Over the past six years, it feels like race relations have been on the decline in the U.S. We’ve lived through Donald Trump’s appeals to America’s racist underbelly. Unarmed Black people have been brutally murdered by police officers. People of color have also been subject to viral videos in which they accuse police of racial profiling.
In an earlier year incident, Asian-Americans were the victims of racist attacks that were inspired by the COVID-19 epidemic.
It makes sense to many that the U.S. is experiencing a decline in race relations after all the events of the past half-decade.
A Gallup poll taken over the summer found that 42% of adults in the U.S. say relations between white and Black Americans are “very” or “somewhat” good, while 57% say the relations are “somewhat” or “very” bad.
This is a sharp decline from 2004 when 72% of American adults said that race relations were “very” or “somewhat” good. Gallup’s recent poll found that Americans are more open to interracial marriages between black and white people than ever before.
“Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people, up from 87% in the prior reading from 2013,” Gallup said. “The current figure marks a new high in Gallup’s trend, which spans more than six decades.”
Gallup asked the same question back in 1958. Only 4% of Americans favored marriage between black and white people.
“Shifts in the 63-year-old trend represent one of the largest transformations in public opinion in Gallup’s history — beginning at a time when interracial marriage was nearly universally opposed and continuing to its nearly universal approval today,” Gallup wrote.
Take the Loving v. Virginia 1967 case to see how far we have come. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed interracial marriage. In the south, it was illegal to marry black and white people before that decision. The decision was criticized by only 20% of Americans at the time.
The big change in attitude towards interracial marriage has come from white Americans. Since 1968, the majority of non-whites approve of interracial marital union. This opinion was not shared by the majority of whites until 1997.
Geographically, the west is most supportive of interracial marital relationships with 97% approval. The south is less accepting with 93%.
How can we understand the fact that Americans are increasingly accepting of interracial marriage, while many people believe that race relations are declining? This is a lesson that everything is possible in race relations. It seems impossible to imagine that everyone would accept white and Black couples marrying in 1958.
We can all take comfort in the fact that, if we continue to fight for justice, we will one day live in a more loving and less racist world.