# 13% of Americans do not believe in inter-racial marriage???? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 6, 2014, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807 "2014-05-06T14:20:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Not\_Carlson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc79bd/32.png) [@Not\_Carlson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_Carlson)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/81 "2014-05-08T23:14:45Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > And to counsel people not to get into an interracial marriage because of it feels very off to me. I’m with you on that. If I heard anyone saying “don’t get into an interracial / international marriage because you’ll have to put up with too much shit,” I would suspect them of being motivated by bigotry, and therefore part of the problem. But if I heard someone say “if I’d known how much shit I’d have to wade through in an interracial / international marriage, I wonder if I would have chosen differently,” then I certainly wouldn’t dismiss or trivialize their grievance. **Nevadacaptor** seems to think such grievances are indicative of some kind of personal failure on behalf of the person being shat upon. Weakness? Sure. But then the interrogatee who caves under torture is also showing weakness. (If you’ll excuse the rhetoric.) ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2014, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/82 "2014-05-08T23:48:15Z")
> [@Not\_Carlson](#): > > I’m with you on that. > If I heard anyone saying “don’t get into an interracial / international marriage because you’ll have to put up with too much shit,” I would suspect them of being motivated by bigotry, and therefore part of the problem. > > But if I heard someone say “if I’d known how much shit I’d have to wade through in an interracial / international marriage, I wonder if I would have chosen differently,” then I certainly wouldn’t dismiss or trivialize their grievance. > **Nevadacaptor** seems to think such grievances are indicative of some kind of personal failure on behalf of the person being shat upon. Weakness? Sure. But then the interrogatee who caves under torture is also showing weakness. (If you’ll excuse the rhetoric.) That’s true. For me, I think I read the anecdote, felt pretty unconvinced that this was an accurate report, looked at the advice being given, and felt it was likely to be an anecdote being shared for its persuasive value, we’ll say. ---
**Author:** ![Not\_Carlson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc79bd/32.png) [@Not\_Carlson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Not_Carlson)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/83 "2014-05-09T00:40:10Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > That’s true. > > For me, I think I read the anecdote, felt pretty unconvinced that this was an accurate report, looked at the advice being given, and felt it was likely to be an anecdote being shared for its persuasive value, we’ll say. Fair enough. **Urbanredneck** ’s anecdote didn’t strike me as being beyond the realm of plausibility, and I didn’t ascribe any particular agenda to his/her sharing of it,. But re-reading the advice at the end, > [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Would I counsel a mixed couple to think twice about it? Yes also. Yeah, maybe advising people to “think twice” about something like that without actual first-hand experience is not such a great idea. Although in fairness to **Urbanredneck** , I actually stopped just short of making a similar comment (deleting it when I realized that, no, I probably _wouldn’t_ actually tell a couple to think twice about their marriage based only on my own narrow experience, though I _might_ advise them of possible challenges). ---
**Author:** ![Blackberry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blackberry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blackberry)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/84 "2014-05-09T08:43:10Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > People worried about my relationship or potential children (which I won’t be having) are just concern trolling, IME. You overcome intolerance by doing the thing you want to do and by being in public, not by hiding or being ashamed. Concern trolling was certainly the basis of my mom’s issue, albeit subconsciously. I remember when I was a teenager she went through a very unfortunate stage of being into Dr. Laura and was always pushing some stupid book of hers onto people including me, so at one point I found a part in the book where someone asked about their family disapproving of their interracial relationship due to “concern” and Dr. Laura basically said that for the relatives to express their concern by causing the very problems that they claim to be concerned about is disingenuous. I showed that to my mom but of course that got me nowhere. (Not at the time anyway…but since then she’s gotten to be much less racist, less judgmental in general, and no longer follows Dr. Laura’s bullshit either [it wasn’t bullshit in that one instance, but even a broken clock is right twice a day], so things are much better all around.) Anyway, I’d say the number of adults in the U.S. who have some fairly serious reservations about interracial marriage especially when it comes to people close to them instead of hypothetical people, is a lot higher than 13%. I don’t think my mom would have answered that she was opposed to it even when she was explicitly forbidding her daughters from dating black guys. Because she did let my sister date Asian and Hispanic guys and she was friendly with women who had biracial kids, etc. The survey question would only catch some of the more extreme and upfront racists. