Mixed Race Studies

 The Rise of Intermarriage: Rates, Characteristics Vary by Race and Gender

Pew Social and Demographic Trends
Pew Research Center
Washington, DC
2012-02-16
56 pages

Wendy Wang, Research Associate

Note from Steven F. Riley: The Pew Social and Demographic Trends data is report from 2010-06-04 for the year 2008, titled “Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic” is here.

Page 10 of the report states,

Backdrop and Recent Changes: The increasing popularity of intermarriage in the U.S. happens at a time when fewer people are getting married and the share of adults currently married has reached a historic low. [See the report “Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married—A Record Low,”]  The number of new marriages in the U.S. has declined from approximately 2.3 million in 2008 to 2.1 million in 2010. Only about half of U.S. adults (51%) are currently married. The share is highest among Asians (61%) and lowest among African Americans (31%), with whites (55%) and Hispanics (48%) in between.

For new marriages in 2008 to 2010 period, black male exogamy increased from 21.7% to 23.6% (from 1 in 5 to 1 in 4) and black female exogamy increased from 8.9% to 9.3% (relatively steady at 1 in 11). Asian male exogamy decreased from 19.5% to 16.6% (from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6) and Asian female exogamy decreased from 39.5% to 36.1% (from 2 in 5 to 2 in 6).

This report contains no data on the “exogamy” of individuals who identify with more than one racial group.

Executive Summary
 
This report analyzes the demographic and economic characteristics of newlyweds who marry spouses of a different race or ethnicity, and compares the traits of those who “marry out” with those who “marry in.” The newlywed pairs are grouped by the race and ethnicity of the husband and wife, and are compared in terms of earnings, education, age of spouse, region of residence and other characteristics. This report is primarily based on the Pew Research Center’s analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) in 2008-2010 and on findings from three of the Center’s own nationwide telephone surveys that explore public attitudes toward intermarriage. For more information about data sources and methodology, see Appendix 1.

Key findings:

• The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
• Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
• At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
• However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
• Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
• Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
• Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
• Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
• Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Chapter 1: Overview
• Chapter 2: Characteristics of Intermarried Newlyweds
• Chapter 3: Intermarried Couples of Different Cohorts
• Chapter 4: Public Attitudes on Intermarriage
• Appendices
  1. Data & Methodology
  2. State and Regional Rates
  3. Detailed tables

Read the entire report here.

Intermarriage rates soar as stereotypes fall

The Washington Post
2012-02-16

Carol Morello

Virginia leads the nation in the percentage of marriages between blacks and whites, a new study by the Pew Research Center shows, barely four decades after state laws criminalizing interracial marriage were struck down by the Supreme Court. And one in five new married couples in the District crossed racial and ethnic lines.

The prevalence of intermarriage in and around the Washington area reflects demographic changes that are pushing interracial marriage rates to an all-time high in the United States while toppling historical taboos among younger people…

…Dan Lichter, a Cornell University sociologist who has studied intermarriage, said the trend shows the continuing blurring of racial boundaries.

“Different racial and ethnic minorities are increasingly sharing the same social space, in their neighborhoods, their job settings and schools,” Lichter said. “It’s a reflection of declining inequality on a lot of fronts, including income and education.”

But a postracial society remains a long way off, he added.

“Most of the minorities who outmarry are not marrying other minorities,” Lichter said. “They’re outmarrying to whites. It’s not a melting pot.”

Nathan Nash, a black man who is divorced from a Korean American woman he was married to for five years, said that is particularly true for African Americans. A technology consultant who used to live in the District and now lives in Orange County, Calif., Nash said he has Asian friends who would not consider dating blacks…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial marriage in US hits new high: 1 in 12

The Miami Herald
2012-02-16

Hope Yen, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Interracial marriages in the U.S. have climbed to 4.8 million—a record 1 in 12—as a steady flow of new Asian and Hispanic immigrants expands the pool of prospective spouses. Blacks are now substantially more likely than before to marry whites.

A Pew Research Center study, released Thursday, details a diversifying America where interracial unions and the mixed-race children they produce are challenging typical notions of race.

“The rise in interracial marriage indicates that race relations have improved over the past quarter century,” said Daniel Lichter, a sociology professor at Cornell University. “Mixed-race children have blurred America’s color line. They often interact with others on either side of the racial divide and frequently serve as brokers between friends and family members of different racial backgrounds,” he said. “But America still has a long way to go.”

The figures come from previous censuses as well as the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, which surveys 3 million households annually. The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. For purposes of defining interracial marriages, Hispanic is counted as a race by many in the demographic field…

Read the entire article here.

