Interracial Marriage hits all time high, but America still has a long way to go

The study found that Hispanics and Asians were still most likely to marry someone from a different racial background, but the biggest change took place among African Americans, where interracial marriages increased from 15.5 percent to 17.1 percent. Black men were nearly three times as likely as black women to marry someone of a different race, 24 percent to 9 percent.

Just 17 percent Asian men, on the other hand, married someone of a different race during that time, compared to 36 percent among Asian women. The intermarriage rate among Hispanics was about 25.7 percent, and among whites it was 9.4 percent. Of the 275,700 new interracial marriages in 2010, 43 percent were whites marrying Hispanics, 14.4 percent were whites marrying Asians…

…Overall, the public perception of mixed marriages has only grown more positive. About 83 percent of Americans now say they think it’s “all right” for blacks and whites to date one another; in 1987, only 48 percent of respondents agreed with the idea. Sixty-three percent now say it “would be fine” if a family member married someone from another race, and 61 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said that they felt interracial marriages were changing society “for the better.” (Twenty-eight percent of respondents age 65 or older agreed.) According to the study, minorities, young adults, college-educated adults, and those who identify as “liberal” were most likely to look at interracial marriage in a positive way.

Thanks to such unions, the number of multiracial Americans is also on the rise. About 9 million people — roughly 8 percent of the minority population in the United States — identify as multiracial.

”Race is a social construct; race isn’t real,” Jonathan Brent, whose father is white and his mother is Japanese-American, told the Associated Press. It’s an idea that more and more young adults agree about.

Generasian

Fri Feb 17

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