Proposal

Ebony & Ivory Live Together In Perfect Harmony: The Progression of Interracial Marriage Since the 1960s

I am working on the topic of the development of interracial marriage since the 1960s because I want to find out why it took years for people to accept these relationships and amend laws to help my reader better understand how views change based on generational differences.

There has always been a struggle with the acceptance of interracial relationships in American society.  My focus on this topic will start on research in the 1960s, primarily during the times of the Civil Rights movement.   Relationships between those of different races were not socially acceptable, so marriage was, of course, forbidden.  Each state even had its own laws against miscegenation up until the year 2000 when Alabama finally changed its constitution. You could cross state lines and not be sure how your relationship would be treated. How crazy is it that people of different races could not even live together without it being illegal?? Change was gradual and did not happen all at once. I want to look into the differences between the generations back then and compare their culture/society/beliefs to the generations after them, and to our generation now.

I became more interested in the topic of interracial marriage when I was in high school.  My school was very racially diverse and I found myself in an interracial relationship my senior year.  When I got to college, it was even more common to see people in interracial relationships and, to me, it was something beautiful (not to say that same-race relationships are not beautiful).  In my generation, a majority of my cousins date outside their race, but not with ease. The generation before us did not grow up in America, they immigrated from the Philippines and have had to learn American culture and accept that we were not going to always date in our own race, but it is not always easy for them.  They feed into stereotypes and are somewhat scared of something that is unfamiliar or unlike them in various ways - education, religion, family values, etc. These are the generational differences that we have to learn from and grow from.

Ebony & Ivory Live Together In Perfect Harmony

I am working on the topic of the development of interracial marriage because I want to find out why it took decades for people to accept these relationships (and amend laws) to help my reader better understand how views change based on generational differences.