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/85 "2014-05-10T16:37:55Z")
I notice articles like this are usually focusing in on white/black relationships. Why? Those aren’t the only 2 races. What about black and East Asian? Indian and white? East Asian and Indian, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/86 "2014-05-10T16:42:42Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > I notice articles like this are usually focusing in on white/black relationships. > > Why? Those aren’t the only 2 races. What about black and East Asian? Indian and white? East Asian and Indian, etc. Very interesting tidbit I learned in a course about legal history in the US: How bad, or how well, members of those other races are treated is directly tied to how “white” they’re seen by white society. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/87 "2014-05-10T16:45:08Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > I notice articles like this are usually focusing in on white/black relationships. > > Why? Those aren’t the only 2 races. What about black and East Asian? Indian and white? East Asian and Indian, etc. For the bulk of the US - which doesn’t live in diverse, urban areas - the others are so rare as to be irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/88 "2014-05-10T19:36:26Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Very interesting tidbit I learned in a course about legal history in the US: How bad, or how well, members of those other races are treated is directly tied to how “white” they’re seen by white society. This appears to be suggesting that only ‘white’ opinions are relevant, or that how other races treat each other is irrelevant. I also find that odd. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/89 "2014-05-10T19:49:13Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > This appears to be suggesting that only ‘white’ opinions are relevant, or that how other races treat each other is irrelevant. I also find that odd. Through most of US history, non-whites were treated as if their opinions were not relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/90 "2014-05-10T20:04:32Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > I notice articles like this are usually focusing in on white/black relationships. > > Why? Those aren’t the only 2 races. What about black and East Asian? Indian and white? East Asian and Indian, etc. WAG: In the US at least, whites and blacks are perceived as being furthest apart _racially_, while at the same time not being as likely to have _cultural_ differences such as speaking different languages, practicing different religions, or having families that come from different countries. So white/black couples are the clearest and most canonical examples of specifically inter-racial marriages. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/91 "2014-05-10T20:04:33Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Through most of US history, non-whites were treated as if their opinions were not relevant. And they still are apparently. Or is this the attitude that ‘only white people can be racist’? ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/92 "2014-05-10T20:07:13Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > WAG: In the US at least, whites and blacks are perceived as being furthest apart _racially_, while at the same time not being as likely to have _cultural_ differences such as speaking different languages, practicing different religions, or having families that come from different countries. So white/black couples are the clearest and most canonical examples of specifically inter-racial marriages. Fair enough ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/93 "2014-05-10T22:10:52Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > How many baby boomer (or older) parents would feel comfortable with their kids in an interracial marriage? I suspect that a lot of that 13% are old people. There are people alive today who passed and enforced segregation laws. But they were not “baby boomers”. I cannot track down every segregationist law ever promulgated in the U.S, but I suspect very few were passed after the oldest boomers, born in the mid '40s or so, were old enough to vote. How many boomers would be uncomfortable when presented with a black/white inter-racial prospective child-in-law? A lot, possibly. People were tortured and murdered in our lifetimes over race. The visceral response would not be, “How wonderful that my child found true love”, but “Oh my dear God, please don’t let some-one kill them.” > [@jsgoddess](#): > > That’s how my mother deals with pretty much anything relating to gay people. She’s against it, but will make exceptions for anyone she knows. You’d think a bit of extrapolation would be in order but no. Or she could just be being polite to and about the people she knows? ---