The Real American Love Story: Why America is a lot less white than it looks

Slate
1999-10-05

Brent Staples

The PBS broadcast last month of An American Love Story—a 10-hour film about an interracial family—spawned a great deal of chatter to the effect that mixed-race couplings were the wave of the future. In fact, they are the wave of the past. Interracial marriages accounted for only 2.2 percent of all marriages in the Current Population Survey of 1992, a gain of only two-tenths of a percent over 1980, and the number of mixed couplings actually decreased slightly in 1991. The census pattern suggests that slightly more interracial couples will fall into each other’s arms in the coming years but that there will be nothing resembling a dramatic acceleration of marriage across the color line.

But America already has almost 400 years of race mixing behind it, beginning with that first slave ship that sailed into Jamestown harbor carrying slaves who were already pregnant by members of the crew. Americans have grudgingly accepted the fact that sex between masters and slaves such as Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was frequent, leading to a many-hued race of people who do not look African at all, even though they call themselves “African-American.” Outside of recent African immigrants to the United States, there are virtually no black Americans of purely African descent, which is to say no black people who lack white ancestry, left in this country.

Four centuries of race mixing have had a similar impact on Americans who define themselves as white. Convincing estimates show that by 1950 about one in five white Americans had some African ancestry. This inheritance most often arrived at the bedroom door in the form of a fair-skinned black person who had slipped over the color line to live as white. Put another way, most Americans with African blood in their veins think of themselves as white and conduct themselves as such—and check “white” when they fill out census forms…

Read the entire article here.

Brazil in black and white? Race categories, the census, and the study of inequality

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Number 8, August 2012
pages 1466-
1483
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.607503

Mara Loveman, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Jeronimo O. Muniz, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Federal University of Minas Gerais

Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Many scholars advocate the adoption of a black-and-white lens for the analysis of racial inequality in Brazil. Drawing on a nationally representative dataset that includes race questions in multiple formats, we evaluate how removal of the ‘brown’ category from the census or other social surveys would likely affect: (1) the descriptive picture of Brazil’s racial composition; and (2) estimates of income inequality between and within racial categories. We find that a forced binary question format results in a whiter and more racially unequal picture of Brazil through the movement of many higher income mixed-race respondents into the white category. We also find that regardless of question format, racial inequality in income accounts for relatively little of Brazil’s overall income inequality. We discuss implications for public policy debates in Brazil, and for the broader scientific and political challenges of ethnic and racial data collection and analysis.

Read the entire article here.

Post-Racial? Americans and Race in the Age of Obama

The Greenlining Institute
Berkeley, California
November 2011
26 pages

Dr. Daniel Byrd, Research Director

Bruce Mirken, Media Relations Coordinator

Since the election of Barack Obama as the United States’ first African American president, there has been much discussion of whether this means the U.S. has become a “post-racial” society. Does race still matter in America? This question is particularly significant in light of the fact that within about three decades, people of color are projected to become the majority. Policy based on mistaken assumptions could cripple efforts to revive the U.S. economy. Using the most definitive survey data available, we investigated perceptions of race in America among different racial and ethnic groups and how those perceptions compare to measurable realities of U.S. society.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Recommendations
• Introduction
  • Methodology
  • America’s Changing Demographics
  • Race Relations in America
  • Perceptions of Discrimination and Inequality in America
  • Race and Health
  • Race and Income
  • Race and Treatment of Groups by the Federal Government
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Summary
  • A Call to Action
• References
• Appendix I
• Appendix II

Read the entire report here.

Virginia’s Caroline County, ‘Symbolic of Main Street USA’

The Washington Post
2012-02-10

Carol Morello

Bowling Green, Va. — Only a few easily overlooked markers note the importance of Mildred and Richard Loving in Caroline County, where five decades ago the sheriff rousted the white man and his black bride from their bed and carted them off to jail.

A small brass plaque in the county courthouse credits their landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, with overturning laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Their names are engraved on a granite obelisk, at the end of a list of prominent local African Americans. The county Web site devotes a page to their case.

Yet their legacy is everywhere in the small Tidewater towns and family farms that make up Caroline County, where a soaring number of people identify themselves as multiracial.

In the 2010 Census, 3 percent of Caroline County’s 28,500 residents were counted as of two or more races. Most are younger than 20. The phenomenon is both old and new.

Historical records show multiracial children in the county going back to slave-holding Colonial times. Today, their increasing ranks are part of a national trend that is changing the way people think and talk about race.

…Even in 1958, Caroline County was an unlikely place for an interracial couple to be arrested. An area known as Central Point had so many multiracial residents of white, black and Native American heritage that during segregation, their children all attended the county’s all-black high school. A major feature of Central Point is Passing Road — a name attributed in local lore to the many residents who could “pass” as white. Elderly residents of Central Point say they recall other interracial couples who had married out of state and lived quietly in the area….

