Race as Social & Legal Construction, Anti-Miscegenation Law, Segregation, and Exogamy

Everyday U.S. discourse blurs the two, but social scientists separate them:
- Ethnicity = shared language, religion, cuisine, ancestry, etc.
- Race = legal & political categories historically anchored to access/denial of power.
Key analytic insight: both are socially constructed, but race is more explicitly a legal invention than a biological fact.

A social construction derives its meaning from collective agreement, not from nature.
- Natural category example: Helium—floats balloons independent of human opinion.
- Social category example: ZIP code—exists only because we maintain it.
Race operates more like ZIP codes than chemical elements:
- Criteria change across time & place.
- Boundaries shift with law and power.
- Example: Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act (1924) re-classified some previously “white” people as “black.”

Virginia (“one-drop rule”): any ascertainable African ancestry ⇒ legally Black.
Florida (1/8 rule): Black if you had a Black great-grandparent or closer.
Crossing state lines could flip one’s legal race, illustrating legal—not biological—foundations.
Punishments for violating racial rules (e.g., anti-miscegenation) ranged up to felonies, prison, or banishment.

Anti-Miscegenation Laws (41 states, 1691–1967):
- Banned marriage (and often cohabitation/sex) between whites and non-whites, while often permitting marriages among non-white groups.
- Aim: keep “whiteness” an exclusive, non-acquirable status (\textit{opportunity hoarding}).
- Exception: white–Latino marriages often allowed (Spanish heritage counted as white & facilitated land transfers in the Southwest).
Key Court Cases
1. Pace v. Alabama (1883) – upheld criminalization of interracial sex.
2. Perez v. Sharp (CA, 1948) – first state high court to strike down a ban; framed marriage as a fundamental right.
3. McLaughlin v. Florida (1964) – overturned ban on interracial cohabitation.
4. Loving v. Virginia (1967) – U.S. Supreme Court unanimously invalidated all state anti-miscegenation statutes; cited Fourteenth-Amendment Due Process & Equal Protection.
- Richard Loving’s message: “Tell the Court I love my wife and it’s just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.”

Until $2010$ , individuals could choose only one race; multiracial identities invisible in federal data.
- $2010$ : first multiracial option → $9\,\text{million}$ self-reports.
- $2020$ : $33.8\,\text{million}$ ( $+276\%$ in a decade).
Hispanics/Latinos treated as ethnicity; must still choose a race (often White or American Indian).
Proposed but omitted category: MENA (Middle Eastern & North African); political control of Census categories shows social construction in action.

Post-Loving trend: $3\%$ (1967) → $17\%$ (2015) → $\approx20\%$ (today) of new marriages.
If Americans married randomly across race, slight majority would be exogamous, so $20\%$ still reflects strong endogamy.
Higher rates in metropolitan & less segregated areas.

Propinquity = physical nearness; crucial predictor of partner choice.
Segregation policies limited interracial contact, thereby suppressing exogamy even after legal bans fell.

Racial Zoning (1910s) – Baltimore first; banned by Buchanan v. Worley (1917) but Court said anti-miscegenation laws made zoning unnecessary!
Restrictive Covenants – racial clauses in property deeds; invalidated in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948).
Redlining (HOLC & FHA, 1930s–1988)
- Neighborhoods graded Green, Blue, Yellow, Red.
- Criteria: building age & racial composition (“homogenous” = white ⇒ Green).
- Federal mortgage insurance & low-interest loans flowed almost exclusively to white areas.
- Long-term consequences: wealth accumulation via subsidized homeownership for whites; depressed values & disinvestment in minority neighborhoods.

Index of Dissimilarity ( $0–100$ ); > $60$ = “high segregation.”
- U.S. Black–White index: $74$ (1940) → $79$ (1970) → $59$ (2010). Still near “high.”
Contrasting locales (2010–15):
- Jackson, MS: index $69$ ; only $3\%$ new marriages exogamous.
- Santa Barbara, CA: index $49$ ; $30\%$ exogamous.

Early 1900s exodus of Black Southerners to Midwest, Northeast, West.
Formerly white cities (e.g., Cleveland, Milwaukee) responded with zoning, covenants, redlining.
2010 racial dot maps still show sharp neighborhood color clustering.

Legal scholar Sheryll Cashin:
- “Opportunity hoarding” = monopolizing resources via exclusive whiteness.
- Cultural dexterity = ability to engage multiple cultures without expecting assimilation; fostered by interracial families/communities.
- Predicts societal inflection if exogamy reaches $\ge30\%$ —prejudice & discrimination would markedly decline.

Historical discrimination (housing, marriage) has enduring effects on wealth, neighborhood quality, school funding.
Present discrimination persists (e.g., appraisal bias, dating/marriage preferences).
Policy relevance: “you have to be measured to matter” → Census categories affect resource allocation.
Celebratory activism: June 12 = Loving Day—commemorates the 1967 decision and affirms freedom to marry across racial lines.

Modernity & individualization: shift from state-assigned to self-selected identities.
Parallel legal logics: Loving & Perez precedents later leveraged in same-sex marriage cases (e.g., Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Obergefell v. Hodges).
Family sociology: marriage, endogamy/exogamy, power of law & space in shaping intimate life.

Books: "Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers"; "Tell the Court I Love My Wife" (Peter Wallenstein); "How the Irish Became White" (Noel Ignatiev); "The Warmth of Other Suns" (Isabel Wilkerson); "Loving" & "Place, Not Race" (Sheryll Cashin).
Documentary: The Loving Story (HBO/Max).

Share of new exogamous marriages: $1967: 3\% \rightarrow 2015: 17\% \rightarrow 2020s: \approx20\%$
Multiracial census identification: $2010: 9{,}000{,}000 \;\text{people} \rightarrow 2020: 33{,}800{,}000$ ( $+276\%$ ).
Segregation threshold: \text{Index} > 60 \;\Rightarrow\; \text{High Segregation}.