A new Pew survey finds that the rates of intermarriage between ethnic groups has more than doubled to 15% from just 6.7% in 1980.
Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
Some of the details point to the fact that old ideas about the need to preserve racial and ethnic ‘purity’ are rapidly disappearing. Like with same sex marriage, it is the young people who are taking the lead in acceptance of intermarriage between ethnicities.
As travel between countries becomes even easier and communications between diverse people become commonplace because of the internet, one can dare hope that future generations will be less burdened with the hateful tribal mentality that has plagued my generation and the ones that came before. We may never reach world peace but we can hope that conflicts over such absurdities as race and language and ethnicity disappear.
Unfortunately conflicts over religion will continue as long as religion exists because beliefs about different gods are irreconcilable and impervious to reason. It will take the disappearance, or at least the marginalization, of religion to get rid of that particular source of conflict.
HBO just aired a wonderful documentary “The Loving Story,” showing the journey Richard and Mildred Loving went through to get miscegenation laws struck down through Loving v. Virginia. I highly recommend it!
I don’t know if I would say that interracial marriage is ‘good’ for society, as such. It’s just something that should happen automatically if a multi-racial society doesn’t have serious, terrible, deep-rooted problems. So maybe it’s indicative of an improvement?
Europe has a different context in many ways, but also a growing number of multi-racial marriages. There are three in my family, and since they are more or less a consequence of globalisation, they are also marriages of people with religious and nationality differences. With that experience I feel that difference in nationality is a huge administrative burden on families, the one I would most like to see eased, difference in (moderately held) religious belief is a minor source of conflict, mostly with older family members who weren’t expecting it and didn’t build the relationship themselves, and difference in race means that it feels more comfortable to actively choose diverse neighbourhoods in which to live.
Intermarriage isn’t just good socially, it’s good genetically. Genetic diversity makes for healthier people, so marrying people of different ethnicities or “races” is even better than marrying cross-country if you want healthy kids.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7c7_1319561773
The rate of hermaphroditism is higher than average amongst Palestinians, likely a result of being fenced in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for at least two generations. I tried to find scientific papers to post links and back up that statement, but all I’m finding are news items like the one above, or racist anti-Palestinian websites.
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