The Rise of Interracial Dating31242

Many people remember interracial dating as something that was truly a rare occurrence that usually happened in small pockets of more diverse, metropolitan areas of the country. For the most part, there weren’t many interracial couples in Middle America unless they moved in from somewhere else because dating outside of one’s race simply wasn’t an organic thing. The sight of interracial couples drew lengthy, uncomfortable stares and whispered epithets. In some cases, these couples endured much worse including outright harassment. And if they managed to survive society’s umbrage and disdain they still had to figure out how to make their relationship work in general … the usual nut that every couple, interracial or not, has to learn to crack. Needless to say, there used to be a high failure rate for interracial couples. Today, however, one in seven new marriages in the U.S. is between people of different races. How did interracial dating take such a 180-degree turn from obscure to commonplace? Attitudes toward it certainly didn’t change without some important drivers. Prior to the early 1990s there was largely no assistance from the mainstream media to debunk the taboos associated with interracial dating. A few television shows in the 70s and early 80s began to broach the topic of race relations, albeit sheepishly. However, marketing and advertising never paid much attention to multicultural audiences. Two things changed all of that. Hip-Hop music and the Internet. You’re probably wondering how that correlation makes sense but it’s actually fairly obvious. Let’s start with Hip-Hop. The music transformed not just America but the world. That’s an undisputable fact. When Japanese kids have dreadlocks, can recite rap songs verbatim that were made by artists from Brooklyn or L.A. and can do every dance from their favorite videos without missing a beat, you know that Hip-Hop is an international culture. It skyrocketed in popularity and the media finally took notice of non-white audiences. Seeing people of color on television was no longer uncommon after Hip-Hop hit the world stage. If you were a white kid that lived in a rural mid-western state who may not have grown up around people that looked different all you had to do was turn on MTV to see the multi-colored quilt that had been draped over America. Commercials started using Hip-Hop music and featuring popular rappers. Many talented figures from the Hip-Hop community transitioned into acting on television and movies as well. Hip-Hop focused the spotlight on minorities for once and White America, along with the rest of the world, took notice. Now, what about the Internet? When it became commercialized in the early 1990s people immediately understood the power of the Internet as a tool to connect the world. Chat rooms were crowded with people excited to talk to someone else on a different coast in real time. Then, with the advent of online dating sites, people could peruse profiles of others that they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, gain access to previously. Suddenly, people had options. They were free to learn about someone of a different race or ethnicity without feeling the cast of a thousand eyes on them in public. And the Internet really arrived around the same time that Hip-Hop was making its ascent, which proliferated its spread into the global stratosphere. So when you combine the burgeoning popularity of Hip-Hop with the force multiplier of the Internet you get a color barrier that eventually fell harder than the Berlin Wall. Dorothy Dandridge dating a white man used to cause a public uproar but now people marvel over how good Halle Barry looks with a white guy on her arm – and they go to their favorite blog or news site online to see it. Innocent men like Emmitt Till used to be lynched for merely looking at a white woman. Now, white women fawn over superstars like Will Smith and nobody bats an eyelash. Hip-Hop made it cool to be attracted to someone of a different race and the internet made it easy for people to date interracially. Without these two important catalysts, interracial dating might not be as commonplace and accepted as it is today.

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Author: T. Gianelli