Black and hispanic interracial

Fifty years after the U. Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial marriage, interracial couples are more common than ever before—especially in cities. Overall, there has been a dramatic increase in interracial marriage. In , 10 percent of all married Americans were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity.

Interracial marriage is a form of marriage outside a specific social group exogamy involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States and in South Africa as miscegenation. It became legal throughout the United States in , following the decision of the U. Virginia , which ruled that race-based restrictions on marriages, such as the anti-miscegenation law in the state of Virginia , violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

By Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown. Since then, intermarriage rates have steadily climbed. All told, more than , newlyweds in had recently entered into a marriage with someone of a different race or ethnicity. By comparison, in , the first year for which detailed data are available, about , newlyweds had done so. The long-term annual growth in newlyweds marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity has led to dramatic increases in the overall number of people who are presently intermarried — including both those who recently married and those who did so years, or even decades, earlier.

In , the U. Supreme Court ruled in the Loving v. Virginia case that marriage across racial lines was legal throughout the country. Intermarriage has increased steadily since then: One-in-six U. Here are more key findings from Pew Research Center about interracial and interethnic marriage and families on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision.