Cassandra's Current Event

The article I read was about…
-Black and white marriage in the South becoming a changing image
-Jeffrey Norwood, a black college basketball coach was offered a great job north of the gulf coast but at that time he was in a relationship with a woman who was and white and Asian.
-Although his father was worried about him being apart of an interracial relationship in South Mississippi because of the dangers he might be faced with.
-As Jeffrey Norwood visited Hattiesburg, Mississippi he noted that he saw a growing diversity of the different races that lived there
-In fact, about 46 years ago, Mississippi legalized mixed marriages. In Mississippi it was illegal to have an interracial marriage because it was a law until 1967.
-Maryland was actually the first colony to prohibit interracial marriage and this was enacted in the 1660’s. -Then by 1750, all of the southern colonies as well as Pennsylvania and Massachusetts made interracial marriage illegal.
-During the 1950’s about half of the states still had laws that prohibited interracial marriage.
-Then by the early 1960’s at least 41 states enacted anti-miscegenation statuses one at a time.
-After the Loving vs. Virginia case in the Supreme Court in 1967 declared that the laws that banned interracial marriage violated the equal protection clause because not only did it violate principle of racial equality but because it abridged the fundamental right to marry. People of different races have been allowed to marry ever since.
- A 2010 Census Bureau reveals that the nations mixed race population is growing at a much faster pace then demographers had estimate, especially in the South as well as parts of the Midwest.
- In North Carolina, the mixed-race population nearly doubled.
-Well as in Georgia, it increased by over 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. ---Also, in Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70 percent.
- A sociologist and demographer, William H. Frey stated that “The fact that even states like Mississippi were able to see a large explosion of residents identifying as both black and white tells us something that people would not have predicted 10 or 20 years ago.”
- The increase of the amount of mixed race people were smaller in states like Mississippi because to begin with because it had a much fewer amount of mixed raced people where as in states such as California, Hawaii and Oklahoma the increase of mixed race people occurred at a faster pace. In fact in Hawaii, about 23% of the population is of a multiracial group which was the highest out of any state in the country!
-Since 2000 Hawaii’s growth of multiracial groups was 23.6 percent
-Both historically and today, in Mississippi the two groups that are least likely to marry are blacks and whites and sociologists believe that it’s because of the economic as well as social distance between them.
-In actuality, that’s the most common interracial marriage but multiracial people still consist of a small percentage of Mississippi’s total population because of a population of about 34,000, interracial people only account for about 1.1 & and many people complain of receiving racial inequities.
Marvin King whose black and married to a white woman as well as a political science professor at the University of Mississippi,states that “Racial attitudes are changing..day in, day out, there is certainly not the hostility there was years ago, and I think you see that in that there are more interracial relationships, and people don’t fear those relationships. They don’t have to hide those relationships anymore.”
-Many experts believe that due to military service as well as the amount of time spent at a college campus creates relationships of mixed races.
-Hattiesburg is a city of Mississippi that consists of about 50,000 residents. It also contains the Camp Shelby military base on the southern side as well as the University of Southern Mississippi which might explain why Hattiesburg and its surrounding counties are enduring a rapid growth of mixed-race people.
-Jeffrey and Patty Norwoord got married and although they weren’t searching to live in a diverse neighborhood in Hattiesburg, they discovered that they were living in one anyways because their families turned out to be black families, white families as well as families that were mixed of the two.
-Mrs. Norwood also spoke out about the difficulty their children would have on checking only one box on forms at ask to mark their race. She states, “I usually went with Asian because I could only check one box…Our daughter’s life will not be like that. She knows what she is and she’s exposed to a little bit of everything. The times have certainly changed.”
- Although where they lived was also diverse, they have experiences instances where racial tensions occurred. For instance, a waitress at a restaurant might suddenly decide that they aren’t serving the Norwoods. Also when they are walking with their arms intertwined, people may ask in disbelief “Are you together?”
-Even though interracial marriage seems to be occurring and the amount of mixed race people are becoming a growing population, a poll of the Mississippi republicans going into the 2012 election reveal that 46 percent of GOP (Grand old Party) voters in the state think interracial marriage should be illegal.

Although Mississippi has legalized mixed race marriages, do you think that Mississippi should make interracial marriage illegal once again or do you disagree with the Republican voters? Why or why not? Even though Mississippi has become increasingly diverse with mixed race relationships over the years, why do you think racial tension is still occurring?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/us/20race.html?ref=raceremixed