The anti miscegenation laws were not just against Blacks and Native Americans. In 1922, Congress passed the Cable Act, which retroactively stripped US citizenship from anyone who married “an alien ineligible for citizenship,” and at the time this meant any non-white but effectively targeted primarily Asian Americans. So an white woman born in the US that married a Japanese man, for example, and had 3 kids, could be stripped of her citizenship, along with her children. Interestingly, laws banning interracial sex were found unconstitutional a few years prior to the Loving case.
In 1970, the Pew Institute found that less than 1% of all marriages were between spouses of different races. As recent as 2013, the number had grown to 6.3%. “In 2013, a record-high 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race,” according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data. The report found that, “Multiracial adults, many of whom are themselves the product of interracial marriages, are much more likely than all married adults to have a spouse or partner who is also multiracial. Among all mixed-race adults who are married or living with a partner, about one-in-eight (12%) say their spouse or partner is two or more races.”
And some racial groups are more likely to intermarry than others. “Of the 3.6 million adults who got married in 2013, 58% of American Indians, 28% of Asians, 19% of blacks and 7% of whites have a spouse whose race was different from their own.”
As the statistics show the rise of interracial marriage, so naturally follows the rise of the multicultural family. With mixing of race, comes mixing of cultures. Today you can witness the beauty that results from blending African, Latin, Arabic, Asian, and European heritage, language, religion, culture and traditions. Yet, the true beauty lies in cultivating a lasting connection with each facet of a person’s multicultural heritage, rather than only identifying with one part.