Wright, Richard; Houston, Serin; Ellis, Mark; Holloway, Steven; Hudson, Margaret. Crossing racial lines: geographies of mixed-race partnering and multiraciality in the United States. Progress in Human Geography 27 (2003): 457-474 This article presents a very detailed look at interracial marriage in present day America. Similar to Heer, trends are looked at regionally in order to produce a bigger picture of the United States as a whole. Unlike the Heer article, this data studied in this article is split among more racial groups mostly due to the inclusion of a Latino and Asian race description to marriage documents. The rate of interracial marriages is still small, but growing nonetheless. What is most relevant is the authors discussion about children of mixed marriages. The studies describing these childrens search for an identity and studies dealing with the childrens ability to adjust deal with those still in childhood. The final section is about adult children of interracial marriages. It details the struggle they went through in order to represent themselves on the 2000 Census. There are studies investigating what type of people they marry: someone else whom is multiracial? someone whom is a member of the minority parents race? someone who is of the majority parents race? Or someone of a completely different race altogether? Questions such as these push the study of this occurrence forward. As mentioned above, the last section is the most relevant to Guess Whos Coming to Dinner. During a scene in which Spencer Tracys character Matt Drayton was having one of many discussions with his daughter Joey he asks her if she and John plan on having kids. They say yes, and that they understand there will be hardships. If one looks at the article discussed they would be able to see what that would have been. A child born in the late 1960s early 1970s would be in the middle of a major wave of research such as this article all the while fighting to be recognized by other areas of society.

Majete, Clayton. What you may not know about interracial marriages. World & I 12 (1997): 300-311 The author gives an overview of topics that he believes have become stereotypes and are perpetuated about interracial couples. His reasoning for this lack of understanding comes from his opinion that there is little scientific research about this subject. His conclusion is that people go on to make their own assumptions and stereotypes begin and grow from there. Interviews and statistics are used to disprove stereotypes and show that interracial couples really do marry for love not as a way to move up the social ladder or rebel against their parents. The second part of the article concentrated on the couples relationship with their families. The negative reactions were more likely to come from white families (black families were still very harsh). Overall most reactions were positive, but these reactions were more an expression of acceptance than complete happiness. The rest of the article details the struggles couples and their biracial children face. The plot of Guess Whos Coming to Dinner deals with many of these topics. The main storyline is all about the reaction of the reaction of John and Joeys families, Joeys family in particular. A major part of gaining the families trust involves John and Joey spending much of the movie convincing the family they are in love. They also need to convince the audience too in order for the movie to be convincing and avoid the stereotypes Majete is weary of. Even after much of this is accomplished the couple only has Mr. Draytons acceptance of the situation, he is not enthusiastic, much like the parents of real life interracial couples.

Lewis Jr., R. & Yancey, G. (1997) Racial and Non Racial Factors that Influence Spouse Choice in Black/White Marriages, Journal of Black Studies, 28(1), 60-79. This article is looking to find out why blacks and whites choose to marry outside of their race. An experiment was done in which a survey was sent out to many interracial couples (black-white only) asking them about their behind their marriage. Some of the questions dealt with race (Did you marry your spouse because you find men/women of a different race very attractive?) and some did not (Did you marry your spouse because you have similar tastes in entertainment?). The concluding results show that nonracial factors were the biggest factors in a couples decision to marry. Throughout Guess Whos Coming to Dinner Joey and John try to convince all of the other parties of this. Their statements should carry some weight seeing as they met and fell in love while getting to know each other through common activities. When describing her time in Hawaii Joey speaks of all the moments she and John shared and the activities they did together. That is how a relationship is formed. Not simply through looks and a wish to get a rise out of ones parents.

A PennTags project I chose to do Guess Who's Coming to Dinner because I have always been a fan of Sidney Poitier and this is one of my favorite movies that he's done. This movie takes place in 1967 in California. It is the story of a young girl, Joey Drayton and a doctor John Prentice, who fall in love after spending time together while on vacation in Hawaii. The two return to visit Joey's parents and ask for their permission in order to get married. There is one catch, permission needs to be granted the same day because Joey and John will be flying out to Switzerland the next morning in order for John to begin working there. Unfortunetly Joey's father finds he is having a hard time granting permission because John is black. Mr. Drayton always saw himself as a free thinking liberal until he was presented with this decision. Throughout the movie he is troubled by the fact that he isn't as liberal as he once thought he was. John's parents then enter the picture and John's father has his qualms as well. In the end permission is granted and all parties are happy. I was interested in researching this film because the arguments that occur are still relevant today and I thought it would be interesting to do research and see how articles dealing with these same subjects were addressed back then, and how they are addresed now.