Some concepts are best left in the past, such as not bathing, viewing tomatoes as poisonous, and racism. Despite all the progress made with civil rights for racial minorities, America is still stuck in the past. This is shown through the increasingly apparent criticism and shunning of miscegenation, or the mixing of different racial groups in marriage. Despite the fact that everyone is equal regardless of race, and that the marriages are done out of love, people still continue to condemn interracial relationships. The stigma against interracial relationships needs to be removed and the people involved in the marriage need to be treated like they are in any other racially “traditional” union. Otherwise, America will be stuck in a regressive state, and will not truly be the land of freedom and equality.

America has been wrongly conservative with the idea that somehow marriages are not marriages when the parties included are not of the same race. This can be shown by the fact that interracial relationships were banned in the Deep South until very recently. For example, Alabama was the last state to legalize interracial marriage in November of 2000. Although these couples are now legal, it does not mean that they are accepted in the eyes of society. In 2010, an interracial couple was denied the right to a marriage certificate in Louisiana. The judge that made this decision thought that the couple’s children would be in danger, according to the Huffington Post. There was no reason for the judge to believe that any child was in danger, because the parents had no record of abuse or of being unfit parents. The judge made this decision solely because the couple was of two different races.

Whether in public or in private, there are many situations of people being treated differently because they are with someone of another race. There are many examples of this in everyday life and in the eyes of fiction. In an early 2013 Cheerios commercial, an interracial couple with a mixed race daughter was featured. There was a lot of public criticism towards the company for using an interracial couple in an advertisement for an American family brand, because somehow marrying someone out of love is not American. People wanted the commercial removed from the air. The fact that a commercial had people enraged at a fictional interracial couple is ridiculous.

Although there are still many same race couples, the number of interracial couples had risen. Since 1980, the percent of interracial couples in America has risen from 3.2% to 8.4%, according to Hope Yen of the Washington Times. These percentages have more than doubled and although it is great to know that America has warmed up to the idea of interracial relationships, there are still many people who condemn these relationships and want them to end.

Interracial relationships are still being condemned today. It is a blatant violation of basic human rights, and it upholds the evil institution or racism. These interracial marriages are absolutely no different from same race marriages. It is still a union between two humans who wish to pursue their own happiness. It is absurd that there are people aiming to deny couples this inherent right.