Although we live in a society where equality is vital, there are still many stigmas in our everyday life that we don’t really notice including age, social class, and race. In our attempt to research the stigmas in interracial relationships portrayed through media, we focus on how interracial relationships went from illegal to legal and how they are depicted from both society and each other. From true life events like the Emmett Till case to the behind-the-scenes look at interracial stigmas in shows like ER, we used our research to show how our society believes interracial relationships stray from the social norm through a conflict theory approach.

History has continuously gone through paradigm shifts due to war, laws, new generations, and social movements. Interracial relationships between blacks and whites have been in US history since the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, however they have gradually become more prevalent and public in the media since the civil rights movement.

America’s history has created a negative social stigma towards African Americans. Having relationships with African Americans was seen with shame. The relationship was forbidden and had to end or was concealed from the public eye. It took patience, openness, and legislation to change the legal and social view of interracial relationships. The taboo with interracial relationships stemmed from the conflict theory between races. Whites were seen as superior and had created inequality for blacks and minorities during the segregation laws enacted in the US. It took social change to establish the opposite ideal that interracial relationships are normal and should be accepted. The media helped change the status quo by updating the public with changes in legislation and eventually in movies and sitcoms.

It also took the media to portray the violence between interracial relationships for the public to realize how extreme and violent racism could be. The case of Emmett Till was a stepping stone for the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. A young boy from Chicago was brutally murdered for talking and whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Desegregation had just been enacted in the US and the South had not accepted the social change. Emmett Till’s murder became infamous because of his battered face in Jet Magazine. The image shocked the nation and was a brutal wakeup call in how the view of interracial relationships was extreme and unaccepted.

The most important step in changing the view of interracial relationships was the case Loving v. Virginia (1967).  The court case established the slow beginning of social acceptance of interracial marriage, because it made it anti-miscegenation laws illegal in the 16 states that still held on to the belief that marriage shouldn’t be interracial. Before the decision, other minorities were denied the right to marry whites. The 1948 case of Perez v. Sharp denied a Mexican American to marry her black fiancé because Mexican Americans were considered white. (RLBARNES). When interracial marriage became illegal, interracial marriages and relationships began to increase in number and so did the social acceptance of it. It was more acceptable in some areas than others, but the media began to also show a trend in interracial relationships, particularly through television, though far later.

Television has been a way for people to come together, build ideas and form connections. To different social groups. Although broadcast television has been around in the U.S. since the late 1920s, the first scripted and televised interracial kiss was aired almost half a century later.This kiss was shared between William Shatner, a white male, and Nichelle Nichols, an African American female, on an episode of the TV series Star Trek in 1968. Amongst the actors themselves, personally they thought little of it. Nichols told interviewers that, “by that time, [she] didn't think of it as the first inter-racial kiss,” instead, she was just excited to see romance on the show (Christian). She uses the phrase “by that time,” because a year before the air date, the Loving vs. Virginia case had just been settled and cultural integration amongst Americans had increased. Nevertheless, when it came time to actually airing the episode,everyone at the studio started wondering how the public, and in particular Southerners, would react to the scene. (Christian). Broadcasting companies were aware of the tendency for people to stay within their social groups that were separated by race and many other factors. People had, and still have, a tendency to practice endogamy, which means marriage to someone within one's social group (Conley). Back in the late 50s to the late 60s, even though laws had begun starting to shift towards more cultural integration, people were still unsure about crossing the boundaries of race because if they were to do so, life would be more difficult for them because not everyone was racially tolerant. Due to the wider acceptance of simplicity with endogamy over difficulties with exogamy, which means marriage to someone outside one's social group (Conley), production and broadcasting companies were very uncomfortable with allowing interracial relationships to be put in TV shows.

Although the Star Trek episode had the first interracial kiss seen on television, not counting the brief unscripted kiss between Nancy Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. a year before,this was not the first interracial couple seen on TV. The first TV series cast with an interracial couple was The Jeffersons between Franklin Cover and Roxie Roker in 1975. If a simple kiss could cause as much controversy as it did when the episode of Star Trek came out, then an interracial couple would cause even more of a disturbance. However, over time with more and more images of interracial interactions on television, the idea of interracial couples becomes ingrained as a more accepted choice, and exogamy becomes easier. Even though interracial relationships are rarer than most boundary-crossing relationships (Qian), the slow push for more interracial interactions on television causes a greater equality between different types of relationships.

Today, television shows feature interracial relationships more often and with surprising behind-the-scenes commentary. Shows such as Lost, ER, and Grey’s Anatomy have all featured interracial couples, who are either married or engaged, among main characters (Oldenburg), and shows including Friends and Sex and the City have featured shorter and less serious mixed relationships (McFarland). More recently interracial relationships have appeared on Modern Family, Parenthood, and Mr. Sunshine (Deggans). However all of these shows have also been criticized for simply sweeping the racial differences under the rug and showing that the couple is never treated differently for being racially different or faces issues within the relationship due to their different backgrounds (Oldenburg). Unlike in general society where conflict theorists point out the inequalities interracial couples still face discrimination, the plots of television shows seem to avoid recognizing that interracial relationships face different problems than couples who are the same race. In his article “On TV, Interracial Couples in A Too-Perfect World," Eric Deggans says “Race difference is an elephant in the room, instead of a window into a new experience.” Deggans is referring to the conflict theory approach of acknowledging that interracial couples do face problems in society that same race couples don’t experience, and that by featuring these problems on television, the general public would be given an opportunity to gain understanding and hopefully acceptance of mixed race couples.

Stereotypes have also played a role in how interracial relationships are portrayed on television. For example, on ER, African American actor Eriq LaSalle actually requested that his on screen relationship to a white doctor be ended, because he felt that their relationship was projecting the image that a black doctor would rather be with an educated white woman than someone from his own race (McFarland). LaSalle didn’t want to portray the stereotypical idea that successful black men only date successful white women or that because he’s a successful doctor he has the privilege to date a white woman who would never consider dating an unsuccessful black man. On Lost, when a black woman was reunited with her white husband after a plane crash, the rest of the stranded passengers are surprised by her husband’s race and one even comments “So Rose’s husband’s white. Didn’t see that one coming”, though this comment was quickly minimized when another character changed the subject (Oldenburg). There’s an expectation that her husband would be the same race as she is, especially since black women are 2.82 times less likely to date outside their own race than black men according to the 2000 census (McFarland).

Although we went into the project with the idea that interracial relationships are still stigmatized, we were surprised to see that there are still stigmas like the ones Eriq LaSalle presented. With tv series such as Friends and Sex and the City, both shows huge in popularity, it is easy to believe that interracial relationships are easily accepted in today’s society. Our research shows that the stigmas are still there and that couples are affected and frowned upon by society due to stereotypes and cultural differences.

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McFarland, Melanie. "Interracial Romance Now the Norm on TV, but Real-life Issues Are Ignored." Seattlepi.com. 13 Feb. 2006. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. <http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/tv/article/Interracial-romance-now-the-norm-on-TV-but-1195700.php>.

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Qian, Zhenchao. "Breaking the Last Taboo: Interracial Marriage in America." Contexts 4.4 (2005): 33-37. American Sociological Association. Web. 13 Apr. 2012.  <http://www.soc.washington.edu/users/brines/interracialmarriage.pdf>.

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