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Facts About Interracial Dating
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Online
dating is not just a local phenomenon but transcends cultural and
geographic boundaries. Interracial dating and intermarriage
has increased in the last century due to greater human mobility and
multiculturalism. Before the 20th century, with the
exception of soldiers and traders, most people rarely interacted with
foreigners. Not so anymore. Inter racial dating is
more preferred for the spice it adds to life.
Even
the term "interracial dating" is subject to interpretation. Often
people take it to mean marriage between caucasians, asians and blacks.
However, most people have strong historic, national and linguistic
identities as well, which may cause more interpersonal differences than
just ethnic definitions of race. For instance, most caucasians would
not view a union between Korean 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
reported that 95% of 18- to 29-year-olds approve of blacks and whites
dating. About 60% of that age group said they have dated someone of a
different race.
This
level of tolerance did not always 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 whites.
More
such laws were passed in the 1700s and 1800s as a response to an influx
of Chinese 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 their 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 asian "war brides" of Chinese, Japanese,
Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese origin.
It
was only in 1967, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, that
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that miscegenation laws were
unconstitutional (Loving v. Virginia). At that time, 38 states still
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.
Even
in this century, there is 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 whistled 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 asians 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 within their own ethnic group are Vietnamese
men and women, Korean husbands and Asian Indian wives. Most asians who
marry a non-asian have a white spouse; intermarriage with blacks and
latinos is less common. However, even among asians, most people still
marry someone of their own racial group. 22 percent of Asian-American
women have a non-asian husband. A mere nine percent of asian husbands
have non-asian wives
African-American
men had white wives 2.65 times more often than black women had white
husbands. In other words, in 73 percent of black-white marriages, the
husband was black. This trend is even more pronounced 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 wives have white husbands, while merely seven percent
of asian husbands have white wives. The sex ratios of asian/white
couples is the mirror image of black/white marriages. Asian women had
white husbands 3.08 times 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 involving 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
gender 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 marital
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 intermarriage. 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 average low income of lack males, elite black athletes are
rich and famous.
Black
women are rarely cast in highly sexualized 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 likely 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 degrees 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 blacks 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, people say they are high-minded and look for
beauty within, and that their mates' personalities are the most
important factor in determining the outcome of a relationship. Yet it
is abundantly clear that people are quite superficial and still to
adhere to age-old sex stereotypes : women find muscular, aggressive
males attractive, while 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 derived 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 enumeration 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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