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Interracial marriage

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File:Othellopainting.jpeg

Othello and Desdemona from William Shakespeare's Othello, a play concerning an interracial couple.

Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry, often creating multiracial children. This is a form of exogamy (marrying outside of one's social group) and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation (mixing of different racial groups in marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations).

Legality of interracial marriage[]

Main article: Anti-miscegenation laws

In the Western world certain jurisdictions have had regulations banning or restricting interracial marriage in the past, including Germany during the Nazi period, South Africa under apartheid, and many states in the United States prior to the Supreme Court's 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia. In both Nazi Germany and certain American states, such laws have been linked to eugenics programs[1].

In many Arabic nations, laws and customs continue to exist which revoke the civil rights of women who marry men not native to the woman's country of birth, or to men who are non-Muslim in particular. Women who follow through on this choice run a high risk of being subjected to honor killings by male family members.[2][3][4] Saudi-Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Jordan, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan and the Palestinian Authority retain laws in which violence against women on the grounds of "adultery" is condoned or mitigated by the legal systems.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] In 2008, Pakistani senators defended the practice of burying young women alive who were judged guilty by tribal elders of having engaged in a relationship with men not of their tribe.[12]

According to the report of the Special Rapporteur submitted to the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2002) concerning cultural practices in the family that reflect violence against women (E/CN.4/2002/83), similar such legal situations where the law is interpreted to allow men to kill female relatives in a premeditated effort as well as for crimes of passions, in flagrante delicto in the act of committing adultery, include: Argentina, Equador, Iran, Israel, Peru and Venezuela.[13]

United States[]

See also: Multiracial American and Race (United States Census)
File:Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving.jpg

The plaintiffs in Loving v. Virginia, Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving became the historically most prominent interracial couple through their legal struggle.

In Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem (1948), Gunnar Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern Caucasian Americans on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, "social equality" including dancing, handshaking, and most important, marriage. This ranking scheme seems to explain the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell. Of less importance was the segregation in basic public facilities, which was abolished with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most tenacious form of legal segregation, the banning of interracial marriage, was not fully lifted until the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down in 1967 by the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia.

Census Bureau statistics[]

The number of interracial marriages registered by the United States Census Bureau has continued to steadily increase since the Supreme Court's 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, but also continues to represent an absolute minority among the total number of marriages recorded. According to the 1993 Census, 310,000 interracial marriages were registered by 1970, 651,000 by 1980 and 1,161,000 by 1992, accounting for 0.7%, 1.3% and 2.2% of the total marriage numbers during those years, respectively. With the introduction of the "mixed-race" category, the 2000 census showed interracial marriage to be somewhat further widespread, accounting for 2,669,558 such marriages, or 4.9% of the total.[14] These statistics do not take into account the mixing of ancestries within the same race; e.g. a marriage involving Indian and Japanese ancestries would not be classified as interracial due to the Census regarding both as the same category. Likewise, the Census Bureau does not consider Hispanic to be a race but an ethnicity. Consequently, Hispanic marriages with non-Hispanics are not registered as interracial if both partners are of the same race (i.e. a White Hispanic marrying a non-Hispanic White partner).[14]

Married Couples in the United States in 2006:[15]
White Wife Black Wife Asian Wife Other Wife
White Husband 50,224,000 117,000 530,000 489,000
Black Husband 286,000 3,965,000 34,000 45,000
Asian Husband 174,000 6,000 2,493,000 13,000
Other Husband 535,000 23,000 41,000 558,000

Based on these statistics:

  • Caucasian Americans are the least likely to marry interracially, although in absolute terms Caucasian Americans are involved in interracial marriages more than any other racial group. 1.9% of married Caucasian American women and 2.2% of married Caucasian American men have a non-Caucasian American spouse. 1.0% of married Caucasian American men are married to an Asian American woman, and 1.0% of married Caucasian American women are married to a man classified as "other".
  • 3.7% of married African American women and 8.4% of married African American men have a non-African American spouse. 6.6% of married African American men, and 2.8% of married African American women, have a Caucasian American spouse. Only 0.1% of married African American women are married to an Asian American man, representing the least represented marital combination.
  • There is a notable disparity in the rates of exogamy by Asian American males and females. Only 25% of Asian American/Caucasian American marriages involve an Asian American male and Caucasian American female, and only 15% Asian American/African American marriages involve an Asian American male and a African American female. 19.5% of married Asian American women and 7.2% of married Asian American men have a non-Asian American spouse.

