Who Interracially Dates: An Examination of the Characteristics of those who have Interracially Dated

Abstract

Interracial romantic relationships are a useful barometer of macrolevel race relations. Much of the research of who enters into interracial relationships concentrates upon marital relationships. While this research is useful, there is little research regarding who interracially dates. Logistical regression analysis was conducted on data from a telephone survey. European-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans were analyzed separately. Similar demographic and social factors predicted outdating across racial groups. Within three of the four racial groups studied, younger men and those who attended interracial schools were significantly more likely to interracially date. Surprisingly, neither religious preference nor geographic region provided significant explanatory value in interpreting interracial dating. Furthermore, this data did not support notions that majority-group members use interracial dating relationships to “trade up” by dating racial minorities with higher economic and educational attainment.

A Multilevel Analysis of Interracial Relationship Characteristics Among Young Adults

“…Specifically, a one unit increase in residences lived at between waves is associated with a 5% increase in the odds of interracial relationship involvement (p \ .001). Finally, in contrast to prior research that has found that women are less likely to have dated interracially than men (Yancey 2002), gender is not a Race Soc Probl (2010) 2:92-100 97 significant predictor of interracial relationship involvement in this analysis. Despite the non-significance of the gender coefficient, the direction of the coefficient does support prior research.…”

“…For example, college-educated individuals are more likely to form interracial romantic unions and to marry interracially than their non-college educated counterparts (Lichter and Qian 2004;Yancey 2002). This pattern may be due to college-educated individuals having greater contact with individuals of different races/ethnicities (Powers and Ellison 1995), or alternatively may be explained by the more positive attitudes toward interracial relationship involvement that are generally noted among those with a higher education (Bobo 2001).…”

“…In addition, individuals who are geographically mobile are more likely to enter interracial unions than are their non-mobile counterparts (Rosenfeld 2007), perhaps because individuals who move more frequently have a greater chance of coming into contact with individuals of various races/ethnicities than do those who are non-mobile. Finally, some research suggests that men are more likely to date interracially than are women (Yancey 2002), though this association is largely dependent on the proportion of men and women in a given population (i.e., if there are more women than men in a population, than the proportion of women in interracial unions will be lower than the proportion of men in interracial unions).…”

“…For example, Wang et al (2006) find that interracial relationships are more likely to dissolve than are same-race unions even after adjusting for a plethora of individual-level, relationship-level, and social network-level controls. Further, regarding trends in union type by interracial relationship status, some estimates suggest that while over half of blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans and over 35% of whites have dated someone of a different race (Yancey 2002), a mere 10% of all US cohabitations and 6% of all US marriages are interracial (Lichter and Qian 2004). Finally, Rosenfeld and Kim (2005) examine Census data and find that compared to their heterosexual counterparts, that same-sex relationships are more likely to also be interracial.…”

“…Keywords Interracial relationships Á Multilevel modeling Á Race/ethnicity Á Relationship stability Á Sexual intercourse Á Partner heterogamy For decades scholars have examined the characteristics of those who marry interracially (Lichter and Qian 2004), and to a lesser extent, of those who engage in non-marital interracial unions (Joyner and Kao 2005;Yancey 2002). Scholars often view estimates of who engages in interracial unions as insight into current-race relations within society, because participation in interracial unions entails social interaction across racial lines and therefore weakens racial boundaries (Bogardus 1967;Qian 2005).…”