Increased exposure to opposite-sex members of other class groups generates a substantial increase in interclass marriage, but increased exposure to other race groups has no detectable effect on interracial marriage.
London – and no, not just the London in the TV ads – has a huge interracial marriage rate. The US – as with the TV ads – doesn’t.
When I increased my exposure to opposite sex members, I got arrested.
Race quotas perhaps.
If you observe that 15% of a population is black, and tell Harvard 15% of their intake must be black, then a lot of interractions at college are going to feel like ‘ah bless, good luck’ or ‘my asian friend was denied a place because of you’.
It’s just not a good starting point.
NFL seems to be pure merit based – I bet that’s the kind of arena where the inter-racial marriages are.
Being very naughty about this indeed. The racial mix in players and in cheerleaders is somewhat different. Which could, I suspect, lead to that change in averages concerning marriages.
Indeed Bongo.
Imagine that a black candidate gets admitted to Harvard, aces all the exams etc. As a genuinely intellectually gifted (not subsidised) graduate.
Then spends the rest of his career listening (or imagining) co workers saying he only got his grades because of positive discrimination.
I discussed this with a friend (Haitian, Harvard Masters grad) and he was still full on positive discrimination.
My friend, I deduced, was a beneficiary, not a potential casualty of the programme.
Thing is, in the US, there aren’t a lot of places where you’re not already mixing with other races and for a long time now.
And in those places where you aren’t, if you’re non-white there are strong pressures to marry into your own ethnicity and the handful of people who don’t go to the local state college or the military members coming back home after 20 years overseas isn’t going to shift that.
Just anecdotal observation, but if the focus is on relationships rather than marriage, the findings would be far different.
AA males are on average socio-economically poor, and there is no shortage of socio-economically poor white females for them to procreate with – but these relationships do not lead to marriage, at least partially because the welfare system penalizes marriage.
At the opposite end of the wealth spectrum (such as AA NFL stars), their white girlfriends become wives.
@Bongo
The ‘Asian friend’ who didn’t get in will find that most of the less-smart folk who did are legacy admissions.
The difference between the brightest black candidates who get a boost from positive discrimination and the brightest white candidates who do not would hardly be noticeable when it comes to those social interactions. The ‘ah bless’ will be far more relevant to the people who are there because of grandad.
Philip, there’s a reason the great Clarence Thomas hung his Harvard law diploma in the bathroom.
You only have to look at English professional football teams to see just how many mixed ‘relationships’* there have been.
*I think we are going to be using this word instead of ‘marriages’ at some point in the not too distant……..
Has anyone seen the study and underlying data?
The “substantial increase” in actual legal. interracial marriages might just be from “f-all of nothing” during the undeniable Jim Crow era to “not exactly a lot” even now.
However if you were to expand that category to include impermanent cohabiting friends with benefits plus the whole baby moma/baby daddy movement you’d be getting a lot closer to the truth – certainly in London.
The irony is that all those “black dad white mum” tv ads are as woefully misleading in their “happy settled family” presentation as they are in the universality of mixed relationships message which being relentlessly drummed into our consciences. Addolff mentions members of the England football team – how many of them are the product of actual marriages rather than relationships of indeterminate length and stability?
Is it reasonable in this sort of context to assume that the black people in Britain are as awful on average as African-Americans? Because if ours are cut from better cloth the comparison seems to be a bit irrelevant.
@dearieme – “Is it reasonable in this sort of context to assume that the black people in Britain are as awful on average as African-Americans?”
Well, unless they’re recent immigrants, African-Americans are probabaly as awful as the average American. Draw your own conclusions from that.
“Addolff mentions members of the England football team – how many of them are the product of actual marriages rather than relationships of indeterminate length and stability?”
It’s possibly a lot higher than you might think, given the amount of commitment required from when the lad is about 9~12 years old, and the potential payoff when they turn pro and are on their first or second contract.