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Notes -
December 13, 2022
My friend and I recently got into a lengthy discussion over the topic of interracial dating while having coffee one morning. What made it specifically interesting was the perspective from which we both were perceiving it. I am a white Christian reactionary, and he is a mixed-race homosexual man. We were at a bar the previous night and i had politely declined a black woman's advances, and when asked why in the morning i explained to him that i have a strong preference for white women. I explained that i do find other races of women attractive, including black women, but that i simply cannot picture myself married with a woman of a different race and desired children who resembled myself. I don't usually explain this to people, but he seemed fairly interested.
It is here where he interjected and told me that the way i view interracial relationships were wrong, and that sooner rather than later the west will be a homogenization of all different races. He explained to me of a recent study he had read that said that interracial marriages already encompassed 30% of all marriages and is at upwards of 93% acceptance rate among the population, and both are projected to climb. This shocked me, as I explained to him that within my main communities that are predominately white I still found interracial marriages to be relatively rare through simple observation. I told him there is absolutely no way that is correct, as there is no way 30% of white people are in interracial relationships.
That night I did some more research and found out the realities of it. Now the biggest hurdle is that i can only really make claims based on marriages, there is no data on interracial dating. The data may be far higher when we take that into consideration but i could find nothing to substantiate any definite claims. The claim of 30% is not true. As of 2017 17% of the overall population is in an interracial relationship. There is also a 94% acceptance rate of interracial marriages in aggregate.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/
https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/attach/journals/apr20srefeature.pdf
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2378023118814610
It gets more interesting the more you delve into the makeup of the interracial relationships themselves. While definitely seeing an increase, White people have had the lowest growth of interracial marriages in the last forty years. Only about 11% of the white population will intermarry. And the gender disparity between white men and white women who intermarry are exactly the same as they were in 1980.
Unlike many other ethnicity's, the intermarriage rates among whites are also constant regardless of education levels.
For comparison, Black intermarriage rates have tripled since 1980, from 5% to 18%. The most dramatic gap in all the data exists between college educated black men and women.
Also, just as a side note that shocked me, 54%! Of US born Asian women marry outside their race.
Overall, while whites have the largest amount of people intermarrying simply due to sheer logistical numbers, they are statistically the least likely to date outside of their race, and relatively equal rates for both men and women. I brought this up to him the next time I saw him, and he was quite shocked at this. He brought up an interesting question.
Considering that the general acceptance of interracial marriage is so high, why is it so relatively rare? We came up with a couple conclusions
There is simply not enough intersection or engagement between different ethnic communities. If you are a certain race, you most often will associate with others of the same ethnicity simply due to family connections/religious affiliations etc.
Most are outwardly accepting of it, but secretly discourage it. This is what I personally think it is, just simply based on my actual experiences. My parents could go on and on about however noble their intentions are, but if I brought home a black woman or a native woman, they would be supportive but be incredibly disappointed. I also see many white women disparaged in friend groups if they date inter-racially as well. I even found studies that suggest this has been measured (Could be misrepresented however)
https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/study-uncovers-a-gendered-double-standard-for-interracial-relationships-59477
It is also interesting that both my friend and I came into the conversation of interracial marriages with the context that that means some sort of mixture of whites. We never considered that the majority would be between different ethnic groups. It actually came into my head reading this article from refinery.
https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2021/12/10794659/interracial-relationships-black-women-whiteness\
While I resent much of the post-modern perspectives about race this is not the place for that, but I couldn’t help but notice that I ended up agreeing on many of her points. We do look at interracial relationships much like the perspectives that she presents. But the fact still remains, even in a period of time that is most likely the most accepting of interracial marriages throughout any point in history, almost to the point of encouragement, Interracial relationships still remain relatively rare.
Thoughts. I'll note first, to give my standpoint and biases, that my marriage of years could be classified as interracial in some cases but not in others. I look like an SS corporal out of central casting, my wife is Persian and even paler than me. On the census, some Persians pick white and some pick Asian and some pick other, normally depending on what they think is most advantageous to them personally. In public we read as a white couple, some of my bigoted relatives say we're not, some of her uncles say it's all Aryans.
