Interracial marriage

An interracial couple is a romantic couple or marriage in which the partners are of differing races.

General
Historically, there have been controversies over interracial couples, for reasons of racist origin, such as fears of "racial impurity". South Africa and the United States are but a few countries that have had regulations banning interracial marriage. As of 2006, no countries have laws against interracial marriage.

U.S. and interracial couples
"In Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem," Gunnar Myrdal (1948) ranks the reasons for segregation according to Southern whites in the 1930s and 40s from least to most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, &#8220;social equality&#8221; including dancing, handshaking, and most important, marriage. This ranking scheme seems to have been upheld relatively well into the 1960s. Of less importance was the segregation in basic public facilities, which was abolished with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And the most important reason for segregation, marriage, was not fully overcome until the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down later in 1967.

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia struck down the last of the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, and with this, the frontier of available marriage choices shifted out. The number of interracial marriages in the United States has been on the rise: 310,000 in 1970, 651,000 in 1980, and 1,161,000 in 1992 according to the U.S. Bureau of the census 1993. Interracial marriages represented .7% of all marriages in 1970 to 1.3% in 1980, to 2.2% in 1992. With the introduction of the mixed-race category, the 2000 census revealed interracial marriage to be somewhat more widespread, with 2,669,558 interracial marriages recorded, or 4.9% of all marriages (census 2000 PHC-T-19). (Here, marriages between two mixed-race persons, or where they are the same race but one is Hispanic and the other not, are not counted as interracial.) However, black-white marriages still tend to be the most controversial in the public eye. From a recent poll of 1,314 Americans of all races, it was noted that 3 in 10 people are against black-white marriage, but are far more willing to accept white-Hispanic or white-Asian marriages (Ford 2003). Marriage between Whites and Asians, and particularly light-skinned North East Asians such as Chinese are often looked upon as being the non-controversial interethnic pairing in the United States and is becoming increasingly common (Lange, 2005). Reasons for this are often cited as being because of the great similarity in skin color, and low instances of ethnic strife between Whites and Asians in the U.S. since World War II.

Interracial marriage disparities for certain races
Although mixed-race partnering has increased, the United States still shows huge disparities between black male and black female endogamy statistics. The 1990 census reports that 17.6% of black marriages occur with whites. Yet, it is found that black men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to a white woman than a black woman to a white man. In the 2000 census, 239,477 BM-WF and 95,831 WM-BF marriages were recorded, again showing the 2.5-1 ratio. But despite this, slightly more white men are married than white women, showing that white women are not as likely to marry interracially.

One major reason is that there is also a disparity between Asian women and Asian men: according to the census data from 2000, Asian American women were 2.9 times more likely to be married to a white man (398,349) than Asian American men married to a white woman (136,358). For other racial groups, non-Hispanic white men are slightly more likely to marry women of those groups than vice versa. With blacks and Asians, the ratios are even further imbalanced, with 28,500 BM-AF and 4,841 AM-BF marriages recorded.

A similar trend can be seen in the UK. According to the 2001 census, black males were around 50% more likely than black females to marry outside their race, whereas women of Chinese origin were twice as likely as their male counterparts to marry someone from a different ethnic group.

For the purpose of comparison, roughly four times as many Japanese men are married to foreign wives as Japanese women are married to foreign husbands, according to recent data. However, there is significant disparity in the country of origin of the partners: while 83% of foreign women married to Japanese men come from just three regions—China (35%), the Philippines (27%), and the Koreas (21%)—the foreign partners of Japanese women are more diverse, with the Koreas representing 32%, "other" (i.e., not the Koreas, China, the Philippines, Thailand, the US, the UK, Brazil, and Peru) at 28%, and the US at 19%. (For historical reasons, figures for partners with North or South Korean citizenship consist almost entirely of Korean nationals born in Japan; see Zainichi Koreans.) In any event, the absolute numbers are small, as just over 1% of Japan's population is foreign.

A new term has arisen recently to describe the social phenomenon of the "marriage squeeze" for African American females. The marriage squeeze refers to the belief that the most eligible and desirable black men are marrying non-black women, leaving black women wishing to marry black men with fewer partnering options. There is a corollary "squeeze" for Asian American males. Controversially, this may be due to the desire to "marry up," i.e., black men choose to marry white women, and white men choose Asian women.

Education and interracial marriage
Using PUMS data from both the 1980 and 1990 U.S. Census to determine trends among interracial marriage among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, it may be seen that endogamy (marrying within race) was more prevalent for African American men at lower educational levels. In 1980, the numbers were as follows: African American males without a high school diploma participated in endogamy at 96.5%; for those who received a high school diploma, 95.6%; for a college degree and above, the percentage of endogamy dropped to 94.0%. However, the rates for African American women changed very little with different educational attainment levels. For the African American woman who had not received a high school diploma the rate is 98.7%, high school diploma is 98.6%, with some college it is 98.2%, and college degree and more, 98.5%. And, during this time, there was a significant increase in marriages between whites and African Americans maintaining that African Americans are most likely to marry whites over other groups.

The 1990 results show that rates of endogamy dropped for both males and females, albeit more for the African American male. In 1990, a black male with a college degree and more was participating in endogamy at 90.4%, for a black female with the same educational attainment level, 96.4%. The results for the propensity of individuals at higher educational attainment levels to participate less in endogamy over the 10 year period were similar across races, including whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.

Immigrants and interracial marriage
It is found that racial endogamy is much stronger for immigrants as compared to natives; it is 4.9 times more likely for black immigrants than for African Americans. Additionally, black immigrants have the highest rates of endogamy of immigrants. Also, black immigrants are much more likely to marry other same-race immigrants and African Americans, than to out-marry racially. Native-born whites are also 1.6 times more likely to marry a native-born black than an immigrant counterpart. Immigrant black women are generally more likely to marry native-born whites than their male counterparts.

Cohabitation and interracial marriage
Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to a white spouse and 3.3 times more likely to be cohabitating with a white person, as compared to their black female counterparts. Research yields that 7% of married black men are with white wives and 15% of black men cohabit with white women.