I thought I would put up a graph depicting the race and gende break down of interracial marriages from the mid-1900s. We had a debate in the comment section over at Rachel’s Tavern last week, and I promised one of my readers that I would find the studies which indicated that marriages between black women and white men were more common until the 1960s. Here is data tabulated by David Heer from 1974. The 1960 Census was the first one to keep data on intermarried couples, and the change between 1960 and 1970 is important because laws against interracial marriage were ruled unconstitutional in the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia case. What is most striking to me is that the race/gender make-up of intermarried couples switched in the 1960s. I also checked several of the other studies at the time. As Ann correctly noted, none of those early deomographic studies covered the nation as a whole. One researchers Monohan ((Monahan, Thomas P. 1970. “Interracial marriage: data for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.” Demography 7:287-299. Monahan, Thomas P. 1976. “The Occupational class of couples entering into interracial marriages.” Journal of Comparative Studies 7: 175- 192.)) was able to get limited samples of cities or states, but comprehensive data was limited because it was not kept in many states. What is also striking is that there still were thousands of Black white marriages in the south in 1960 even though they were illegal in many of those states in 1960, which likely means that many of these couples were acting in defiance of the law. Surpisingly, the number of IR’s decreased in the south after the Supreme Court’s ruled laws against intermarriage illegal.
Table 1. Number of Black/White Marriages by Type and Region, US 1960 & 1970 
Heer, D.M. 1974. “The Prevalence of black-white marriage in the United States, 1960- 1970.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 35:246-258.))
I know many of you may also be interested in the current rates of Black American intermarriage. In the year 2000 Census there were 78,778 black woman/white man couples, and 208,789 black man/white woman couples, which means 72.6% of Black white marriages in 2000 werer between black men and white women. For those who are curious about Black intermarriage with other groups. Here are the stats:
Asians (BM/AF=27,520; BW/AM=4,472)
Pacific Islanders(BM/PF=2,248; BW/PM=492)
American Indians (BM/IF=7,398 BW/IM=3,751).
(Note on Data: Remember the Census does not conisider Latinos a race, so I have excluded Latinos from this analysis. I also exclude those people who marked more than one race. This is only for people who marked one race. BW= Black women and BM=Black man)
I don’t have a great deal of commentary other than to say regardless of the racial group Black men are much more likey to outmarry at this point and time.
This is one of Steve Sailer’s favorite topics.
Fascinating. Thanks for posting this!
I hadn’t thought of the big picture, really. There are two interracial couples in our very close circle, both black men, white women. (Just chance, I guess, anecdotal.) One couple, near our age, would have married 30 years ago or so, which still isn’t 1970; the other couple, the ages of our older children, would have married much more recently.
All this in San Francisco. Interracial marriage haven’t been unusual here for my adult lifetime anyway. Why the decreases in the South I wonder?
I would really like to know if census data also supports the stereotype (which exists at least in communities of Asian-Americans I’ve been part of) that Asian *women* tend to outmarry much more than Asian men.
Holly,
Holds true in my very limited circle, but again, that’s not data.
Yeah, I don’t have a citation, but it’s true; Asian American women outmarry much more than their male counterparts. In fact, Asian American men and black women are the least likely to outmarry of any other demographic in the US. I imagine it’s because Asian men are seen as less masculine than other men, while black women are seen as less feminine.
Hm. I know some pretty masculine – and attractive – Asian men. (Of course I’m married already!) All we can do is speculate I guess.
It seems strange to me that this is being tracked in terms of the total number of interracial marriages, with the only relative values being “% change.” I’m accustomed to seeing intermarriages between Jews and non-Jews counted in terms such as “number of intermarriages per 100 Jews,” as the Jewish community is larger or smaller in different times and places, which is really a different sort of shift than changing attitudes about education and marriage.
I checked your site Half Sigma, and you seem to be a decent, non-wingnutty asshat type, so I’ll just take this opportunity to tell you that no one needs to quote Steve Sailer on this topic, ever. The guy flat-out invented his own 2000 census statistics, and when called on his bullshit, curled up into an ass ball and slinkered away. I’d imagine he’s a big hit with the drunken frat boy type a la Borat, the ones who wanted slavery reinstated.
“Yeah, I don’t have a citation, but it’s true; Asian American women outmarry much more than their male counterparts.”
Parts of that are true. But there’s an important correction to be made here: Asian (American) women are much more likely to BE OUTMARRIED than we Asian males are. That little present perfect tense is the important part because it differentiates between first and second generation Asian Americans, as well as the rest of us from the captive war brides from Vietnam, a special case of first generationers. Given the small statistical size of Asian Americans, the latter is no small distortion. There’s also the case of mail order brides, which I don’t have to tell you skews asymmetrically, rice queens from San Fran notwithstanding.
