Interracial marriage
Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different "races" or racialized ethnicities.
In the past, such marriages were outlawed in certain U.S. states, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation — a term which first appeared in Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, a hoax anti-abolitionist pamphlet published in 1864. Even in 1960, interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 U.S. states.
It became legal throughout the United States in 1967, following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the case Loving v. Virginia, which ruled that race-based restrictions on marriages, such as the anti-miscegenation law in the state of Virginia, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.
Legality
Interracial marriage has been internationally protected under the UN's "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights" which has granted the right to marriage "without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion", since it was approved in 1948. Since its enactment, it has been accepted by nearly every nation on the globe. Despite this, interracial marriage was not legalized in all U.S. states until Loving v. Virginia in 1967 which legalized interracial marriage in all fifty states. In addition, the UDHR is not legally binding and thus it is not necessarily reflective of global policies on interracial marriage.A 2013 Gallup poll found that 11 percent of Americans said they disapprove of interracial marriage, compared with 94% who disapproved in 1958.
In 1958, actor Sammy Davis Jr., who had faced a backlash for his involvement with a white woman, actress Kim Novak, briefly married a black woman to protect himself from mob violence. The opposition to interracial marriage in the United States prior to its legalization in 1967 was reflected by former president Harry S. Truman in 1963 who when asked by a reporter if interracial marriage would become widespread in the United States he responded, "I hope not; I don't believe in it. Would you want your daughter to marry a Negro? She won't love someone who isn't her color." African Americans' approval of interracial marriage has consistently been higher than whites' over the decades, and in 2013 Blacks' approval is now nearly universal, while whites' approval is at 84%. In 2021, 94% of U.S. adults approved of interracial marriages. In the past, many jurisdictions have had regulations banning or restricting not just interracial marriage but also interracial sexual relations, including Germany during the Nazi period, South Africa under apartheid, and many states in the United States prior to the 1967 landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia.
Complications
A 2008 study by Jenifer Bratter and Rosalind King conducted on behalf of the Education Resources Information Center examined whether crossing racial boundaries in the United States increased the risk of divorce. Comparisons across marriage cohorts revealed that, overall, interracial couples have higher rates of divorce, particularly for those that married during the late 1980s. A 2009 study by Yuanting Zhang and Jennifer Van Hook also found that interracial couples were at increased risk of divorce. One consistent finding of this research was that gender is significantly related to divorce risk. Interracial marriages involving a White woman have a higher risk of divorce, as compared with interracial marriages involving Asian or Black women.According to authors Stella Ting-Toomey and Tenzin Dorjee, the increased risk of divorce observed in couples with a White wife may be related to decreased support from family members and friends. They note that White women were viewed as "unqualified" by their non-White in-laws to raise and nurture mixed race children, due to their lack of experience in "navigating American culture as a minority". A 2018 study by Jennifer Bratter and Ellen Whitehead found that white women with mixed race children were less likely to receive family support than were non-white women with mixed race children.
In one study, White women married to Black men were more likely to report incidents of racial discrimination in public, such as inferior restaurant service or police profiling, compared to other interracial pairings. Such discriminatory factors may place these marriages at an increased risk of divorce. A study published in 2008 reported a lower risk of divorce for inter-ethnic marriages between Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites. However, another study, published in 2011, found that these intermarriages were at an increased risk of divorce. Gender was found to be related to the probability of divorce, with marriages involving White women and Hispanic men having the highest risk of divorce.
Benefits
Positive interracial encounters
A benefit of interracial marriages is that it increases the opportunity for positive interracial encounters. Research has found a reduction in prejudice and discrimination towards members of an out-group when one has positive interracial encounters. For instance, a meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp found intergroup friendship was associated with decreased intergroup prejudice. This can be explained by the "Contact Hypothesis" which is the idea that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce in-group out-group prejudice. This contact does not have to be direct, but it could also be vicarious. For instance, Wright et al. found Caucasians who report knowing another Caucasian with an inter-race friend had fewer negative attitudes about non-Caucasians regardless of direct level of contact.They created a competition between two groups who thought the groups had been formed based on similarity. After an intergroup hostility had been established, participants observed a member of an in-group member complete a task with an out-group person. The participant observed the confederate acting differently depending on the condition she observed. In the positive condition, the confederates hugged and greeted each other as pre-existing friends. In the neutral condition, the confederates were polite to each other but not necessarily friendly. In the hostile condition, the confederates acted as if they were pre-existing enemies. Participants who were in the positive condition rated the out-group more positively on both negative characteristics such as "inflexible" and positive characteristics such as "intelligent". They concluded that merely observing a positive in-group member act positively towards an out-group member increases positive feelings towards the out-group This is a benefit of interracial marriages because they tend to involve the families and friends of the interracial partners coming together and forming relationships with one another. Consequently, this diversity within a family system can enhance open communication for individuals so that they have a deeper understanding of the views of different people.
Mixed‐race people
There are both challenges and potential benefits that come with being multiracial. Some research has previously claimed that mixed‐race individuals are perceived as more attractive than their monoracial peers. However, such claims have been challenged on the grounds that they rely on oversimplified assumptions about genetic distinctiveness and ignore the substantial role that culture and socialization play in shaping beauty ideals.Critics argue that applying heterosis – the idea that genetic diversity inherently enhances physical traits – to human populations is problematic because traditional racial categories are not biologically discrete. Although earlier studies reported higher attractiveness ratings for some mixed‐race faces, subsequent analyses have shown that attractiveness is a complex social construct that varies with context, time, and cultural influences rather than being solely determined by genetic factors.