Interracial marriage by pairing[]

Asian and Caucasian[]

Marriages between Caucasian Americans and Asian Americans in the United States are becoming increasingly common for both genders (Lange, 2005), however marriages between Caucasian men and Asian women have continued to outnumber the reverse coupling by four to one.[15] In 1990, about 69 percent of married Asian American women aged between 18 and 30 were married to Asian American men, while 25 percent had Caucasian husbands.[16] By 2006, 41 percent of Asian American-born women were registered as having Caucasian husbands, while 50 percent were married to Asian American men .[15] C.N. Le estimated that the gender gap is smaller among the American-born or 1.5 generation Asian Americans.[17] Asian Americans of both genders who are U.S.-raised are much more likely to be married to Caucasians than their non-U.S.-raised counterparts. Not all Asian ethnicities have similar intermarriage patterns; for instance, Indian Americans were overwhelmingly endogamous, with only a small amount of outmarriage to other ethnic groups. The interracial marriage disparity for Indian Americans was low, with outmarriage to Caucasian Americans slightly higher for Indian American males, whereas all other major Asian groups had more outmarriage for women.[17]

African and Caucasian[]

File:Robert De Niro and Grace Hightower in 2008.jpg

Robert De Niro and his wife Grace Hightower at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

Although mixed-race partnering has increased, the United States still shows disparities between African American male and African American female endogamy statistics. The 1990 census reports that 17.6% of African American marriages occur with Caucasian Americans. African American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to Caucasian American women than African American women to Caucasian American men. In the 2006 census, 286,000 African American male to Caucasian American female and 117,000 Caucasian American male to African American female marriages were recorded. In 2007, 4.6% of married African Americans were married to a Caucasian American partner, and 0.4% of married Caucasian Americans were married to an African American[18].

Native American and Asian[]

Filipino Americans have frequently married Native American and Alaskan Native people. In the 17th century, when Filipinos were under Spanish rule, the Spanish colonists ensured a Filipino trade between the Philippines and the Americas. When the Mexicans revolted against the Spanish, the Filipinos first escaped into Mexico, then traveled to Louisiana, where the exclusively male Filipinos married Native American women. In the 1920s, Filipino American communities of workers also grew in Alaska, and Filipino American men married Alaskan Native women.[19]. On the west coast, Filipino Americans married Native American women in Bainbridge Island, Washington.[19].

"[I]n the 1920s Japanese men married Eskimo women throughout western Alaska." During the 1930s, there was relatively frequent intermarriage between Japanese Americans and Cherokee Indians in California, since these ethnic groups were introduced or hired as farm laborers and they worked together.[20]

Asian and African[]

With African Americans and Asian Americans, the ratios are even further imbalanced, with 59.8% more Asian female/African male marriages than Asian male/African female marriages. [14] However, C.N. Le estimated that Asian Americans of the 1.5 generation and of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups had African American male/Asian American female marriages 27.2% more than Asian American male/African American female relationships.[17] Even though the disparity between African American and Asian American interracial marriages by gender is high according to the 2000 US Census, [14] the total numbers of Asian American/African American interracial marriages are low, numbering only 0.22% percent for Asian American male marriages and 1.30% percent of Asian female marriages, partially contributed by the recent flux of Asian immigrants.

File:Mixed-couple.jpg

A Filipina bride and Nigerian groom walk down the aisle.

Historically, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese Americans immigrated to the Southern states, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. The tenth US Census of Louisiana counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese Americans to be with African Americans and 43% to be with Caucasian American women. After the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese American men had fewer potential ethnically Chinese wives, so they increasingly married African American women on the West Coast[21]. In Jamaica and other Caribbean nations as well many Chinese males over past generations took up African wives, gradually assimilating or absorbing many Chinese descendants into the African Caribbean community or the overall mixed-race community.

