You meet this handsome young man one day, and soon the two of you are growing closer. You finally decide to introduce him to your parents, but they start to act weird as soon as they meet him. As the day goes on, you become worried. Finally, once you tell him goodbye and close the door, your parents let loose. They wonder why you’ve brought this “fill-in-the-blank-stereotype” person into their home. You’re astonished by this outburst and left to wonder: “Are my parents racist?”

If this sounds familiar to you, it is probably because you have either been in a mixed-race relationship or, perhaps, are in one right now. If you are or have been, you know that, when someone doesn’t approve of it, they look at you funny. It happens.
Before June 1967, marrying outside of your racial identification in the U.S. was illegal. The process for changing this actually began in January 1959 when Mildred and Richard Loving, a mixed-race couple from Virginia, married and returned to Virginia, only to be arrested in violation of the state’s anti-miscegenation statute – also known as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 – which prohibited marriage between people classified as “white” and people classified as “colored.” Each of them was sentenced to a year in prison.

They appealed their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which overturned their conviction on June 12, 1967. Thus, laws that had originally prohibited interracial marriage were then declared unconstitutional. This was a great step for interracial couples; however, even today there is still a long way to go.

People today have taken to the idea of interracial relationships. The diversity of the students at our school shows this; but the stereotypes and the weird looks haven’t altogether disappeared. While many people have come to terms with having friends of another race, most still don’t mix with others of another race when it comes to a serious relationship.

This has a lot to do with culture and, in the U.S., the culture of interracial relationships just is not that established. While today’s American teens are around so many different ethnicities that the idea of an interracial relationship doesn’t bother us, parents and family can be a major influence on an individual when considering a potential boyfriend or girlfriend. Some parents from other countries, and even parents born right here in the U.S., have a problem with their child dating someone of a different race.

I had a friend of one race who was dating a guy of another race. She kept this a secret from her mother for as long as she could because she knew how her mother felt about boys from this race. Her mother, for some reason, saw these young men as not being worthy of her daughter. When her mother finally did find out about their relationship, she yelled at her daughter and told her how she was worthless because of whom she was dating.

People have problems with relationships that pair people of different racial, ethnic, or even religious groups. Why they do is unclear, but it is time for people to stop judging others simply because s/he is “different.”

Biased attitudes lead to racism and, in turn, to the destruction of a potentially good relationship. Don’t let someone else’s opinion, your culture, or even your own hesitation keep you from someone. Everyone deserves a chance.