Love and Race by Nicholas D. Kristof

The essay Love and Race was written by Nicholas D. Kristof. In this essay Kristof tells us about many different kinds of people dating other people that are different from one another. He starts of the first paragraph saying “Instead of preying on people of different races, young Americans are falling in love with them.” The University of Mississippi was once known as the symbol of racial confrontation. Kristof tells us that white people are dating black people even at the University of Mississippi. In the United States there are 1.5 million people that are married to someone not of the same color or race. This number is doubling each decade.
Kristof also goes on to say that 40 percent of Asian-Americans and 6 percent of blacks have married whites in recent years. And 40 percent of Americans had dated someone else of another race. However the rise in interracial marriage reflects a revolution in attitudes. Kristof tells us a story as recent as 1958 a white mother in North Carolina, called the police after her little girl kissed a black playmate on the cheek. This boy was 9 years old and sent to prison for 14 years for attempted rape. (His appeals failed, but was released later after an outcry.) Kristof then goes on to tell us that in 1963 59 percent of Americans thought that marriage between blacks and whites should be illegal. At one point in time 42 states banned interracial marriage, although the Supreme Court finally invalidated these laws in 1967.
Interracial marriage is a good thing. It welcomes thoroughgoing desegregation says Kristof. In this article Kristof explains that there are a lot of “big shots” in this country that are married to people of another race. This people he talks about are high class citizens involved in our government that many people look up to. Kristof was excited to find interracial couples at Ole Miss but couldn’t find anyone of the couples to talk to him about their relationship. A minister on the campus said “Even if people wanted to marry interracially, I think they would keep it kind of quiet.” The segregations of the 19th century warned us that granting rights to blacks would be the start of a slippery slope, ending up with black men marrying white women. These racists were prophetic. They warned that racial equality would lead to “mongrelization” of America says Kristof. He said perhaps they were right in a sense, for we are going to increasingly see a blurring of racial distinctions.