Interracial Relationships

             All relationships have their ups and their downs, their good times and their bad times, no matter who you or your partner is. When a person becomes romantically involved with a person of another race, negative experiences and problems between partners seem to increase. After all, only three percent of American marriages each year are between a Black and a White person (Moran, 121). This percentage has been increasing due to rising social acceptance as well as a rise in interaction between the races (Why Interracial Marriages are Increasing). Ninety-three percent of these consist of a Black husband and a White wife (McNamara, 43). There are many explanations as to why the number is so minuscule, but I think the main reason is because interracial couples have to face more dilemmas and overcome more obstacles in our society than do same-race couples.
             Interracial relationships are not anything new to my generation or even to the few generations before me, for that matter. The thing about them that is a reasonably modern phenomenon in America's history, though, is the couple's ability to love across the color line freely. During the colonial era, both Black and White indentured servants came to America to work for a four to seven year period in exchange for food, clothing, and shelter. These servants often worked very closely with each other, living in the same dwellings and socializing after their labor was done. Living and working in such close proximity to one another made intermixing between the two races inevitable. Eventually, after relations between Blacks and Whites began to produce more and more offspring, a "one-drop rule" was established. This rule proclaimed that any person with any trace of African ancestry was considered to be Black. This brought discrimination and prejudice to the innocent biracial children. Maryland was the first of the colonies to, in 1661, enact a law which banned mixed-race marriages, followed by Virginia just one year later (Moran, 19).