|
Despite its battles over immigration, affirmative action, racial profiling and other issues, America is finally becoming a melting pot.
A powerful interracial tide has transformed friendships, dates, cohabitations, marriages and adoptions in just one generation. If the wave continues to grow, it could sweep away racial stereotypes and categorizations, as well as the rationale behind affirmative action and other broad minority protections. It remains to be seen, however, whether higher levels of social integration, especially among Asians, are benefiting blacks, the least integrated of U.S. minorities. Data from the 2010 census will make that a lot clearer.
For now, the interracial trend — while evident everywhere — is hard to gauge because young adults and children are at its vanguard: children such as Heshima Sikkenga, 9, of Apple Valley, Minn., for whom race "is a minor point, like brown hair or blond hair," as his father, Steve, put it.
But the wave is so far-reaching that the average American today, young or old, is 70 percent more likely than Americans were a generation ago to count a person of another race among his or her two or three best friends, according to an article in the current issue of American Sociological Review. The same percentage of applicants tells Match.com, a leading Internet dating service, that they're willing to date someone of another race.
"I'm seeing a lot more interracial couples," said Javier del Cid, a 32-year-old Washington bartender who has worked in restaurants for 18 years. "They're not scared anymore. You see a Hispanic guy with a black girl, you don't say, 'Oh, my God!' Only people raised before it was accepted say that."
Del Cid should know: A Guatemalan, he dates mostly black women.
Some numbers
A raft of social research ratifies his view:
In 1992, about 9 percent of 18- to 19-year-olds said they were dating someone of a different race. A decade later, the figure was about 20 percent, according to a 2005 study by sociologists Grace Kao of the University of Pennsylvania and Kara Joyner of Cornell University.
In 1992, 9 percent of 20- to 29-year-old Americans were living with people of different races. A decade later, Kao and Joyner found, 16 percent were.
In 1985, when asked to describe confidants with whom they'd recently discussed an important concern, 9 percent of Americans named at least one person of a different race. These days, about 15 percent do, according to Lynn Smith-Lovin of Duke University and Miller McPherson of the University of Arizona at Tucson, co-authors of the American Sociological Review article.
In 1980, 1.3 percent of marriages in the United States were interracial, according to the census. By 2002, that had more than doubled, to a still minuscule 3 percent.
In 1987, 8 percent of adoptions were interracial. By 2000, 17 percent were, according to Census Bureau demographer Rose Kreider.
What's causing the shift?
One big reason is that the white fraction of the U.S. population is shrinking. Four out of 5 people in America were white in 1980, and today 3 out of 4 are, mainly because of surges in Hispanic and Asian populations. People's friendship networks are more racially mixed today whatever their races, Smith-Lovin said, "primarily because society is more diverse."
At the same time, racial attitudes are softening. In 1990, two-thirds of Americans polled said they opposed having a close relation or family member marry a black person. That's dropped to about one-third, according to Maria Krysan, a racial attitudes specialist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
More integrated workplaces also have a lot to do with it, according to researchers. Steve Sikkenga, 54, a federal Justice Department official in Minneapolis, Minn., agreed.
"The white-collar workers were all white when I started working at Detroit Radiant Products in Warren, Michigan, in the '70s," Sikkenga said. "There were some other races in the shop, but there was no co-mingling to speak of. Where I work now it's a lot different and a lot better."
A generational phenomenon
For singles in their early 20s, living on their own and newly freed from the opinions of parents and college cliques, workplaces are hubs for interracial contacts. One consequence: Americans age 21.5 are the likeliest of all to be living with people of another race, according to researchers.
Young adults ages 22 through 25 also typically have the most sexual partners and the most breakups. But while interracial couples who live together often marry, their relationships disintegrate short of the altar more often than those of same-race couples do. According to Kao and Joyner, the marital batting average is .213 for same-race couples who live together in their 20s. For mixed race couples, it's .127.
When you're young, "you experiment," said Justice King, 38, a black Washingtonian who's dated interracially. "You maybe want to be exposed to somebody of another culture. But by the time you're 30, you know what's going on. You're ready to choose, ready to get serious."
If disproportionate numbers of interracial relationships tend to be passing fancies, they may not be harbingers of big social changes. Even so, Duke sociologist Smith-Lovin noted in an e-mail, interracial intimacies of all kinds matter because "having a positive, cooperative tie to a person in another racial group makes us less likely to stereotype that racial group. So increasing the proportion of the population that has such a tie should make us less prejudiced and less likely to discriminate against people who are not of our own race."
Sunday, July 23, 2006
More people report befriending, dating or living with people of other races.
