Loving V. Virginia.

Reflection

During 1958 Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man decided to marry.

They were both residents in Virginia but couldn’t get married there due to a charge they would

receive for violating the inter-racial marriages in Virginia. So they decided to get married in the

District of Columbia where it was not a violation, then decided to move back to Virginia, their

home. There they were found guilty in virginia for violating the ban on inter-racial marriage, and

were offered suspension of sentesing if they left Virgina for 25 years, of course they stayed and

were incarcerated for a year. They were later in favour to Loving by unanimous decision. This

story concludes that racial discrimination blocking the equal protection clause. As well as of

course, love. This revolved around the American civil right movement. The purpose of

miscegenation was for cohabitation or a marriage between people of different races. At the time

Virginia had banned this, which shows they supported racial discrimination. I say this because

discrimination includes treating individuals based on ascribed or received traits, stratification

also comes into play as well as inequality in this cse. To be more exact on why it appears to be

correlated to stratification and inequality is because according to the textbook “stratification is a

central sociological idea that describes structured patterns of inequality between different groups

of people” (183). This description by patterns of inequality is prevalent with the case of Loving

v. Virginia. Although after the cse was resolved, the discrimination was identified and was able

to be shut down in the ban. The textbook also states that “these patterns are shaped by family…

nationality and ability”(183) which shows that in terms of what cause the stratification to be

existent is caused by an individuals societal influence. For this instance, Virgina being a part of

nationality, the people that may have went against Loving was being unequal by seeing the racial
discrimination in Virgina as a norm. Then the textbook states “patterns of inequality are always

changings, because societies are always changing.”(183). This is proven when the jury,

unanimously, gives in favor of Loving. Signifying that there is possibility for change when

societies change. The jury realized that it was wrong to discriminate against races and to ban

marriages with people with different races. Something important I would like to mention from

the textbook, that helps me explain better what we can gain from this case, “ascriptivenss refers

to the degree to which patterns of inequality are connected to traits that are presented at birth…or

nationality”(184). As we see Virgina as a whole proved to be against inter-racial marriage, for

this case, ascriptiveness. Now to this day we can see this take part in our day to day lives as we

indulge in media and let others influence how we view things and develop traits. For the case of

Loving v. Virginia, we can see that there was discrimination against races, but it came to light for

how wrong it was later.