in the predominantly white neighborhoods. You won’t see them in the black neighborhoods.
My black friends from the inner city never even saw a mixed race couple until they came out to the suburbs, and they were shocked by how many they saw. They won’t date white people because the know it won’t go over well in their families.
One of my friends is very hurt that his parents will babysit his sister’s black baby but want nothing to do with his bi-racial baby.

*Don’t be putting this on white people. *
It goes both ways.
My last relationship ended because of the racism on HIS side. I couldn’t go to any family events because I am white, we spent NO holidays together because I was not allowed in their homes.
More his fault for not having the balls to stand up for me.
It’s not something I would have tolerated from my family.

8

The sentiment was very common - I know that my dad had a friend from England who was married to a black woman, and in the 80s/90s would steer the couple from going to certain redneck bars since their presence might start a fight. I would routinely bump into people in the 90s who considered mixed-race relationships a problem, and not just the angry outsiders who you figure might have a KKK outfit in the closet. It was often phrased in nice ways in public, like concern for how people from different worlds couldn’t work together, but that was clearly a cover. It also was one of those opinions that was expressed like it was as controversial as preferring floral pattern bedspreads to solid-color; the people who said it clearly didn’t think everyone agreed, but didn’t expect anyone to take it badly like you would “That Hitler guy was pretty keen”. I’ve also dated white women who told me that they’ve encountered a good number of guys in the 90s-00s who didn’t want to date them after discovering they had dated a black man in the past, so while it’s gone underground the idea hasn’t died off.

9

I started dating my first wife in 1997, and in Los Angeles. Though mixed couples were far from unheard of at that point, particularly in a large, urban area, I can’t say that we never met with disapproving looks.

Still, I imagine that as more younger folks have grown up with mixed-raced relationships being more common, the taboo has continued to fade.

10

I think the world underestimates how very very racist America is.

11

Taboo? No, I don’t think so, even though I had married by the 80’s and wasn’t dating anymore. In my own area, hispanic male/while female relations weren’t exactly taboo, but they were frowned upon pretty much by all sides (I know I got a lot of shit about my eventual wife, and she did too from her family). But by the 80’s and 90’s I’d say most of the steam had gone out of that particular issue by and large. Obviously, MMV, as it would be situational, but overall in the US? I don’t think it was that big a deal by then. We had other stuff to rile up the masses by that point. JMHO, based on my own experiences which, at that time were still mainly in the South West, California and a bit in the eastern cities like New York and Boston. I didn’t really get active with moving around or working in large parts of the country until the mid-90’s.

12

My (white) half-sister (from my mom and stepfather) had the following dating history.

When she brought home a complete weirdo that happened to be white, her father was cool with it.

When she brought home a white dude 10 years older than her (at 19), her father was cool with it.

When she brought home an asian girl, the ostensibly liberal father said “hey, it’s the 2000s, that’s ok”

When she brought home a black guy, he pulled a gun and told him to get the hell off his property.

She hasn’t seen her father or mother since, and she’s still dating and living with that last guy (he’s pretty cool).

Racism can be a funny thing. I figured if coming out as bisexual, dating someone of another race, dating someone way older, and dating someone with mental problems, were all cool, then why wouldn’t a black guy be fine too? Apparently it was not. Too bad for stepfather - like I said, he’s a cool guy and loves playing with his “nephews” (my sons).

All this was post-2010. So it still happens, and can be surprising when it does.

13

One data point: I began a “mixed raced” marriage in 1988. My wife wasn’t black, so maybe that’s a different situation. Plus, in Seattle, it was not uncommon. Other than my grandmother, no one said anything disapproving. The marriage had a lot of problems, but the fact we were of different races was pretty far down the list.

14

On the one hand, one can say that the greater acceptance of mixed race couples is part of “The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice”. However, I feel the need to point out that our most recent election in the US showed that there is still a long way to go. While individuals may have internalized the message that overt bigoted behavior is not socially acceptable, there is still a large portion of the population who find the internal tensions of living in an accepting society (races, LBGT, etc.) to be causing them stress.

15

One of my sisters worked as a dispatcher for a college PD and fell in love with a black officer. His family and our family were fine with that. They married in '83 and their house in Northern Illinois attracted the attention of vandals for several months.

They ended up going through a messy divorce a few years after he retired and became impossible to live with.

16

Central Jersey late 70s:

Our next door neighbors were a mixed marriage. We kids didn’t care of course and my parents seemed comfortable with it but the family from Italy next door didn’t seem to like or respect it. So I think it still varied a lot.

My father invited them over to a few BBQs and my mom made a baby blanket & sweater for their first born and later my father found some work for the neighbor in the trucking company my father worked for.

Oh, weird note: in 1970 just Jewish & Catholic marriage was still considered weird or taboo so the fact my parents, children of the depression and not liberals by any means were OK with the mixed race marriage was a good sign I believe. My kids find it funny that my wife and I would have been controversial though in 1970. By 1992 when we got married though not a thing though.

17

“Black guy with white girl” is generally the ultimate, absolute worst Bad Thing for white racists. If a white guy dallies with a black woman it’s treated as something bad but not something you get really angry over, if it’s an asian X and and a hispanic Y who cares, but black man and white woman gets the torches and nooses ready to go. There’s a lot of weird racial ideas tied up in it, like ‘black guys are super animalistic machines of lust who are only held at bay with violence’, ‘black men are so well-hung that once they’ve had her she won’t be satisfied with anything else’, and the like, even if people won’t say that out loud anymore. If you’re trying to figure out whether someone who’s white (or close to it) is OK with interracial marriage, you haven’t put it to the test until you show them BM-WF.

Note that ‘interracial’ porn isn’t actually about a wide variety of races mixing, it means ‘big black guy and cute white (or rarely asian) woman’ - it’s playing on that one particular taboo, ‘race mixing’ in general can’t sustain an entire category by itself.

18

In 1995 I met my first boyfriend online, on a BBS. He happened to be black. Same age as me, awesome guy, treated me like a princess.

When my parents - white people in their mid-40s, from Ohio - found out they flipped. their. shit.

In all of the yelling and screaming one thing I remember they said was “we’re going to take you to Cleveland to show you how bad interracial people are treated” or some shit. I don’t even know what they meant. It was absolutely surreal. I was grounded foreverz.

So at least in my stupid house, interracial dating was still a bad thing in the 90s.

19

And what have you learned from your time in Cleveland, young lady?

20

I’m a white kid. In the mid 80s my mom started dating a black man and had 2 children with him. In the early 90s I was pretty much run out of public school and ostracized from the white part of my town for that reason. I had a difficult adolescence for unrelated reasons and was bullied by black kids, too, but all of my friends from age 12-16 or so were black and most of the adults who looked out for me were older black folks. I thought my family was cool with it, but I found out later my grandmother believed it was against God or some bullshit. This was in a Mid-Atlantic area.