This practice has been met with many objections along the way. Of course, you have freedom in your dating choices, yet there are systemic causes and effects to your decision that are worth examining. We are attracted to the image of beauty that is currently being marketed to us and, unfortunately for people of color and Rubenesque women, historically most models in fashion magazines have been white and waifish. Regarding familiarity, we tend to be attracted to people who remind us of someone we know or have dated in the past.

Allison Skinner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. According to the most recent U. More interracial relationships are also appearing in the media — on television , in film and in advertising. These trends suggest that great strides have been made in the roughly 50 years since the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws. But as a psychologist who studies racial attitudes , I suspected that attitudes toward interracial couples may not be as positive as they seem. My previous work had provided some evidence of bias against interracial couples.

The celebrity world offers up plenty of examples. Actress Tika Sumpter, who is Black and engaged to a white man, tweeted that white people in relationships with Black people have a duty to fight racism on behalf of their partners. The landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia struck down state bans on interracial marriage in

Upset as she was, Farr remembered the rules imposed by her own Irish-Italian parents, who had once forbidden her from dating anyone who was black or Puerto Rican. And many of her friends' parents, she later learned, had also imposed similar rules on their children. She was determined to fight for her beau, and he for his parents to accept her. Farr, who lives in Los Angeles, talks here about the road to acceptance within her husband's family, how her parents changed their attitudes about race and love, and the road that lies ahead for their three children.