Mixed Race Studies

I wouldn’t, But You Can: Attitudes toward Interracial Relationships

Social Science Research
Published online: 2011-11-18
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.11.007

Melissa R. Herman, Visiting Researcher of the Research Unit
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung
also Assistant Professor, Sociology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

Using the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we study Whites’ attitudes towards dating, cohabiting with, marrying, and having children with African Americans and Asian Americans. We find that 29% of White respondents reject all types of relationships with both groups whereas 31% endorse all types. Second, Whites are somewhat less willing to marry and bear children interracially than to date interracially. These attitudes and behaviors are related to warmth toward racial outgroups, political conservatism, age, gender, education, and region. Third, White women are likely to approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves, while White men express more willingness to engage in such relationships personally, particularly with Asians. However, neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in interracial relationships. Thus, positive global attitudes toward interracial relationships do not translate into high rates of actual interracial cohabitation or marriage.

Highlights

• Whites are more willing date interracially than to intermarry or bear multiracial children.
• These attitudes are related to outgroup warmth, conservatism, age, gender, education & region.
• White women generally approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves.
• White men generally approve of interracial relationships both personally and globally.
• Neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in one.

Exploring Gloria Anzaldúa’s Methodology in Borderlands/La Frontera—The New Mestiza

Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge
Volume IV, Special Issue, Summer 2006
pages 87-94
ISSN: 1540-5699

Jorge Capetillo-Ponce, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Boston

Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera—The New Mestiza does not fit into the usual critical categories simply because she follows inclination of interest, as opposed to working at achieving systematization. Not only does she shift continually from analysis to meditation, and refuse to recognize disciplinary barriers, but she speaks poetically even when dealing with cultural, political, and social issues. Indeed her method, like Simmel’s, is more akin to “style” in art than it is to “analysis” or “inquiry” in the social sciences. A critic proclaims her/his own incompetence, however, if the mere fact that a text has a certain interdisciplinary quality scares him/her away from her/his rightful task of elucidating its various historical, philosophical, sociological, psychological, and literary elements. In this article, I herewith take up that pleasant task, via this brief sketch pointing us toward a deeper comprehension of Anzaldúa’s Borderlands.

Read the entire article here.