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News and Views: The Effect of Higher Education on Interracial Marriage
Interracial marriage is on the rise in the United States. Rates of inter-marriage between the races differ dramatically by place of residence and particularly by the factor of military service. Blacks with higher education are far more likely than college-educated whites to marry outside their race.
The matter of interracial marriage is an important issue. A number of thoughtful scholars, including Nathan Glazer, believe that inter-marriage is probably the most important factor in creating a successful multiracial society in the United States.
In the fall of 1995 seven black women students at Brown University, angered by the small number of available black men for dating, instituted a "Wall of Shame" in a university dormitory on which the names of black men who dated white women were listed. The black women accused the black men of succumbing to European ideals of beauty glorified by the white-dominated media. Black men are also accused by black women of seeking out white women as trophies or status symbols. Black women, too, have come under criticism for abandoning black men. The superior educational achievements of black women(*) necessarily mean that they are able to find fewer black men who are their educational peers. This is a powerful reason why black college women often date white men. Tensions among black men and black women over interracial dating and interracial marriage are now becoming more severe.
Although there are documented instances of interracial marriages in the United States prior to the Civil War, they were extremely rare. By 1960 less than 1 percent of married blacks had a white spouse. In fact, in the early years of the twentieth century, 30 states had laws that prohibited the marriage of blacks and whites. California outlawed the "intermarriage of white persons with Chinese, Negroes, mulattos, or persons of mixed blood descended from a Chinaman or Negro from the third generation inclusive." A 1965 Gallup poll showed that 72 percent of southern whites and 42 percent of northern whites supported laws against interracial marriage. In 1976 these so-called miscegenation laws, which...