Race relations are deteriorating; tensions between black Americans and the police are rising; confidence that America’s racial problems can be resolved is at an all-time low.
The solution? Interracial friendships, dating and marriage and transracial adoption may be our best hope. Let me explain. But first, let’s review some statistics.
Recent polling shows that three quarters of whites don’t even have a black friend. And while rates of interracial dating and marriage are on the rise, they’re still quite low overall. Research from dating websites shows that while people in their 20s and 30s claim to be open-minded when it comes to dating other races, few actually do so — especially whites and especially those who live outside big cities.
Dr. Jerry Mendelsohn, professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, lead author of a 2011 study that examined online dating racial preferences, has said: “We’re a ways off to being in a post-racial era with dating. … It appears that crossing the racial boundary is very difficult, especially for whites, but once the boundary has been crossed, i.e., once participants have been contacted by someone of a different race or ethnicity, they are more open to the possibility of an interracial date.”
When it comes to interracial marriage, in 2013, nearly 46 years after Loving v. Virginia struck down all anti-miscegenation laws, the Pew Research Center found that 12 percent of newlyweds were interracial. And it found that about 6 percent of existing marriages were interracial. Marriages between blacks and whites are still among the least common. And while interracial marriage has become much more acceptable to the broader public, according to 2014 polling from Gallup, there are still tens of millions of Americans who believe that interracial marriage is a bad thing for society.
Perhaps the most promising trend is in the area of transracial adoption. Statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services find that 40 percent of adoptions are transracial, up from 28 percent in 2004.
Why does any of this matter? If part of the problem is that, as Sen. Marco Rubio and others have asserted, anyone who is not black will “never fully understand the experience of being black in America,” then perhaps part of the answer is for white people to understand what those experiences are by changing the ways they interact with black people, and vice versa.
It’s one thing to live next to, or socialize or work with people of different races. But to have a close friendship with or marry someone of a different race is an entirely different experience requiring an entirely different level of commitment. The same goes for having a child who’s a different race than you are.
It means growing invested in their lives, emotionally and otherwise, and of course it requires spending vast amounts of time with them, their families and friends. Most of all, it means loving them and being loved by them. When love enters the picture, relationships are transformed, and so is one’s understanding of what another person experiences, and why it matters. One goes from getting a window into that person’s world to becoming part of that world.
This doesn’t mean people should seek out friends or partners of other races solely to better understand America’s racial issues. It would be weird, and that’s not the way love and relationships work. What it does mean is being open to people who aren’t like ourselves — open to challenging the prejudices (good and bad) that we have about them and about what loving them, and what being loved by them, would mean.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
