Race: Diversity at work has role in sharp rise. Ripple effect on family, others promotes tolerance.

When Steve and Ruth White got engaged 17 years ago, his Southern Baptist pastor in Montebello told Steve that no less an authority than God would disapprove of their interracial union.

Steve’s best friend at church handed him 10 written reasons he shouldn’t marry Ruth. “Number 1: She’s black,” it began.

And his mother? “She cried for a long time,” White said.

“These were people I loved and trusted,” he said. “I felt like I was in the eye of a very strong storm, and everything was swirling around me.”

Like a number of Americans--many of them in California--the Whites married across America’s still-polarized racial lines anyway.

“In retrospect, there’s nobody better for me than Ruth, and there’s nobody close to us who doesn’t see that, even my mom,” White said.

Over the past two decades, the number of interracial marriages has shot up, as the legacy of America’s racial caste system erodes and workplace diversity grows.

Experts believe that California, which is poised to become the most populous U.S. state in which whites are no longer a majority, is at the forefront. Census samples show that mixed marriages are more than twice as common in California--involving roughly one of every 10 couples, compared to one of every 25 U.S. couples elsewhere--than in the rest of the nation. And their rate is climbing here among younger adults.

“People keep saying we’re becoming another Yugoslavia,” said Phillip Gay, a San Diego State University race relations expert, referring to the Balkan nation dismembered by ethnic animosity. “But if you look at intermarriage, we’re moving in the opposite direction, toward a more racially integrated society.”

Whenever such couples unite, experts say, they have a “ripple effect” on friends and families.

“They commit a whole lot of other people to their marriage and to the whole cause of racial equality and justice,” Gay said. “You’ve got a mother and a father who’ve got to become more sensitive. Aunts, uncles and cousins who have to soften. If you multiply those marriages by those who have a stake in it, a lot of people are involved in an interracial marriage.”

“I think the ultimate future of America will be very improved by higher rates of racial intermarriage,” said James Allen, a cultural geographer at Cal State Northridge who co-wrote “The Ethnic Quilt,” a 1997 book on Southern California demographics. “Racial stereotypes and racism will be much diminished.”

Influx of Asian War Brides

In 1960, when interracial marriage was still illegal in much of the South, there were only 150,000 interracial unions on record. Many involved U.S. servicemen and Asian war brides.

There were just 51,000 black-white marriages, a controversial combination in a country where widespread belief in white supremacy persisted for hundreds of years.

By 1996, there were more than 340,000 marriages between blacks and whites, according to census updates, and Modern Bride Wedding Celebrations had an entire section for mixed couples.

Still, the 1.5 million interracial marriages recorded by the census in 1990 were only 3% of the country’s then 51 million marriages, said Claudette Bennet, a census racial statistics expert.

But 26.1% of those interracial marriages were in California--though the state makes up only 12% of the U.S. population, Bennet said.

And a recent sampling of U.S. Census data--factoring in Latinos as an ethnicity--shows that 11% of California’s 6.3 million marriages involve partners of different races or ethnicities, compared to 4% of the 48 million U.S. marriages elsewhere, said Andrew Ruppenstein, a state Department of Finance researcher.

“Whites have more opportunity here to marry people of other races,” said Ruppenstein, who conducted the sample. “Somebody in Iowa, even if they wanted to marry someone of another race, would have a harder time, because there aren’t that many other races.”

The sample showed that 1 in 10 married white men, black women and Latinos in California are wedded to someone of another race or ethnicity. The most likely to marry outside their group--15%--are Asian women, Latinas and black men. White wives--93.2%--are most likely to be married to white men. Whites most often “outmarry” to Latinos, while Latinos, blacks and Asians most often “outmarry” to whites, the sample showed.

Some academics believe that mixed couples gravitate to places--like California, where miscegenation laws were overturned in 1948--where they anticipate acceptance.

An Atlanta-based magazine, Interrace, named San Jose No. 2 on its list of Top 10 cities for interracial couples, behind Montclair, N.J. San Diego was fourth and Oakland 10th.

Interracial unions were reported to be common in Los Angeles--but so was social pressure from blacks and Latinos who opposed marriage to whites.

San Diego, described as “boiling over with acceptance,” beat out more liberal California cities because of its Navy presence. Black American soldiers struggled with racism in the ranks in World War II, but today the armed forces are considered highly hospitable to interracial families.

“For interracial couples, being in the military is better,” said Clayton Majete, a New York University lecturer who is concluding a 10-year study of 450 black-white couples across the United States.

San Diego may be affected by other factors. Experts say the close ties to more racially tolerant Latin America has rubbed off on immigrant hubs like Southern California and Miami.

When Melissa Moonves and her Haitian-born husband, Yves Cologne, both Miami journalists, married 16 years ago, “our families were worried about us encountering hostility,” Moonves, 42, said. “They worried life would be rough and it would be hard on the children.”

Today, she can’t recall any open discrimination. Race was an issue only on their sons’ school forms--until Dade County added a “multiracial” box. “Maybe 15 years ago we’d get looks in restaurants, but not anymore,” Moonves said. “It’s just so common.”

In general, cosmopolitan cities and university campuses are most tolerant, experts say. Black-white romance is most difficult in small towns, or in rural Southern areas with a history of slavery, where until recently, even the rumor of an interracial dalliance could be used to justify the lynching of a black man, Majete said.

In one Southern town Majete visited, an enraged white father destroyed a family trailer because he believed that his daughter used it for clandestine trysts with a black boyfriend.

In such settings, budding biracial relationships may fizzle out long before the marriage stage.

