At least in big US cities like New York and Chicago, the sight of inter-racial couples (white man, asian woman) is extremely common. Go to any high-end restaurant for dinner and you’ll see several white man/asian woman couples on any given night. But the reverse situation – an asian man dating a white woman? It does happen, but it seems to be much much rarer than the other way around.
This census bureau chart confirms there are twice as many white man/asian female marriages as the reverse. Granted, some of that is probably due to american soldiers bringing home “war brides” from japan after WW2 and from vietnam/korea after those wars. But even among younger people who were born and raised in the US, there seems to be far more white man/asian female couples than the other way around.
So given that a large number of asian-american women marry white men, thereby “removing” them from the dating pool and leaving an “oversupply” of single asian men; are there any statistics on who asian-american men marry? Or is there just a significant imbalance in the number of asian-american men who never marry? Or am I simply underestimating the number of inter-racial couples with an asian-american man?
A quick google found a few sites encouraging black women to approachasian men. From what I read there, and here’s painting with a very broad brush, Asian men are a bit racist when it comes to black women. Perhaps Asian men in the West marry women from already dwindling supply in Asia, so the poorer men back in China and India are the ones really left wifeless?
This is an interesting question. My Dads second wife was Asian, and she had a hugh family in the US. Almost all of the women, except for the elders, were married to white men.
So white men and Asian women date, because Asian women are hotter than white women, while white men are hotter than Asian men. White women and black men date because black men are hotter than white men, while white women are hotter than black women. Taking this into consideration, the hottest possible coupling would just eschew the Caucasian middleman all together, and hook up the black men and Asian women. Is that common, though?
(I guess in this scenario, the Asian men would end up dating the black women with neither party enjoying it, while the white men and white women would just be SOL and get stuck with each other…)
Yes, that confirms that (in america) white man/asian woman couples are much more common than the reverse. But it still doesn’t answer the question of what happens to all the ‘surplus’ asian men.
The OKCupid article just shows reply rates to emails, which isn’t the same thing as marriage of course; but if we assume those numbers are accurate, they imply there should be a disproportionately large number of single asian-american men (at least compared to the number of asian-american women). Is that in fact the case? Are there any statistics showing a large number of unmarried asian men in america?
It’s kinda stood out to me since moving to Seattle from China less than 2 years ago that there are a lot more White female -Asian male pairings than when I left the US 30 years ago. There are still a lot more White male - Asian female couples (including my marital status). But I’ve noticed the pendulum swinging. Where I’ve really noticed it is among elementary school teachers - 2 out of 3 teachers that my kids currently have are married to Asian men.
Drewtwo99 - interesting question. Ancedotally, are there more white-Asian pairings in the gay community than the broader community? My niece (middle school teacher - confirmation bias) is white and her girlfriend is Japanese American. I’ve got several white female colleagues with Asia significant others (and Washington State is on track to legalize same sex marriage - go Washington!).
Something that might have bearing on the numbers of Asian-American women available at the younger end of the dating pool is the adoption rate of Chinese girls over the past twenty or so years. The one-kid-per-couple policy, when paired with the cultural preferance for having a son left many of them in orphanages, to be adopted internationally.
Just among my own aquaintances and friends, there are six couples who have adopted daughters from China, with two couples adopting two daughters each. Some of these young women are now college age.
The “war bride” thing would be a factor for many couples older than that.
An aside but its sexual preference for a race really “racism”?
Anyway something you should consider as well is that marriage is temporary a lot of times, a interracial couple does not mean someone is permanently out of the dating pool. AND at least for couples with a foreign citizen spouse what are the stats on the required immigration? Perhaps women are more likely to immigrate to their husband’s home nation.
Bizarre. I thought I wrote this reply, but I guess not so I’m trying again…
In the April 2011 National Geographic print issue, they talked about this in a column. Here’s the blog version (not sure if it’s full length).
The infographic there of interracial marriages in the US in 2008 is particularly interesting. It suggests that Asian men are marrying, more than any other interracial group, Hispanic women. In no interracial groupings are there more Asian grooms than brides, so that still leaves the question of “So who DO they marry?” unanswered.
For that, Wikipedia has better info (of course):
Asian men, as a percentage, marry:
Asian women: 91%
White women: 7%
Other: 0.9%
Black women: 0.3%
I looked at some other stats from the American Community Survey, and in terms of percentage of Asian men 15 and older who have never married, it didn’t seem to vary significantly from other racial groups – something around 30% to 35% for all the groups.
I’ve told the folks back home (semi-seriously) that here in Silicon Valley a white guy might date around with women of different races, but when it comes time to settle down and marry, he’ll find himself a nice Asian woman.
Well, it depends on why. “I just think they look hot” isn’t any more racist than liking redheads; but “I don’t date X because they are all criminals/rapists/liars/imperialists/stupid” is racist.
