Michael and Samantha Herrod work together at their Merrillville, Ind. home Tuesday December 6, 2011. The Herrods have been married for 12 years and have two children. | Stephanie Dowell~Sun-Times Media
Love is color blind
According to the study by Ohio State University and Cornell University, almost all men and women of various ethnicities in 2008 were more likely to marry Americans of another race than in 1980. Those include:
White men — 7.5 percent in 2008 compared to 3.8 percent in 1980
Black men — 23.1 percent in 2008, 7.3 percent in 1980
Asian men — 66.9 percent in 2008, 50.6 percent in 1980
Hispanic men — 54.1 percent in 2008, 39.6 percent in 1980
White women — 7.9 percent in 2008, 4.6 percent in 1980
Black women — 12.1 percent in 2008, 3.1 percent in 1980
Asian women — 69.3 percent in 2008, 52.9 percent in 1980
Hispanic women — 58.2 percent in 2008, 39.6 percent in 1980
ARTICLE EXTRAS
When Michaile and Anthony Broadnax decided they wanted to get married in 1989, the first minister they went to wouldn’t marry them.
That’s because Michaile is white and Anthony is black.
The second minister they approached told them he would do it but people in the congregation wouldn’t like it. The Munster couple said that was just one of multiple times they had to deal with racism at the beginning of their relationship. Those issues have dwindled over the years, however, as people become more and more comfortable with interracial marriages.
That comfort has helped lead to an increase in mixed relationships during the past three decades, according to a study by Ohio State University and Cornell University. The study, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, shows that men and women in 2008 of almost every ethnicity were more likely to be in an interracial marriage than they were in 1980.
The biggest increase was between blacks and whites, according to the study. For instance, just 4.7 percent of married black men in 1980 had a white wife. That increased to 14.4 percent by 2008, according to the study. Although Hispanics and Asians were still more likely to intermarry with whites, it didn’t increase as much because more Asian and Hispanic immigrants came to the country during this time. According to the study, this means the increase in marriages between blacks and whites is due to a lessening of racist attitudes.
Not so easy
Those changes mean local couples like the Broadnaxes face a more open world and more couples like themselves.
Michaile and Anthony met while they were working for the town of Munster on summer break from college. Anthony, who was raised in Gary, noticed Michaile, whose family is from Crown Point but who grew up elsewhere, during lunch breaks. The two started talking and getting to know each other.
“It sounds nice and easy, but it wasn’t,” she said.
The two were aware issues would arise with a romantic relationship and, although they didn’t hide it, they also didn’t spread the news to family members, he said. Michaile said three years before she met Anthony when she was going off to college for the first time, her father spoke about race for the first time.
“Don’t bring home a black guy,” she says he told her.
Her grandmother’s husband told her not to bring Anthony to his Crown Point home, she said, and the one time she did bring Anthony, he waved Anthony away. Michaile’s mother didn’t object to Anthony so much as she was concerned about the problems that Michaile would face by being in an mixed relationship.
Anthony said although his family didn’t express issues with the relationship, he does think they had their own concerns. He said he had trust issues, however, because he couldn’t understand why a white woman would want to date him. He said he was just used to white people at Southlake Mall (now Westfield Southlake) staring at him whenever he went there after school.
“You always felt you were suspect,” he said.
As bad as problems were for the Broadnaxes, they weren’t as extreme as those experienced by Hobart couple Samantha and Michael Herrod when they got married in 1999. Her father’s side of the family wouldn’t even come to the wedding, she said.
Samantha grew up in Hobart and her family never mixed with black people.
“I’d hate to say they were prejudiced, but they almost were, surrounded by white people,” she said.
The couple, who met while they worked at the Post-Tribune, has suffered other forms of racism, Herrod said. They used to get looks, usually from middle-age people, when they would go shopping together. The couple both delivered the newspaper in their Hobart neighborhood, and a neighbor once called the police on Michael, who is black.
“We had a lot of issues,” she said.
