racial discriminations, most apparently seen in the institution of marriage between African-Americans and Caucasians. The United States bureau of the Census reported that in 1987 over 827,000 interracial married couples existed in America, of which fewer than 200,000 of them were between African-Americans and Caucasians (Herring 29). These numbers (census) do not reflect the spread of desegregation very well. If there is such a large spread of desegregation between African-Americans and Caucasians from the past to the present, then the numbers should reflect a much larger count of interracial marriages between these races. This however, is untrue; therefore, there are less apparent barriers African-American and Caucasian couples' face. One of the major barriers that face these couples does not come from themselves but rather from family disapproval. Lois, a Caucasian woman, and her husband Chuck Bronz, an African-American man, were married in 1960. They have no prejudice about each other and they share the comfortable rhythm of any long married couple. They had no problems with friends because they had a good mix of them from different races, friends who looked at the person not the color. However, they had problems with other people, namely Lois' mother. Her mother had sat her down and asked her why she could not marry her own kind. Lois, of course, stood firm and married Chuck, which unfortunately resulted in the ties between her mother and herself breaking (Kantrowitz 40). Ruben, an African-American Jewish man, married Mary, a Caucasian Lutheran woman. None of Mary's relatives attended the wedding, except for her mother. Mary's father was outraged that he was expected to accept an African-American, and a Jew, into the family (Aunapu 65). It is not the disfavor of strangers that hurts these couples the most, but rather the disfavor of family. Territa, an African-American woman, had broken up with Todd, her Caucasian husband, several t...
