really impossible to believe that Robs going out with this monkey @FKAtwigs”. The singer did respond via twitter saying, “I am genuinely shocked and disgusted at the amount of racism that has been infecting my account the past week… Racism is unacceptable in the real world and it's unacceptable online.”

 

This comes at a time where we’ve seen many high profile people stand up and say that interracial relationships still receive such hate and discrimination. Kanye West spoke out about the issue claiming that his video for ‘Bound 2’ was only ‘accepted’ after him and Kim Kardashian both graced the cover of American Vogue, but he added this only came after “two years of people not understanding an interracial relationship”. Even more recently Kim Kardashian spoke to BBC Newsbeat explaining that her child, North West, was targeted with racial abuse on a 12 hour flight, “there was seven hours to go with someone saying insane things…the flight officials did their best to handle it. But you just have to take the high road”. But why should people just take the ‘high road’ and expect abuse for the personal relations they want to have?

 

Connor O’Toole has been in a mixed race relationship more than once and says he has experienced some racial abuse as a result, “It hasn’t ever been enough to affect our relationship, but certainly enough to establish that not all forms of racism are dead, I have had very close friends ask why I don't just date a white girl being white myself, and several jokes made at mine and her expense.” A pattern soon emerged whereby people explained their experience with peoples negative views, Lakeisha Goedluck is from Chinese, Black Caribbean and white (British) decent and her boyfriend is white (Welsh), she says, “I've had it from black men whilst out with my boyfriend. They ask "why are you with him? Look at him; you should be with a dark man." I’ve also had men completely disregard my boyfriend’s existence and openly flirt with me in front of him.” The negative responses just kept coming with people saying that, “A friend of a friend made a negative comment about interracial relationships a few months ago but apparently it didn't ‘apply’ to me and my family which is actually more offensive” and, “I’m mixed race and people ask me what ethnicity I prefer to date? Like as if I’m choosing a pair of shoes to wear.”

 

Being the young age of 20 years old, I have never had what you would call a ‘serious’ relationship. And this leaves me wondering has growing up in a small town in East Sussex meant that men were afraid to date or take me to meet the parents? These are things I had never thought about previously, has the area, being a predominantly White middle class, attuned me to my independent single lifestyle?

 

But is what we see here more of a cultural problem rather than one that stems from outdated societal views? The Office for National Statistics found from a 2011 Census that ‘White and Caribbean, White and Black African, White and Asian, and Other Mixed were the most likely to be in an inter-ethnic relationship’. However Danielle Holley who is in a mixed race relationship with a Chinese man said that “I am the only white person in the family which my partners side do find difficult because of the communication barrier, Chinese are expected to marry into Chinese most of the time so I think even family members can find it difficult coming round to something different.” Statistics also reflect this as Chinese women are almost twice as likely (39%) to be in an interracial relationship than men (20%). Perhaps suggesting that within this culture it is more accepting of women being in a relationship with another ethnicity.

 

The word ‘interracial’ conjures up negativity as it sounds aggressive, dystopian and forbidden, but the statistics do suggest a movement towards change and a fast growing multicultural society. Will the term ‘interracial’ or ‘multi-racial’ even make sense in say 10, 20, 50 years from now as more of our ethnicities become entwined? The ‘Human Barbie’, Valeria Lukyanova, spoke out about interracial relations stating that this is the reason behind the rise in plastic surgery “Ethnicities are mixing now, so there's degeneration, and it didn't used to be like that.” She goes on to remember the times when there was little racial integration in society, “Remember how many beautiful women there were in the 1950s and 1960s, without any surgery? And now, thanks to degeneration, we have this.”

 

Despite this one distorted view of the world, dating website EthnicCouples.com agreed with the apparent shift in attitude “I think the stigma has quietened down a lot in recent years… the goal of my site is to allow interracial couples to be proud of the love they have and to show others that they are not alone. I think it has been achieving its goal.” And even though some interracial couples have experienced negativity this may have strengthened their relationship as they have stood by each other through the bad times. A relationship therapist from Relate.org.uk agrees with this idea, “There’s loads of stages in the relationship journey, falling in love, then there’s let’s make it serious, then shall we have kids, buy a property, and then as you get further down the spectrum there’s the getting old, getting ill, people dying, these are all really hard times for a couple to navigate. So an interracial couple if they’ve had a really tough time at the beginning, and they found a way through that I would suggest they will be well placed when other challenges come along.”

 

The report by British Future, ‘melting pot generation: how Britain became more relaxed on race’ points out the positive change in British attitude. Rob Ford a politics lecturer at Manchester University states that, “As mixing becomes ever more common, the boundaries between ethnic groups will become ever more complex and blurred, as groups which once lived, worked, prayed and married separately grow ever more tightly bound together. This will lead to new, more complex ethnic identities and, perhaps, a broader, more inclusive “melting pot” British identity.”

 

Lucinda Platt from the Institute for Social & Economic Research drew up a report focusing on the relationships within and between ethnic groups using the Labour Force Survey. One of her findings was that, “Older and younger people from the different ethnic groups attitudes tend to change over generations, more traditional attitudes and behaviours decline and younger generations will also have been more likely to be exposed to those from other ethnic groups and to respond to observed changes in society, in terms of increasing diversity.” In post war Britain in the 1950’s racism was rife as people from the Caribbean came over to work, interracial relationships would have not even been considered. My mother recalled a time when she was in a relationship with my father in 1978, at the age of 14, “one time I was walking down the road with your dad, a man shouted out of the car, ‘put him down you don’t know where he’s been’, we just ignored it and carried on. But I think we were quite fortunate we didn’t come across any major racism as our friends were a mixed group and none of my family was racist, including my grandparent’s which was quite rare at the time.” Racism may become a thing of the past after all with 7% of dependent children in England and Wales (2011) growing up in mixed race households. Growing up with more tolerant views on mixed race relationships surely will dispel the old ways of thinking? A pattern of this sort can be seen in research by British Future showing that 18-24 year olds are most accepting of mixed marriage, the number dropping as the age bracket increases reinforcing the idea that the older generations may hold different views.

 

It seems that the topic of interracial relationships is one with complex ideas and views. What relationships people have is totally down to them and we can only hope that one day we will live in the most diverse and multicultural society. Lakeisha Goedluck pointed out that, “When you love someone and are faced with adversity I think it spurs you on to prove to the people hating on your relationship that your union isn't wrong, but beautiful and 100% right.” because love conquers all, right?