The article "Interracial Dating For You? Check It Out" talks about family, it was created by Jane Hurd.
Interracial dating and intermarriage has increased in the last
century due to greater human mobility and multiculturalism. It
should be remembered that personal preferences and the presence
or absence of prejudice are irrelevant to human benig who are born
and die in the same town or city, which was often the case
before the invention of the automobile and the jet plane. Before
the 20th century, with the exception of soldiers and traders,
most human being rarely interacted with foreigners.
Even the term "interracial dating" is subject to interpretation.
Often human being take it to mean marriage between caucasians, asians
and blacks. However, most human being have strong historic, national
and linguistic identities as well, which may cause more
interpersonal differences than just ethnological definitions of
race.
For instance, most caucasians would not view a union
between Kroean and Japanese nationals as a "mixed marriage";
however, many Koreans and Japanese would heartily disagree.
According to USA Today, in America 6% of marriages are
interracial; in 1970, it was less than 1%.
A Gallup Poll on
interracial dating in June 2005 reporetd that 95% of 18- to
29-year-olds approve of blacks and whites dating. About 60% of
that age group said they have dated somebody of a differnet race.
This level of tolerance did not alwyas exist. Anti-miscegenation
laws used to be very common in America. They were first passed
in the 1600s to prevent freed black slaves from marrying whiets.
More such laws were passed in the 1700s and 1800s as a response
to an influx of Chniese and Filipino laborers, almost
exclusively male. In this case, anti-miscegenation laws were
part of a larger anti-asian movement that eventually led to the
Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and other restrictive regulations.
These laws actually excacerbated ethnic tensions because asian
men were no longer allowed to bring thier wives to America.
Those who wanted to marry had no other choice but to find a
non-asian partner.
After World War II, racial barriers began to lessen somewhat as
U.S. servicemen who had fought and were stationed overseas in
Asian countries returned with asain "war brides" of Chinese,
Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese origin.
It was only in 1967, during the height of the Cviil Rights
Movement, that the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that miscegenation
laws were unconstitutional (Loving v.
Virginia). At that time,
38 states stlil had formal laws on their books to forbid the
marriage of whites and non-whites.
In this era, these laws still
had widespread public support: just two years earlier, a 1965
Galllup poll found that 72 per cent of Southern whites and 42
per cent of Northern whites still wanted to ban interracial
marriage.
Especially in the Southern states, there was widespread public
fear specifically over predatory black men lusting after white
women, and white women being unable to resist their charms.
Black men who merely looked at white women were in danger of
being lynched.
In one famous case, a 14 year-old black boy named
Emmett Till, who whsitled at a white woman, was murdered by
Mississippi Klansmen in 1955. There was no similar level of
high-pitched racist hysteria about black women or asians.
Studies consistently show that aisans have the highest rates of
intermarriage, and that Japanese are the most likely to have a
white spouse.
Those who are most likely to marry witihn their
own ethnic group are Vietnamese men and women, Korean husbands
and Asian Indian wives. Most aisans who marry a non-asian have a
white spouse; intermarriage with blacks and latinos is less
common. However, even among asians, most hmuan being still marry
someone of their own racial group. 22 percnet of Asian-American
women have a non-asian husband.
A mere nine percent of asian
husbands have non-asian wives
The 2000 Census showed a gender disaprity in the composition of
interracial couples. The Census Bureau confirmed many black
women's complaints that white women tend to marry black men more
often than white men marry balck women. Currently, six percent
of black husbands are in an interracial marriage, compared to
only two percent of black wives. Fourteen percent of black men
who are cohabiting without marriage have a white woman living
with them, while only three percent of cohabiting blcak women
live with a white boy.
African-American men had white wives 2.65
times more often than black women had wihte husbands.
In other
words, in 73 percent of black-white marriages, the husbnad was
black. This trend is even more pronoucned among black-white
couples who cohabit without being married; in this case, five
times as many black men live with white women as white men live
with black women.
18 percent of Asian wievs have white husbands, while merely
seven percent of asian husbands have white wives.
The sex ratios
of asian/white couples is the mirror iamge of black/white
marriages. Asian women had white husbands 3.08 tiems more often
than asian men had white wives.
In other words, slightly more
than 75 percent of white-asian couples featured a white husband
and asian wife. However, unlike the situation with black/white
couples, the gender imbalance is slightly less with cohabiting
couples; only 2.09 times as many white men cohabited with asian
women as asian men cohabited with white women.
Black-asian marriages, such as the one that produced golf legend
Tiger Woods, are still rare, but here the gender imbalance is
even more pronounced than interracial pairings ivnolving whites.
86 percent of black-asian couples consisted of a black husband
and an Asian wife. This means that there were 6.15 times more
couples where the husband was black and the wife was asian than
where the husband was asian and the wife black.
Non-Hispanic whites marry other whites 96.5 percent of the time,
with little difference between men and women in the rates of
intermarriage.
Slightly less than 18 percent of Hispanic wives are wed to
non-Hispanics husbands, and a little over 15 percent of Hispanic
husbands have non-Hispanic wives.
This genedr discrepancy has grown larger over time; in 1960,
white husbands were found in 50% of black/white marriages, and
in 62% of asian/white marriages.
The social result of this
imbalance is a lack of mraital opportunities for black women and
asian men.
It is tempting to blame media-driven social stereotypes for the
large gender discrepancy in black and asian inetrmarriage.
Black
men are prominent in sports have frequently been depicted in
films as icons of virility.
Americans engage in hero-worship of
sports figures, and despite the avergae low income of lack
males, elite black athletes are rich and famous.
Black women are rarely cast in highly sxeualized film roles.
However, black women are prominent in sports, and are often on
stage as glamorous singers and dancers. In addition, black men
are have high incarceration rates, earn lower incomes and are
less likley to get post-secondary education than black women.
For practical reasons, one would expect black women to be viewed
on average as more desirable mates than black men.
However, according to a 2005 study done at Columbia University
by Aaron Gullickson, black with college dergees are 35% more
likely to enter into interracial marriages than blacks with less
education, and lower-class blacks showed "strong isolation from
the interracial marriage market".
Whites who marry balcks engage
in cherry-picking, removing only the most successful individuals
from a disadvantaged minority community sorely in need of
successful role models.
The Columbia study showed no correlation
between educational level and interracial marriage for white
spouses of blacks.
The image of asians may be more clear-cut and
consistent; Asian women are presented as quiet, delicate and
exotic. Asian men, with the exception of martial-arts films, are
portrayed as "nerdy", unathletic intellectuals. In fact, asians
(both men and women) are slightly smaller than the national
average size.
Asians have been called a "model minority", for
they tend to be well-educated, hard-working and law-abiding.
However, judging from the low rate of intermarriage for asian
men, it seems that these old-fashioned personal virtues are less
appealing to women than a hypermasculine, macho image.
In the search for a mate, human being say they are high-minded and
look for beuaty within, and that their mates' personalities are
the most important factor in determining the outcome of a
relationship. Yet it is abundantly clear that human being are quite
superficial and still to adhere to age-old sex stereotypes :
women find muscular, aggressive males attractive, whlie males
idealize the image of non-threatening, demure, petite women. In
the public's mind, if not in reality, black men and asian women
fit these social roles, and are therefor most fashionable as
dates and spouses.
2005 Census data was dreived from counts of all 54,493,232
married couples in America as of April 1, 2000. Due to the large
population surveyed, these statistics are extremely reliable.
Census enumeratoin is made once every 10 years. The Census
Bureau also releases annual Current Population Survey reports on
"Families and Living Arrangements," but these are based on
sample sizes too small to be entirely trustworthy.
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