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — Despite its battles over immigration, affirmative action, racial profiling and other issues, America is finally becoming a melting pot.
A powerful interracial tide has transformed friendships, dates, cohabitations, marriages and adoptions in just one generation. If the wave continues to grow, it could sweep away racial stereotypes and categorizations, as well as the rationale behind affirmative action and other broad minority protections. It remains to be seen, however, whether higher levels of social integration, especially among Asians, are benefiting blacks, the least integrated of U.S. minorities. Data from the 2010 census will make that a lot clearer.
For now, the interracial trend — while evident everywhere — is hard to gauge because young adults and children are at its vanguard: children such as Heshima Sikkenga, 9, of Apple Valley, Minn., for whom race "is a minor point, like brown hair or blond hair," as his father, Steve, put it.
But the wave is so far-reaching that the average American today, young or old, is 70 percent more likely than Americans were a generation ago to count a person of another race among his or her two or three best friends, according to an article in the current issue of American Sociological Review. The same percentage of applicants tells Match.com, a leading Internet dating service, that they're willing to date someone of another race.
"I'm seeing a lot more interracial couples," said Javier del Cid, a 32-year-old Washington bartender who has worked in restaurants for 18 years. "They're not scared anymore. You see a Hispanic guy with a black girl, you don't say, 'Oh, my God!' Only people raised before it was accepted say that."
Del Cid should know: A Guatemalan, he dates mostly black women.
Some numbers
A raft of social research ratifies his view:
In 1992, about 9 percent of 18- to 19-year-olds said they were dating someone of a different race. A decade later, the figure was about 20 percent, according to a 2005 study by sociologists Grace Kao of the University of Pennsylvania and Kara Joyner of Cornell University.
In 1992, 9 percent of 20- to 29-year-old Americans were living with people of different races. A decade later, Kao and Joyner found, 16 percent were.
In 1985, when asked to describe confidants with whom they'd recently discussed an important concern, 9 percent of Americans named at least one person of a different race. These days, about 15 percent do, according to Lynn Smith-Lovin of Duke University and Miller McPherson of the University of Arizona at Tucson, co-authors of the American Sociological Review article.
In 1980, 1.3 percent of marriages in the United States were interracial, according to the census. By 2002, that had more than doubled, to a still minuscule 3 percent.
In 1987, 8 percent of adoptions were interracial. By 2000, 17 percent were, according to Census Bureau demographer Rose Kreider.
What's causing the shift?
One big reason is that the white fraction of the U.S. population is shrinking. Four out of 5 people in America were white in 1980, and today 3 out of 4 are, mainly because of surges in Hispanic and Asian populations. People's friendship networks are more racially mixed today whatever their races, Smith-Lovin said, "primarily because society is more diverse."
At the same time, racial attitudes are softening. In 1990, two-thirds of Americans polled said they opposed having a close relation or family member marry a black person. That's dropped to about one-third, according to Maria Krysan, a racial attitudes specialist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
More integrated workplaces also have a lot to do with it, according to researchers. Steve Sikkenga, 54, a federal Justice Department official in Minneapolis, Minn., agreed.
"The white-collar workers were all white when I started working at Detroit Radiant Products in Warren, Michigan, in the '70s," Sikkenga said. "There were some other races in the shop, but there was no co-mingling to speak of. Where I work now it's a lot different and a lot better."
A generational phenomenon
For singles in their early 20s, living on their own and newly freed from the opinions of parents and college cliques, workplaces are hubs for interracial contacts. One consequence: Americans age 21.5 are the likeliest of all to be living with people of another race, according to researchers.
Young adults ages 22 through 25 also typically have the most sexual partners and the most breakups. But while interracial couples who live together often marry, their relationships disintegrate short of the altar more often than those of same-race couples do. According to Kao and Joyner, the marital batting average is .213 for same-race couples who live together in their 20s. For mixed race couples, it's .127.
When you're young, "you experiment," said Justice King, 38, a black Washingtonian who's dated interracially. "You maybe want to be exposed to somebody of another culture. But by the time you're 30, you know what's going on. You're ready to choose, ready to get serious."
If disproportionate numbers of interracial relationships tend to be passing fancies, they may not be harbingers of big social changes. Even so, Duke sociologist Smith-Lovin noted in an e-mail, interracial intimacies of all kinds matter because "having a positive, cooperative tie to a person in another racial group makes us less likely to stereotype that racial group. So increasing the proportion of the population that has such a tie should make us less prejudiced and less likely to discriminate against people who are not of our own race."
| 