Native American and Caucasian[]

The interracial disparity between genders among Native Americans is low. According to the 1990 US Census (which only counts indigenous people with US-government-recognized tribal affiliation), Native American women intermarried Caucasian Americans 2% more than Native American men married Caucasian American women.[22]. Historically in Latin America, and to a lesser degree in the United States, Native Americans have married out at a high rate. Many countries in Latin America have large Mestizo populations; in many cases, mestizos are the largest ethnic group in their respective countries.

Native American and African[]

Interracial unions between Amerindians in Latin America is somewhat commonplace and there is a relatively large population of mixed African-Amerindian people in Latin America commonly called "Zambos" or "Cafusos". In the United States and Canada, interracial unions between American Indians and African-Americans has also been high throughout the 18th through early 20th century resulting in most African-Americans being a fraction American Indian.

See: Black Indians

Marriage squeeze[]

A term has arisen to describe the social phenomenon of the so-called "marriage squeeze" for African American females[23]. The "marriage squeeze" refers to the fact that the most "eligible" and "desirable" African American men are marrying non-African American women at a higher rate, leaving African American women who wish to marry African American men with fewer partnering options. According to Newsweek, 43% of African American women between the ages of 30 and 34 have never been married.[24] Several explanations of this phenomenon have been advanced by sociologists. It may be in part due to the still lingering effects of social ostracism which Caucasian American men who married African American women were heavily subjected in the past. It may also be the result of a desire among African American women to marry African American men due to concepts such as racial loyalty.[How to reference and link to summary or text] There also appears a lingering perception that negative social stereotypes cause black women to be viewed as sexual objects by non-African American men.[How to reference and link to summary or text] Lastly, there is a desire among educated women of all races to marry partners within or above their social and economic class; when African American women restrict their marriage prospects to African American men, African American women risk either marrying below their socioeconomic class or not marrying at all as African American women consistently achieve better completion rates in higher education than African American men do.[25]. Also, rates of incarceration for marriage-age African American males are far higher than rates for females, further contributing to the male/female gap. As of 2002, 10.4% of all African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison.[26] The African-American male-female disparity is highest between the ages of 25 – 29, when for every two African-American men, there are nearly three African-American women. [27]

According to AsianWeek, possible explanations for the relatively low number of African American/Asian American interracial couplings could be covert racism from first generation family members at the idea of marrying African Americans. These negative views on African Americans possibly stem from stereotypes within the Asian community which portray African Americans as "violent" and "lazy", or from the perception that marrying a black partner constitutes "marrying down" because black Americans are on average less affluent than Caucasian Americans.[28]

Education and interracial marriage[]

Using PUMS data from both the 1980 and 1990 US Census to determine trends within interracial marriage among Caucasian Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans, it may be seen that endogamy (marrying within race) was more prevalent for African American men at lower education 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 those with 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 levels. For the African American woman who had not received a high school diploma the rate was 98.7%, high school diploma was 98.6%, with some college it was 98.2%, and college degree or higher, 98.5%. During this time there was a significant increase in marriages between Caucasians and African Americans, maintaining that African Americans are most likely to marry Caucasians 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, an African American male with a college degree and more was participating in endogamy at 90.4%; for an African American female with the same educational 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 Caucasians, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.

Immigrants and interracial marriage[]

Racial endogamy is much stronger for immigrants as compared to natives.[29] Immigrants of African descent are 4.9 times more likely than African Americans to marry within their race.[30] Additionally, immigrants of African descent have the highest rates of endogamy of immigrants. African immigrants are much more likely to marry other same-race immigrants and African Americans, than to out-marry racially. Native-born Caucasian Americans are also 1.6 times more likely to marry a native-born African American than an immigrant of African descent. Female immigrants of African descent are more likely to marry native-born Caucasians than are their male counterparts.

