Afro-americans

[sanctus]

I noted that in countless hollywood movies, if there is an afro-american actor who is married they always have an afro-american wife. I was wondering if this is really the case in the US (i.e. most afro-americans marry other afro-americans rather than non-afro-americans) or it is some form of hidden racism?

[Turtle]

it's a slow changing thing. tiger woods came to mind right away as his dad was african american & his mom is korean. still plenty of old people, southerners, and tea-baggers who don't like it one bit.

 

Interracial marriage flourishes in U.S. - U.S. news - Life - Race & ethnicity - msnbc.com

NEW YORK — The charisma king of the 2008 presidential field. The world’s best golfer. The captain of the New York Yankees. Besides superstardom, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter have another common bond: Each is the child of an interracial marriage.

 

For most of U.S. history, in most communities, such unions were taboo.

 

It was only 40 years ago — on June 12, 1967 — that the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites. The decision also overturned similar bans in 15 other states. ...

[CraigD]

I noted that in countless hollywood movies, if there is an afro-american actor who is married they always have an afro-american wife. I was wondering if this is really the case in the US (i.e. most afro-americans marry other afro-americans rather than non-afro-americans)

It’s really the case in the US – that is, movie depiction of “typical” dark-skinned, dark, curly-haired people married to other dark-skinned, dark, curly-haired people is an accurate reflection of US census data.

 

According to the wikipedia article Interracial marriage in the United States, as of 2006, about 93% of married black men in the US are married to black women. The percentage of interracial to same-race marriages were about 1% in the 1970s, rising to about 5% now, so this statistic was likely larger when many of the movies to which sanctus referrs were made.

... or it is some form of hidden racism?

While demographically accurate, interracial marriage in the US has certainly been affected by racism, much of it far from hidden. Per the same wikipedia article, interracial marriage was not even legal in many states of the US until 12 June 1967. I vividly recall, during my adolescence in the 1970s, my well-educated, otherwise very liberal parents instructing me that I should not reproduce with non-whites, both because such children would be socially stigmatized, and also (and very incorrectly) because they would have a greatly increased risk of health-threatening genetic abnormality.

 

Like Turtle, I think attitudes toward interracial couples are slowly changing.

 

At the present time, in my experience, acceptance of interracial sexual relations and marriage in the US varies dramatically between regions, population density (cities vs. rural), educational and income levels. Where I live now in the suburbs of Washington, DC, interracial couples are unremarkable – I literally cannot recall the race if some of my couple acquaintances, or the race of their parents – while in places I visit, such as southern West Virginia, I recently heard a reputable-looking man of about 60 disapprovingly mutter “nigger-lover” at the sight of a white woman in a nice Mexican restaurant with a black man.

 

A classic US film on the subject is 1967’s double Academy Award winning Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. I recommend it to Non-North Americans of Americans under 40 or so interested in the sociology of interracial relationships.

[modest]

I noted that in countless hollywood movies, if there is an afro-american actor who is married they always have an afro-american wife.

 

in Hollywood movies a fair number of nuclear physicists look like this:

 

Denise Richards as nuclear scientist Dr. Christmas Jones in the World Is Not Enough

 

...so

 

 

I would make one point that might be worth making... Most African Americans are multiracial. Wikipedia makes the point in terms of Barak Obama:

For example, 55% of European Americans classify President Barack Obama as biracial when they are told that he has a white mother, while 66% of African Americans consider him black.[148] Obama describes himself as black[149] and African American, using both terms interchangeably.[150] Because of that and general conventions, he is generally considered to be African American, if only culturally.[151]

African American, bi-racial, and even multiracial are not exclusive categories.

Who is African American?

People I can think of in Hollywood who have played the quintessential African American roles are likewise multiracial. Whoopi Goldberg played a southern black woman in The Color Purple. According to wiki, "Her racial admixture test revealed her genetic makeup to be 92 percent sub-Saharan African and 8 percent European". Someone more from my generation would be Dave Chappelle. He is a black comedian who does a lot of racial material. His mother is biracial (half white).

 

To consider Obama, Goldberg, and Chappelle all of the same race seems a little hypodescent to me. I would rather say they are all multiracial like most Americans. I am personally part Creole, part German, part Dutch, part English, and part Native American. I see America as a melting pot of races and cultures. It is only in the last few decades that Americans of African descent have openly married Americans of European descent, but the relationships have been going on for a long time, and there is currently *nothing* taboo or negative or even noticeable about interracial couples.

 

I should say, I guess, from my perspective there is no negative connotation to interracial coupling. 95% of 18 to 29-year-olds approve of blacks' and whites' dating each other:

 

Demographics of ethnoracial admixture

 

U.S.

 

According to the U.S. Census,[200] in 2000 there were 504,119 Asian-white marriages, 287,576 black-white marriages, and 31,271 Asian-black marriages. The black-white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 in 2005, according to Census Bureau figures.[201]

 

In the United States, rates of interracial cohabitation are significantly higher than those of marriage. Although only 7% of married African American men have Caucasian American wives, 13% of cohabitating African American men have Caucasian American partners. 25% of married Asian American women have Caucasian spouses, but 45% of cohabitating Asian American women are with Caucasian American men.[32] In 2006, 41% of Asian American-born women were registered as having White husbands.[202] One study on college students noted that, while 90% of the 80 black men reported experiences in interracial dating, only 12% of the 140 white men reported such experiences.[203]

 

A Gallup poll on interracial dating in June 2006 found that 95% of 18- to 29-year-olds approve of blacks' and whites' dating each other.[204] About 60% of that age group said they have dated someone of a different race.[205] In 1980, just 17% said they had dated someone of another race.[206]

 

The number of interracial marriages in the U.S. has risen 20% since 2000 to about 4.5 million, according to the latest census figures. About 8% of U.S. marriages are mixed-race.[207] A record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.[208]

 

According to studies by Jenifer L. Bratter and Rosalind B. King made publicly available on the Education Resources Information Center, White female-Black male and White female-Asian male marriages are more prone to divorce than White-White pairings.[209] Conversely, unions between White males and non-White females (and between Hispanics and non-Hispanic persons) have similar or lower risks of divorce than White-White marriages.[209]

Miscegenation

and, why wouldn't they? What sane 18 to 29-year-old could object to Halle Berry hooking up with Pierce Brosnan as the new Bond girl. Who could argue with the hotness of Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush?

 

 

~modest

 

Warren Beatty playing Senator Jay Billington Bulworth in 'Bulworth':

 

"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction... ...Everybody just gotta keep ****in' everybody 'til they're all the same color."