As a whole, the Asian American community is hard to analyze. It is a tiny segment of the population at about 4%, but growing fast – both of which get in the way of meaningful analysis. The generation gap within the community is huge. Outmarriage rates for Asian Americans as a group are increasing fast – something not quite captured by the static relative comparisons that awkwardly pit AF vs. AM – as if it’s a Get Whitey showdown or something, I don’t know.
Did you misplace your asterisks there, Holly, or do I sense an interesting back story coming?
Extremely handy there, Rachel. I haven’t read the initial thread that prompted this chart, but I have a fair inkling on just what kind of poster would have pushed for it. Ugh. Some people really just shouldn’t live.
There’s a Law of Conservation of Sexualization of Other Races: it always exists, merely changes form. There’s fetishization, asexualization, and the targets are always shifting. There was a time when black males were seen as sexually inferior to White men, sort of how Asian men are seen today, only they got the added bonuses of Jim Crow, fire hoses, and strange fruit. Now, black males are sexually glorified/fetishized, while black females get burnt at both ends; either they are safely asexualized loud and fat types, or crack whores. And ne’er shall the twain meet.
I know it’s a wildly inaccurate standard, but does anyone know of movies with a black woman as a normal female romantic lead that aren’t exclusively ‘black’ movies? I can think of MI2, Something New… Rent, if you count Rosario Dawson as black. Even that teeny bopper Guess Who, with that fop Ashton Kutcher, has to make this list because nothing else comes to mind.
Asian American women were outmarried at a rate of 22% according to the 2000 Census. 77% of these marriages were to white men.
Asian American men were outmarried at a rate of 9% according to the 2000 Census. 67% of these marriages were to white women.
Hispanic American women were outmarried at a rate of 18% according to the 2000 Census.
Hispanic American men were outmarried at a rate of 15% according to the 2000 Census.
Just putting the information out there.
The rates are probably related to racialized gender stereotypes of Asian and Hispanic men and women.
It’s actually almost exactly 20%, not 22% (479/2393), but that’s just quibbling. What’s not just quibbling is that the 2000 census measured existing marriages, not some finger-to-the-vein mesaure of a ‘likelihood-to-marry’ from within a static time frame (can you imagine?). So my grammatical quibble still holds: the AF/AM outmarriage ratio should be expressed in the present perfect tense. You stated it as past progressive, implying that at the time of the census the appropriate tense would have been present progressive. That makes a difference, because it leaves out the 200,000 women who were taken back to America as war brides during the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. In a subpopulation that makes up 4% of the total populace, this makes a difference.
Why am I so anal about this distinction? Because Steve Sailer and that ilk are trying to peddle the lie that the outmarrying ratio of AF/AM is either static or even widening, when of course it is anything but – consider the outmarriage statistics of 1.5 gen/US raised versus that of all Asians. (What is more striking than comparing the two, more so than the slow but steady reduction of the gender gap in outmarriage, is the absolute growth of outmarriage rates for both genders.) I’m sorry I don’t have a chart handy, but most Asian American advocacy sites will have one, neatly broken down by particular ethnicity (Vietnamese, Chinese, Pacific Islander, Filipino, etc. etc.).
I mean, I know griping ain’t sexy – thank god for the anonymity of the internet ;) – but as an AM I know what is implied in these discussions.
One sad effect of all this has been a noticeable rift along gender lines in young AA forums and newsgroups, which is a real shame because we must all stand together; ours is a community that really doesn’t need any more excuses to put off asserting our own cultural identity for more temporary acceptance from whitey. (Chinese-American playwright Frank Chin summed it up best when he said that AA’s were the ‘kiss ass’ minority.)
Similarities exist in Black America, in the opposite direction (on this, and perhaps only this, Sailer is correct). Which is why Rachel’s post on past Black intermarriage trends is so important. I’m sure we’ve all met people who, either explicitly or through implication, try to imply that Africans are a naturally ‘masculine’ stock and that thus African and Black American women are less attractive in some objective sense. (In my experience, many, many AM seem to believe this. Just too damn stupid and petty to see the big picture.) That the outmarriage gap didn’t always exist and in fact went in the other way in the past is a serious thorn in the racist side. (In fact, I think I’ll go post there next.)
Sorry, for some reason I thought I was writing in a different thread. So the ‘other thread’ I mentioned was actually this one.
Oh cool, it’s 20% and not 22%. I’d have to look at the Census link again. It’s the 2000 Census of currently married people. The Census comes out every ten years so we’ll have the same measure in 2010. Hopefully, the gap will be closing. I wouldn’t listen to anything SS says and I think other people are saying the gap is closing too.
As far as war brides in the 40s, 50s and 60s, if they weren’t married to their war husbands in 2000, they weren’t included in the 2000 Census as married people. I don’t know what this has to do with married people in 2000, even if there were a lot of war brides who later divorced.