Interracial marriage versus cohabitation[]

In the United States, rates of interracial cohabitation are significantly higher than those of marriage. Although only 7 percent of married African American men have Caucasian American wives, 13 percent of cohabitating African American men have Caucasian American partners. 25 percent of married Asian American women have Caucasian spouses, but 45 percent of cohabitating Asian American women are with Caucasian American men—higher than the percentage cohabitating with Asian men (44 percent)[16]. These numbers suggest that the prevalence of intimate interracial contact is greatly underestimated when one focuses only on marriage data.[16]

Africa[]

Indian men have married many African women in Africa. Indians have long been traders in East Africa. The British Empire brought workers into East Africa to build the Uganda Railway. Indians eventually populated South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Zaire in small numbers. These interracial unions were mostly unilateral marriages between Indian men and East African women[31].

Australia[]

See also: Demographics of Australia

In 2005 there were slightly more marriages by Australian resident women (13,079) to foreign-born partners than by Australian resident men (12,714). Australian-born male and female residents who married that year were most likely to have married an Australian-born partner (84.1% of marriages involving Australian men; 83.7% of marriages involving Australian females). Male Australian residents who were born in China and were married in 2005 were least likely to have married an Australian-born resident (only 3.1% of marriages involving a Chinese-born groom were to an Australian-born bride). Female Australian residents who were born in Vietnam and were married in 2005 were least likely to have married an Australian-born resident (only 15.7% of marriages involving a Vietnamese-born bride were to an Australian-born groom). Only 8.8% of males, and 11% of females, who were American-born Australian residents and married in 2005, married another person from the United States.

In terms of variance between brides and grooms from particular countries in marrying native Australians, 36.7% of brides but only 7.9% of grooms born in countries defined as 'North Asia' (Japan and Korea) who married in 2005 did so to an Australian-born partner. Conversely, 64.1% of grooms but only 43.8% of brides born in Lebanon who married in 2005 did so to an Australian-born partner.[32].

Japan[]

In 2003 there were 36,039 international marriages between Japanese and non-Japanese in Japan - about one out of twenty marriages. About 80% of these interracial marriages involved a Japanese male marrying a foreign female (predominantly Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Thai, Indian and Brazilian), and 20% involve marriage to a foreign husband (predominantly Korean, American, Chinese, British and Brazilian)[33].

South Korea[]

International marriages now make up 13 percent of all marriages in Korea. Most of these marriages are unions between a Korean male and a foreign female (mostly from Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and China) [34].

United Kingdom[]

See also: United Kingdom Census 2001

As of 2001, 2% of all UK marriages are interethnic. Despite having a much lower non-white population (9%), mixed marriages are as common as in the United States[35]. New Studies are being conducted by London South Bank University called Parenting 'Mixed' Children: Negotiating Difference and Belonging[36][37].

Interracial marriage gender disparities for certain groups[]

According to the UK 2001 census [35], British African males were around 50% more likely than black females to marry outside their race. British Chinese women (30%) were twice as likely as their male counterparts (15%) to marry someone from a different ethnic group. Among British Asians, referring mainly to South Asians, males were twice as likely to have an inter-ethnic marriage as were their female counterparts.


References[]

