Interracial Relations and Sex and Marriage Essay

Interracial Relations and Sex and Marriage - Essay Example These Western societies include the apartheid South Africa, the Nazi Germany, a number of states in the United States before the 1967 Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriages. Interracial relations have also been controversial in the Islamic/Arab world in which some Muslim laws and customs ban or restrict sexual and marriage relationships with non-Muslims/Arabs or non-natives of a woman’s ancestral home. In these societies, more so in patriarchal cultures, interracial relations are discouraged to ensure that future generations are brought up as Arabs and Muslims. In worse scenarios, women found to be breaching such laws and customs are subjected to cruel punishments, which could even be death in places where strict Islamic law is followed. In fact, in Arab states of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority, there have been reports of violence against women who have married from other races, ethnic groups, or foreign countries. These harsh laws are applied under the pretext that such an individual has committed adultery and the judicial systems of these countries condone such cruelty towards women and men who embrace interracial relations. This paper explores the issue of interracial relations with reference to the movies â€Å"guess who is coming for dinner† and the novel â€Å"hotel on the corner of bitter and sweet† by Jamie Ford. Interracial Relations-Sex, and Marriages Fortunately for the multiracial United States of America, interracial relations such as cohabitation, sexual, or marriage have been fully legalized since the Supreme Court decision of 1967, which declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Nonetheless, most states of the U.S had legalized interracial relations earlier than 1967. This Supreme Court decision was particularly important for the U.S citizenry due to the fact that the country has rather many ethnic and racial groups, which make inter racial sexual and marriage relations rather common among its citizens. In spite of them being legalized, interracial relations continue to face several challenges, which result in quite a number of complications or barriers that same-race/culture marriages do not face (Smith & Hattery 68). These factors, mostly external, often create conflicts and disagreement in such relationships. For example, the fact that different races have diverse ethical values, customs, and beliefs implies that if people of different races marry, these values and customs may cause conflicts by influencing their perceptions of issues such as lifestyle and family values. Thus, there are bound to be problems and disagreements in such interracial relations (Poitier 124). On a rather positive note, not all interracial marriages have intercultural complications and challenges since there are situations in which people of different races may have the same or almost similar cultures so that little or not custom or value conflicts are encountered in such marriages. For example, in the United States, a couple could be of different races but have intermingled extensively for long periods so that they have similar cultural perspectives on life. The acceptance of the community, family, and the lifestyle of the other partner is among the