Everybody Loves Interracial Marriage
This summer has been a hot and difficult one for race relations given the George Zimmerman trial and subsequent acquittal. Thought Catalog has published several different personal accounts regarding how this has affected people and has done its best to provide viewpoints that are both deeply personal and widely relevant. However, here I want to take a macro view in the form of a Gallup poll conducted in June and July, at the height of the trial. The results, given the heated rhetoric that might lead some to believe that race relations are getting worse, seem to indicate that Blacks and Whites are actually growing together more and more, literally.
Approval of marriages between blacks and whites is up one percentage point from 2011, when this attitude was last measured. Approval has generally increased in a linear fashion from Gallup’s first measure in 1958, reaching the majority threshold in 1997, and crossing the three-quarters line in 2004. Eleven percent of Americans today say they disapprove of black-white marriage, compared with 94% who disapproved in 1958. (Source: Gallup.com)
1958 was a pretty long time ago but at the same time, the current rate of approval of 86% overall says a lot about what people are accepting of and if you look at how just Blacks feel then the number jumps to 96% which means the feeling is ubiquitous there. Take that, 1958.