**Author:** ![Alice\_The\_Goon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Alice\_The\_Goon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alice_The_Goon)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/94 "2014-05-10T22:20:57Z")
I know two people who are openly against interracial marriage (and probably many more who are not so openly about it) and they both give as the reason something that has not been mentioned in this thread yet- because The Bible is against it. They both say that The Bible says something about “even the birds stick to their own kind and don’t mingle with other kinds of birds” or something like that. It prompts me to ask them if they live by The Bible, then, or do they just expect others to, because they both do things like have premarital sex, drink, curse, etc. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2014, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/95 "2014-05-10T22:23:35Z")
> [@Alice\_The\_Goon](#): > > I know two people who are openly against interracial marriage (and probably many more who are not so openly about it) and they both give as the reason something that has not been mentioned in this thread yet- because The Bible is against it. They both say that The Bible says something about “even the birds stick to their own kind and don’t mingle with other kinds of birds” or something like that. It prompts me to ask them if they live by The Bible, then, or do they just expect others to, because they both do things like have premarital sex, drink, curse, etc. I take it they are unclear on the concept of species. sigh ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/96 "2014-05-11T14:36:04Z")
> [@j666](#): > > But they were not “baby boomers”. I cannot track down every segregationist law ever promulgated in the U.S, but I suspect very few were passed after the oldest boomers, born in the mid '40s or so, were old enough to vote. > > How many boomers would be uncomfortable when presented with a black/white inter-racial prospective child-in-law? A lot, possibly. People were tortured and murdered in our lifetimes over race. > > The visceral response would not be, “How wonderful that my child found true love”, but “Oh my dear God, please don’t let some-one kill them.” > > Or she could just be being polite to and about the people she knows? I was just piinting out that 13% doesn’t sound low when you realize that a lot of people over the age of 60 or 70 might feel that way. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/97 "2014-05-11T14:49:38Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > That is not really true. I am biracial, but white people who are inclined to express bigotry against black people consider me black regardless of the fairness of my skin, the texture of my hair, or my features. Trust me, my seeming racial ambiguity has certainly never been too awkward or complex for them to categorize me. On the contrary, it is easier for them. This. I’m not biracial,but I grew up around mostly White people until my mid-teens. The only time I saw a preponderance of Black people was at family reunions or at home. I know how many White people think as I have known them all of my life. To most of them, a biracial person is “Black” unless it’s uncertain that they are indeed,biracial.Anybody who is darker than say Wentworth Miller, the actor, is never going to considered as being anything other than Black and thus treated in the same manner as that person treats Black people. Slow changes. In many places,glacial ones. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/98 "2014-05-11T14:53:26Z")
> [@Alice\_The\_Goon](#): > > I know two people who are openly against interracial marriage (and probably many more who are not so openly about it) and they both give as the reason something that has not been mentioned in this thread yet- because The Bible is against it. They both say that The Bible says something about “even the birds stick to their own kind and don’t mingle with other kinds of birds” or something like that. It prompts me to ask them if they live by The Bible, then, or do they just expect others to, because they both do things like have premarital sex, drink, curse, etc. Since according to anthropologists, race is a social construct and we are descended from various tribes from East Africa, all of whom were Black, those people are apparently hiding behind their religious beliefs to excuse their bigotry. They certainly using any rational or logical reasoning for their behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/99 "2014-05-11T15:02:36Z")
> [@BrianJ](#): > > This appears to be suggesting that only ‘white’ opinions are relevant, or that how other races treat each other is irrelevant. I also find that odd. When only whites were in power (local, state, national politicians), had control over most industries, and were the only judges, then, yes, only white opinions on who was and wasn’t white mattered. And yes I find that sad, but it’s the way it was. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807/100 "2014-05-11T18:31:28Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I was just piinting out that 13% doesn’t sound low when you realize that a lot of people over the age of 60 or 70 might feel that way. People who are 60 were born in 1954. Most of them probably remember the Freedom Rides. They certainly remember King’s assassination. They probably formed their most strongly held beliefs from 1964 through 1975. I doubt support of “anti-miscegenation” laws was one for most. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/13-of-americans-do-not-believe-in-inter-racial-marriage/687807.md?page=6)