The number of interracial families grows, despite racism
Seventeen percent of marriages in the United States are interracial and intercultural and have been increasing for years across the country. Multiracial and multicultural children are being born from these marriages. However, racism is also on the rise and the American public remains prejudiced.According to the 2020 Census, 204.3 million people in the United States identify as white and 33.8 million as multiracial. People of color represent 43% of the total U.S. population. Last August, a group of experts gathered for a panel organized by Ethnic Media Services to discuss what the rise in interracial marriages entails and the concerns surrounding it.
Justin Guest, associate professor of politics and government at George Mason University’s School of Politics and Government, noted that California is the leading state for interracial and intercultural marriages in the U.S. “Interracial marriage is very powerful,” he says, but “the important thing is to expand what it is to be an American and not what it is to be white.” Allison Skiner, assistant professor at the University of Georgia, commented that the rejection of interracial couples is because white people perceive these couples as a “threat to the established social system,” where whites are dominant. Sonia Smith Kang, founder of Mixed Up Clothing and daughter of an African-American father and Mexican-American mother, and her husband Richard Kang, a first-generation Korean-American, participated in the event. As an interracial couple, they struggled. They were accepted by Sonia’s parents. But Richard’s parents had a harder time adjusting. With Donald Trump in the White House has racism grown in the United States? we asked Justin Guest in Sol de Medianoche. “Donald Trump didn’t increase racism and prejudice in the United States; he harvested it,” he answers us. We also asked Allison Skiner about the responsibility we in the media have in supressing racism and prejudice. “The media has responsibility and has the potential to reinforce racial prejudice or to counteract it. They play an important role in perpetuating prejudice,” she tells us. |