  1. ↑ Reiss, Rebecca The Scary Science Of Sir Francis Galton And Jonathan Wells. Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  2. ↑
    1. redirect Template:Cite web
  3. ↑ Jody K. Biehl. The death of a Muslim woman - "The Whore Lived Like a German". URL accessed on 2008-09-20.
  4. ↑ Hillary Mayell. Thousands of Women Killed for Family "Honor". URL accessed on 2008-09-20.
  5. ↑ Altstein,Howard;Simon, Rita James (2003). Global perspectives on social issues: marriage and divorce, 11, Lexington, Mass: LexingtonBooks.
  6. ↑
    1. redirect Template:Cite web
  7. ↑
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  8. ↑ Jordan quashes 'honour crimes' law. Al Jazeera. URL accessed on 2008-09-27.
  9. ↑
    1. redirect Template:Cite web
  10. ↑
    1. redirect Template:Cite web
  11. ↑ New Report Shows Saudi Ministry Textbooks Still Teach Extreme Intolerance. PR Newswire. URL accessed on 2008-09-27.
  12. ↑ Ahmed Hassan, Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan). Pakistan: Activists respond to women buried alive; no cultural justifications for murder!. URL accessed on 2008-09-20.
  13. ↑
    1. redirect Template:Cite web
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Census 2000 PHC-T-19. Hispanic Origin and Race of Coupled Households: 2000. (PDF) U. S. Census Bureau.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Table FG4. Married Couple Family Groups, by Presence of Own Children/1 In Specific Age Groups, and Age, Earnings, Education, and Race and Hispanic Origin/2 of Both Spouses: 2006. U. S. Census Bureau.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Swanbrow, Diane Intimate Relationships Between Races More Common Than Thought. University of Michigan. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Le, C.N. Interracial Dating & Marriage. Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America. URL accessed on 2008-10-04.
  18. ↑ Fryer, Jr., Roland G. (Spring 2007). Guess Who’s Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century. Journal of Economic Perspectives 21 (2): 71–90.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Asian and Native Intermarriage in the US. Color Q World. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  20. ↑ Le Espiritu, Yen (November 2001). Williams-León, Teresa; Nakashima, Cynthia L. The Sum of Our Parts: Mixed-Heritage Asian Americans, 71, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
  21. ↑ The United States. Chinese blacks in the Americas. Color Q World. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  22. ↑ Race of Wife by Race of Husband. U.S. Bureau of the Census. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  23. ↑ Crowder, Kyle D., Tolnay, Stewart E. (August 2000). A New Marriage Squeeze for Black Women: The Role of Racial Intermarriage by Black Men. Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (3): 792–80.
  24. ↑ The Black Gender Gap. Gene Expression. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  25. ↑ includeonly>Melendez, Michele M.. "Fewer Women are 'Marrying up'", The San Diego Union-Tribune, 2004-04-25. Retrieved on 2008-07-15.
  26. ↑ Harrison, Paige M., Beck, Allen J. (2003). Prisoners in 2002. (PDF) Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin. U. S. Department of Justice: Office of Justice Programs. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  27. ↑ O'Connor, Vikki (2006). Barriers to Marriage and Parenthood for African-American Men & Women. (PDF) Syracuse University. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  28. ↑ Lavilla, Stacy (1998). The Minority Interracial Couples. AsianWeek. URL accessed on 2008-09-25.
  29. ↑ Qian, Zhenchao, Lichter, Daniel T. (June 2001). Measuring Marital Assimilation: Intermarriage among Natives and Immigrants. Social Science Research 30 (2): 289–312.
  30. ↑ Quian, Zhenchao, Lichter, Daniel T. (2001). Measuring Marital Assimilation: Intermarriage among Natives and Immigrants. (PDF) Social Science Research. Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University. URL accessed on 2008-09-02.
  31. ↑ Jotawa: Afro-Asians in East Africa. Color Q World. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  32. ↑ 3306.0.55.001 - Marriages, Australia, 2005. Australian Bureau of Statistics. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  33. ↑ includeonly>"Now, One Out of 20 Marriages are Mixed!", Japan: Behind the Scenes, Hiragana Times. Retrieved on 2008-07-15.
  34. ↑ Hae-in, Shin Korea Greets New Era of Multiculturalism. The Korea Herald. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Inter-Ethnic Marriage: 2% of all Marriages are Inter-Ethnic. National Statistics. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.
  36. ↑ includeonly>Smith, Laura. "Mixed Matches", Society, The Guardian, 2007-09-26. Retrieved on 2008-07-15.
  37. ↑ Caballero, Chamion, Edwards, Rosalind Cultures of Mixing: Parents from Different Racial, Ethnic and/or Faith Backgrounds. London South Bank University. URL accessed on 2008-07-15.

External links[]

  • Asian-Nation Interracial Dating & Marriage Among Asian Americans
  • Asian-White.org Informational Site On Asian and Caucasian Romantic Relationships


See also[]


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