…It’s not known how Mildred Loving, with her black and Native American heritage, identified herself in the 2000 Census. She died in 2008, 33 years after her husband died in a car crash. But in the 2010 Census, their daughter decided to check only one box when faced, like so many millions of other Americans, with boiling down a complex ancestry on a bureaucratic form.

“Native American,” said Peggy Loving Fortune, who is 52. “Just Native American.”…

Read the entire article here.

Answer Formats in British Census and Survey Ethnicity Questions: Does Open Response Better Capture ‘Superdiversity’?

Sociology
Volume 46, Number 2 (April 2012)
pages 354-364
DOI: 10.1177/0038038511419195

Peter J. Aspinall, Reader in Population Health at the Centre for Health Services Studies
University of Kent, UK

During a period of unprecedented ethnicity data collection in Britain, an almost universal characteristic of this practice has been the mandated use of the decennial census ethnicity classifications. In Canada and the USA a greater plurality of methods has included open response, now recommended for the 2020 US Census. As the ethnic diversity of Britain has increased, driven by immigration dynamics and population mixing leading to ‘superdiversity’, the census is no longer able to capture the new populations. The validity and utility of unprompted open response is examined in several ‘mixed race’ datasets. It is argued that open response can be a modus operandi for large-scale ethnicity data collection and that the lack of consistency in recording of such responses need not necessarily be viewed as a drawback. Open response offers substantial insights into the country’s superdiversity in a way that ethnicity categorization alone cannot.

Read or purchase the article here.

Racial Divides in a Multicultural America

The American Prospect
2011-01-31

Jamelle Bouie

In The New York Times, Susan Saulny writes about the apparent malleability of race in an increasingly multicultural America. To that end, she profiles a group of students in the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association at the University of Maryland:
 
Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that have defined Americans for generations in favor of a much more fluid sense of identity. Ask Michelle López-Mullins, a 20-year-old junior and the president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, how she marks her race on forms like the census, and she says, “It depends on the day, and it depends on the options.”

It’s interesting to see a group of kids who want to live in a colorblind—or at least, racially fluid—world. But I’m not sure how meaningful this is for future demographic trends. I’ve said this before, but it remains true that “black/non-black” is the main racial divide in American life. For proof, it’s useful to look at rates of interracial marriage:…

…The great majority of intermarriages take place between Hispanics, Asians, and whites. If there is a great population of multiracial people, it’s almost certain that they will be some combination of Hispanic and white, or Asian and white. Undoubtedly, some of these people will “become” white in our racial discourse. To paraphrase myself, by 2050 or so, we’ll have a large population of white people with Latino or Asian last names, and a cultural understanding similar to the descendants of ethnic European immigrants…

Read the entire article here.

Miscegenation Ball

The Atlantic
2011-02-01

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Senior Editor

Reporters should stop writing these beiging of America stories, and listen to Jamelle Boiue:

The great majority of intermarriages take place between Hispanics, Asians and whites. If there is a great population of multiracial people, it’s almost certain that they will be some combination of Hispanic and white, or Asian and white. Undoubtedly, some of these people will “become” white in our racial discourse. To paraphrase myself, by 2050 or so, we’ll have a large population of white people with Latino or Asian last names, and a cultural understanding similar to the descendants of ethnic European immigrants.

Of course, the American racial landscape goes beyond white/black/Latino/Asian. Which is why it’s important to understand the significance of a black/non-black divide. On nearly every measure—from income and education to housing and health—the distance between blacks and everyone else is large and enduring. Upwardly mobile immigrant groups have always counterpoised themselves against the descendants of slaves in an effort to attain the privileges of whiteness. This is a simplified analysis, but my guess is that the dynamic will remain, with a few alternations. Some ethnic immigrants may never “become” white, but since blackness retains this social stigma, it’s very likely we’ll understand them as non-black, which in practice, is the same.

This is a depressing perspective. But it’s not only the likely truth about our future, it’s the truth about our past. The first thing to understand is that race, as we know it, is an invention and a re-invention. You need not go back but a century to see people referring to the “Irish Race”  or the “Italian Race.”  or the “Hebrew Race.” Indeed, by the standards of the 19th century racialism, today’s “white people” are an unholy, mongrel mix.

And so it has long been with “blacks,” an ethnic group whose members range in appearance from Beyoncé and Charlie Rangel to Yaphet Kotto and India Arie. I love my family. But the photos from our Christmas Eve dinners immediately reveal that the notion that we’re all of the same “race” is not so much a statement of phenotype, but of culture and sociology. It should not be forgotten that both America’s president and First Lady have “white” ancestry.

Well-meaning neophytes often suggest that if people of different “races” screwed each other, we’d all look the same, and our problems would disappear. Unfortunately, such magical thinking underestimates the abiding complexity of human thought.In fact people of different “races,” have been screwing for over two millenia. Our response—over the past 500 years—has been to invent more races…

Read the entire article here.