There are additional challenges associated with being multiracial. For example, many multiracial individuals struggle with discerning who they are. A recent survey found that one‐fifth of respondents feel pressure to claim just one race, while one‐quarter experience confusion about their racial identity. This complexity can subject multiracial individuals to a different kind of discrimination than that experienced by monoracial people. For instance, Sarah Gaither has found that multiracial individuals often face rejection from multiple racial groups – for example, those with one Black and one White parent may feel they are not "black enough" for predominantly Black groups, nor "white enough" for predominantly White groups.
At the same time, many multiracial people report that the fluidity of their identity – allowing them to navigate between different social groups – can contribute to higher self-esteem, increased social engagement, and enhanced well-being. In some cases, this flexibility has even been linked to improved creative problem-solving skills when individuals are prompted to consider the multiple facets of their identity.
Americas
United States
The first interracial marriage in the territory that would eventually become the United States took place in 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida: Luisa de Abrego, a free black woman, married Miguel Rodriguez, a Spanish man from Segovia.The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage. A belief in racial purity and white supremacy were among the reasons for such laws, with Abraham Lincoln stating in an 1858 speech, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. I as much as any man am in favor of the superior position assigned to the white race." By the late 1800s, 38 U.S. states had laws banning interracial marriage. Before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the overwhelming majority of white evangelical Christians in the Southern United States saw racial segregation in marriage as something divinely instituted from God, and held that legal recognition of interracial couples would violate biblical teaching.
Interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision that deemed anti-miscegenation state laws unconstitutional with many states choosing to legalize interracial marriage at much earlier dates. Anti-miscegenation laws have played a large role in defining racial identity and enforcing the racial hierarchy. The United States has many ethnic and racial groups, and interracial marriage is fairly common among most of them. Interracial marriages increased from 2% of married couples in 1970 to 7% in 2005 and 8.4% in 2010. The number of interracial marriages as a proportion of new marriages has increased from 11% in 2010 to 19% in 2019.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data conducted in 2013, 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race.. And, most Americans say they approve of racial or ethnic intermarriage – not just in the abstract, but in their own families. About six-in-ten say it would be fine with them if a family member told them they were going to marry someone from any major race/ethnic groups other than their own.
Some racial groups are more likely to intermarry than others. Of the 3.6 million adults who got married in 2013, 58% of Native Americans, 28% of Asian Americans, 19% of African-Americans and 7% of White Americans have a spouse whose race was different from their own. The overall numbers mask significant gender gaps within some racial groups. Among black Americans, men are much more likely than women to marry someone of a different race. Fully a quarter of black men who got married in 2013 married someone who was not black. Only 12% of black women married outside of their race. For Asians, the gender pattern goes in the opposite direction: Asian women are much more likely than Asian men to marry someone of a different race. Among newlyweds in 2013, 37% of Asian women married someone who was not Asian, while 16% of Asian men married outside of their race. However, Asian women are more likely to marry Asian men than any other men of different ethnic background. Native Americans have the highest interracial marriage rate among all single-race groups. Women are slightly more likely to "marry out" than men in this group: 61% of Native American female newlyweds married outside their race, compared with 54% of Native American male newlyweds.
Although the anti-miscegenation laws have been revoked by the Warren Court in 1967, the social stigma related to black interracial marriages still exists in today's society although to a much lower degree. Research by Tucker and Mitchell-Kerman from 1990 has shown that black Americans intermarry far less than any other non-White group and in 2010, only 17.1% of black Americans married interracially, a rate far lower than the rates for Hispanics and Asians. Black interracial marriages in particular engender problems associated with racist attitudes and perceived relational inappropriateness. There is also a sharp gender imbalance to Black interracial marriages: In 2008, 22% of all black male newlyweds married interracially while only 9% of black female newlyweds married outside their race, making them one of the least likely of any race or gender to marry outside their race and the least likely to marry at all.
From the mid-19th to 20th centuries, many black people and ethnic Mexicans intermarried with each other in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. In Cameron County, 38% of black people were interracially married while in Hidalgo County the number was 72%.
The Chinese that migrated were almost entirely of Cantonese origin. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese men in the United States, mostly of Cantonese origin from Taishan migrated to the United States. Anti-miscegenation laws in many states prohibited Chinese men from marrying non-Asian women. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many intermarriages in some states were not recorded and 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. For example, in 1880, the tenth US census of Louisiana alone counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese to be with black and 43% to be with white women. Between 20 and 30 percent of the Chinese who lived in Mississippi married black women before 1940. In a genetic study of 199 samples from African American males found one belong to haplogroup O2a It was discovered by historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the African American Lives documentary miniseries that NASA astronaut Mae Jemison has a significant genetic East Asian admixture. Gates speculated that the intermarriage/relations between migrant Chinese workers during the 19th century and black, or African-American slaves or ex-slaves may have contributed to her ethnic genetic make-up. In the mid-1850s, 70 to 150 Chinese were living in New York City and 11 of them married Irish women. In 1906 the New York Times reported that 300 white women were married to Chinese men in New York, with many more cohabited. In 1900, based on Liang research, of the 120,000 men in more than 20 Chinese communities in the United States, he estimated that one out of every twenty Chinese men was married to white women. In the 1960s census showed 3500 Chinese men married to white women and 2900 Chinese women married to white men. It also showed 300 Chinese men married to Black women and vice versa 100.
The 1960 interracial marriage census showed 51,000 black-white couples. White males and black females being slightly more common than black males and white females The 1960 census also showed that Interracial marriage involving Asian and Native American was the most common. White women most common intermarriage was with Filipino males, followed by American Indian males, followed by Japanese males and Chinese males. For White males, the most was with Japanese females, American Indian females, followed by Filipina females and Chinese females.
In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that prohibiting interracial marriage was unconstitutional via the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868. The court's landmark decision, which was made on June 12, 1967, has been commemorated and celebrated every year on the Loving Day in the United States.