“It’s not just, ‘Let’s get together and have fun.’ Employment can be affected,” Majete said. “Many people may love you very dearly but would not be able to deal with that kind of conflict.”

One Couple’s Struggle

Until 1967, experts point out, it was still illegal for blacks and whites to marry in most Southern states.

The abolishment of those laws began one night in Virginia in 1958, when a sheriff barged into the bedroom of Richard Loving and his pregnant wife, Mildred, and told the couple they had violated Virginia’s miscegenation laws.

Richard, who was white, and Mildred, who is black, had fallen in love at the rural crossroads where they grew up. But under Virginia’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act, whites could marry only within their race. Blacks could also marry native Americans, Latinos and Asians. The couple had driven to Washington to be married.

At their trial, the Lovings pleaded guilty and got a one-year sentence suspended on the condition they leave Virginia for 25 years.

The judge said God had deliberately put the races on different continents and it “showed that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

The Supreme Court didn’t buy it. Its 1967 decision in Loving vs. Virginia declared state laws prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional and void, though some remain on the books.

Recent polls have found that as many as three in 10 white Americans still oppose black-white marriages, but are more accepting if whites marry Latinos and Asians.

But those attitudes are less prevalent among young adults, who are far more likely to date and marry outside their race, experts say.

A 1994 Times poll in Orange County found that 60% of respondents ages 18-34 say they have dated someone of another race.

At Los Angeles’ ultra-diverse Carson High, interracial dating is common.

“It’s not a big deal,” said Mayra Duarte, 18, a biracial senior.

That doesn’t mean parents always agree.

When B.J. Klingman, 17, a white student, dates black students, “my mom has a fit.”

“My parents say you can date anybody you want, as long as he’s not white,” said Jakhara Tandy, 15, a black sophomore. “And don’t date a Mexican. He might be in a gang.”

Valencia Garner, 18, a “black” senior with white ancestry, said that if she dated a Mexican or white student, “my black friends would look at me like I sold out. You’re supposed to be with a brother.”

During the O.J. Simpson furor, Ebony magazine reported that “what seems to bother black women the most is that Nicole Brown Simpson was white.” At a time when there is a shortage of eligible black bachelors, it said, “African American women once again are strongly expressing concern and even displeasure.”

“I find other black women being critical of my mother for having married a white man,” said Jan Carpenter, a San Diego graphic designer. “They say she’s disrespecting black men or has forgotten herself.”

Carpenter, 43, is one of a growing number of Americans who defy easy categorization. She sees herself as African American, but with her blue eyes and pale skin, most view her as white.

Carpenter founded San Diego’s IMAGE, one of a number of U.S. support groups for interracial couples. Their members gathered for camping trips, dinners and outings to museums.

“It was about having a safe place, where you didn’t have to answer questions about why you married who you did,” she said. “A place where your life didn’t have to be an issue or a statement.”

But after a while, attendance dropped off.

“People found they did not have something in common with others just because they were biracial,” she said.

Founding of Support Group

Steve and Ruth White founded A Place for Us, a national support group.

The Whites represent one of the least-common but fastest-growing types of interracial marriage.

In 1980, there were only 27,000 marriages between white men and black women. By 1995, they had mushroomed to 122,000--more than a third of all black-white marriages.

Ruth, then a single mother of three from South-Central, met Steve when he became her manager at a Los Angeles Amway venture. The couple now lives near Gardena.

“A lot more black women are in the corporate world and have more contact with white men,” she said. “They start working with them and they treat them with respect and friendship, and the next thing you know, you’re in a relationship.”

If Steve’s friends opposed the match, he had a few strikes against him too. He was a member of the decidedly un-hip leisure suit set.

“I had to get him out of that,” Ruth said. “It was like, ‘If you’re going to be with me, guy, you gotta look good.’ ”

To this day, race is the last thing that defines their marriage.

“I saw this positive, hard-working woman with her head held up high and a lot of backbone,” Steve White said. “I still admire those things about her daily. It keeps it fresh.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Who Marries Whom

California has 2 1/2 times as many mixed marriages as the rest of the nation. In this state, 11% of the 6.3 million marriages are mixed, compared to only 4% in the rest of the country. Shown here is a racial and ethnic breakdown of the marriages in California, taken from U.S. Census data for 1995-97.

Men Marry...

Race/Ethnicity of wives

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Husbands White Black Asian/Pacific Islander Latino Other White 90.2 0.5 2.8 6.0 0.5 Black 8.4 84.4 3.3 3.3 0.6 Asian/Pacific 6.6 0.1 90.6 2.6 0.0 Islander Latino 9.8 0.2 0.7 89.0 0.3 Other All husbands 57.4 3.9 11.9 26.2 0.6

Husbands Total White 3,737,000 Black 262,000 Asian/Pacific 691,000 Islander Latino 1,565,000 Other 46,000 All husbands 6,301,000

*--*

Women Marry...

Race/Ethnicity of husbands

*--*

Wives White Black Asian/Pacific Islander Latino Other White 93.2 0.6 1.3 4.2 0.7 Black 7.9 90.2 0.4 1.5 0.0 Asian/Pacific 13.9 1.1 83.5 1.4 0.1 Islander Latino 13.7 0.5 1.1 84.4 0.3 Other All wives 59.3 4.2 11.0 24.8 0.7

Wives Total White 3,616,000 Black 245,000 Asian/Pacific 750,000 Islander Latino 1,649,000 Other 41,000 All wives 6,301,000

*--*

Source: State Finance Department