Changes come slowly
Despite the problems the Broadnaxes and Herrods have faced, it hasn’t all been bad, they said. Michaile Broadnax said it was her father, who once told her not to bring home a black man, who actually soothed over her mother’s concerns about the relationship. He had started to interact more with black people, she said, and got over his prejudices. It was also another family member, her grandmother, who stepped in between her husband and Anthony. Michaile said she eventually found out her grandmother told her husband that if he didn’t accept Anthony, they were through.
As for the Herrods, her father’s family did a 180-degree turn, she said. The Herrods now host the family’s annual Christmas party at their home, which used to be her father’s mother’s house.
Both couples say it’s gotten better since they first met, which a Pew Foundation study supports. The survey shows that just 48 percent of people in 1987, the year Michaile and Anthony met, were OK with marriages between blacks and whites. By 2009, support had increased to 83 percent.
Michaile and Anthony said that when they moved back to Northwest Indiana about five years ago after living in a diverse neighborhood in Houston, they didn’t consider living in Munster because they thought it was too homogenous. But after living in Crown Point for a year, they realized that Munster actually was more mixed and have felt comfortable living there ever since.
Their daughter and son have never had issues with other children or parental objection to them because they’re biracial, they said. Even their time in Crown Point, which used to be known as a place where blacks had to leave by sundown, was positive.
“We didn’t have one lick of a problem,” Michaile said.
The family has faced some problems with how people react to seeing them with their children, Michaile said, adding that a man at her church once asked her what it was like to have children who didn’t look like her.
“All he saw was their skin tone and hair color,” she said.
Samantha Herrod said her own children have fared well in the diverse Merrillville schools.
“I think people are more accepting,” she said, noting the stares have lessened over the years, although not completely.
Attitudes today
The changes of attitudes toward interracial couples mean that newer ones, such as Portage residents Nicole and Gerardo Ramirez, have not faced the same kind of problems that the Broadnaxes and Herrods did. Nicole and Gerardo first met when they were 12 and 13, she said, and the two Gary natives dated on and off as their paths kept crossing. He proposed in 2005, a year before she graduated from Purdue University. Although layoffs and their two children delayed the wedding, they finally tied the knot on Nov. 11, joining several other couples getting married at the Porter County Courthouse.
“It wasn’t really that big of a deal to me,” Nicole said of their dating.
She said that neither one of them had actually thought that they would marry someone of a different race, but at the same time they didn’t think it was odd to be in a romantic relationship with people of other races. Nicole, who is black, said she dated white men in college, and that Gerardo, who is Latino, was surrounded by black people growing up in Gary so that it came naturally for him.
“I guess just thinking about it, if it’s meant to be, it is,” she said.
Both of their family and friends were accepting, and she said they’ve never experienced outright racism. That doesn’t mean they never face any problems. Nicole said people have asked her if she’s baby-sitting their two children, who are light skinned and can appear to be Latino,
“I have to be baby-sitting someone’s kids, they can’t be mine,” she said of what other people think.
While they receive looks or questions from some people, Nicole said she thinks most people are used to interracial couples and know, at least, that society now accepts them.
“You’re always going to have somebody who disapproves of whatever,” Nicole said. “But they’re not going to be open about it.”
Part of that, she said, is because there are so many more interracial couples. Nicole said she’s just as likely to see an interracial couple as she is to see one of the same race.
The Broadnaxes and Herrods also say they’re seeing more couples like them, not just in society but within their own families. Samantha Herrod said her husband’s sons from another relationship are all in mixed relationships. The Broadnaxes’ son, who is going to his father’s alma mater Rose Hulman University, is dating a white woman, they said. Michaile said that although she was concerned about what the woman’s family would think, it turned out fine.
Michaile and Anthony said despite their initial years of facing more discrimination, there have always been signs of acceptance. Soon after their own wedding in 1989, they attended a friend’s marriage to someone of another race in Anderson. Unlike the pastor who refused to marry them, this one talked about how race didn’t matter in marriage — it’s about who they are as people.
Texas A&M has its man. Now it's time for Kevin Sumlin, one of the hottest names in coaching, to get his hands dirty, writes David Ubben. 
