Interracial and Interethnic Relationships

An interethnic relationship is a relationship in which the partners differ in their presumed biological and/or cultural heritage. An interracial relationship is a relationship in which the partners differ specifically in their presumed biological heritage. Thus, an interracial relationship is one type of interethnic relationship. Other types of interethnic relationships include, but are not necessarily limited to, interreligious and international relationships.

Like many other topics within the field of personal relationships, the topic of interethnic relationships has been researched most heavily within the United States. Given the problematic nature of race relations throughout the history of the United States, it may not be surprising that interracial relationships have received far more coverage in the field of personal relationships than have interreligious or international relationships. This disparity of coverage is all the more evident when one considers that, among all interethnic marriages in the United States, interracial marriages are least frequent.

Among the general public in America, romantic interethnic relationships tend to be stigmatized to a greater extent than do platonic interethnic relationships. In turn, romantic interracial relationships tend to be stigmatized to a greater extent than do romantic interreligious relationships or romantic international relationships. At one time in their histories, three quarters of all American states enacted laws banning interracial marriage. It was not until 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all remaining state anti miscegenation or anti-“race-mixing” laws as unconstitutional.

From 1970 to 2000, the percentage of interracial marriages in the United States rose from 1 to 5 percent. Despite the increase in the proportion of interracial marriages, the fact remains that, as a whole, individuals overwhelmingly marry within their racial groups. The only major racial group among whom a majority of persons intermarry is Native Americans (among both sexes, more than 55 percent of Native Americans intermarry).

Popular and academic discussions of interracial marriage often focus on African American-European American intermarriage, especially African American male-European American female intermarriage. However, the most common type of interracial marriage is European American-Asian American (and especially European American male-Asian American female) intermarriage. In fact, European American-Asian American intermarriages outnumber African American-European American marriages by nearly a 2:1 ratio (14 percent vs. 8 percent). The prevalence of European American-Asian American marriages over African American-European American marriages has been consistent since the 1970s.

Despite the attention that scholars and laypersons alike have given to African American male-European American female marriages, African American female-European American male marriages outnumbered African American male-European American female marriages until the 1960s. Prior to the civil rights movement, anti-miscegenation laws tended to be enforced more rigorously against African American male-European American female unions than against African American female-European American male unions, especially in the South. It was not until the 1970s that African American male-European American female marriages outnumbered African American female-European American male marriages.

The best-known studies of interracial marriage in the United States are (a) a study of approximately 40 African American-European American couples in Chicago by Ernest Porterfield during the 1970s, and (b) a study of approximately 20 African American-European American couples in Minneapolis by Paul Rosenblatt, Terri Karis, and Richard Powell during the 1990s. Results of both studies contradicted the once-dominant view, expressed by Robert Merton in the 1940s, that exchanges involving different types of social status [Page 906]accounts for patterns of African American-European American marriage (e.g., affluent African-American men are in a position to exchange their high-achieved status with European American women's high ascribed status). Instead, results of the Porterfield and Rosenblatt et al. studies indicates that exchanges involving the same type of love (i.e., romantic love) account for patterns of African American-European American intermarriage.

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