The use of categories like "Hispanic" and "Asian" probably introduces a lot of noise into the data. If David Ortiz marries Meghan Markle, in what ways is that counted as interracial in the stats? Is it a Black man marrying a Black woman, an Hispanic man marrying a Black woman, a Black man marrying a (mostly) white woman, a Hispanic man marrying a white woman? If I saw them in the street without context, I'd call that a white woman and a Black dude. But God forbid we start talking about the same scenario with Sammy Sosa. Hispanic really just means your family lived south of the Rio Grande at any point in history, I've dated Mexican girls who were Lebanese and Mexican girls who were Polish and Mexican girls who were, well, native Mexicans. Some of them were happy to bring me home to their parents but wouldn't dream of bringing a "fellow-Hispanic" with darker skin home. I kind of want the data by where you fall on a foundation pallet. Or with Asians other than East Asians and all Hispanics eliminated from the data, as they confuse things with vague categorization.
Approving of it if you want to do it doesn't mean you think it's a good idea. People might approve in concept, but may not like it themselves or may see it mostly in reality play out poorly. I approve of people being allowed to listen to Polka, that doesn't mean I like Polka. That doesn't mean I think polka has a positive social effect (what with all the drinking). I'm in a favor of a great many things being allowed or existing that I don't want to do, that doesn't make me a hypocrite.
Fetishization is probably a big part of the story. People of all races reduce people of other races to flat cheap characters in romance novels or pornography, and imagine dating that flat character when you ask them about interracial dating. They don't imagine dating real life people of other races, what with the friction and the reality and all. A lot of girls I've dated (Asians, Hispanics, Black girls) had this fantasy of me as this super preppy white guy with a sweater wrapped around my shoulders*; and hey at 19 I'll play the country club minstrel show if it got me laid. But do I want to keep that up? Do they like me as I really exist? Idk.
Local color: One of the four or five richest families I know, practically speaking local feudal lords. One of their sons married a black girl he met in college, gorgeous girl and a really sharp CPA. One of my old PA dutch uncles asks me what I think of it, he knew his grandfather and he wouldn't have stood for it. I said Uncle, you got it all wrong. That kid is Ticketed for the governor's office in 2056. The halfrican scion of a wealthy Republican farming family? The idpol folks would vote for him right now in the cradle! Teach him Spanish, he's golden. This is ethnogenesis in action: URM status has advantages, people are going to identify into it if practical, marry into it if necessary. Look at Bill DiBlasio, he ran on his Black gay wife and Black son, and won despite total incompetence. Idk how that fits in but it feels relevant.
Cross cutting versus coinciding identities. How many interracial marriages are also cross-class marriages? How many marriages at all? Because race often coincides with economic class, it will show up in the raw stats as racial bias, but it's really class bias. They have no objection in theory to meeting a nice girl from their alma mater who happens to be Black, in reality there are very few Black girls who meet that description.
P.S. Shouldn't a Christian reactionary refuse any woman's advances in a bar? Story sort of confused me on that point, race seems irrelevant to whether you're going home with a rando if you're a Christian.
*The weirdest wasn't even a girl I dated, I had a Nigerian study partner in Econ who, in conversation, starts telling me that she wants to marry a blonde guy with blue eyes so she'll have children with pretty eyes and pretty hair, staring at me the whole time. I got just a hint there of what Asians must feel whenever they meet an anime fan.
Have you noticed that most people don't have a particularly strong grasp of genetics? I'm sorry, Nigerian woman, no matter who you marry, your kids will have brown eyes and dark hair.
Now, grandkids are another story, but nobody is going to be thinking that far in advance.
Eh, I think the hair thing is more complicated. Her kids will likely end up moving down the curl spectrum, from a solid 4 to a 3b or even a 2c. Which is a significant "improvement" on balance, if that's what you're looking for.
Though I suspect the various ways that Black women in American media make themselves up confuses the issue considerably for a Black woman from abroad.
Also see the grandmother in the painting "Redemption of Ham"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanqueamiento?wprov=sfti1
There's, um, interracial porn where the actors' skin tones are close enough that you wouldn't be able to tell from a close-up shot that it's not just regular porn. I doubt it's full-body make-up. American Blacks are on average significantly lighter than West Africans.
But yeah, getting blue-eyed first-generation descendants would be quite improbable.
I was thinking more of hair relaxing, wigs, extensions, contacts. All fairly common among Black celebrities (of the non porn variety). I can personally say that prior to dating a girl who would leave my Ford explorer smelling like a nice ethnic hair care product, I did not realize how much effort American Black women put into making their hair look vaguely straight. So one might reasonably form unrealistic expectations for what a little mixing will do for hair, and to a lesser extent eyes and skin, from that exposure and lack of context.
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