This paper claims that although there has been a significant increase in the number of scholarly publications on interracial marriages in the United States in recent decades, most of these publications tend to focus on the small but visible increase in marriages, co-habitations and dating; how Whites or European Gentile Americans are gradually becoming accepting of these relationships; the factors that are causing non-Blacks to “reject” Blacks; and specifically factors that are causing White men and other non-Black men to “reject” Black women. As a result, the paper attempts to contribute to this topic by focusing on an important phenomenon—that it could actually be Black women who are turning down non-Black men. The paper presents eight factors that may be causing Black women to turn down interracial romantic relationship requests from non-Black men.
KeywordsBlack American WomenInterracial MarriageEconomicsEducation LevelsHistoryGender and Race
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: New Press.
Banks, R. R. (2011). Is marriage for white people? How the African American marriage decline affects everyone. New York: Dutton.
Belknap, J. (2010). “Offending wome”: A double entendre. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 100, 1061-1097.
Bernard, E. (2011). The marriage gap. Wilson Quarterly, 35, 88-90.
Blackmon, D. A. (2009). Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of black Americans from the civil war to world war II. Harpswell, ME: Anchor.
Blau, P. M., Blum, T., Rytina, S., & Schwartz, J. (1988). Inequality and intermarriage: A parado of motive and constraint. Social Forces, 66, 645-75. doi:10.1093/sf/66.3.645
Bobo, L. D. (2009). Crime, urban poverty, and social science. Du Bois Review, 6, 273-278. doi:10.1017/S1742058X0999021X
Bobo, L. D., & Thompson, V. (2006). Unfair by design: The war on drugs, and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Social Research, 73, 445-472.
Boroughs, M. S., Krawczyk, R., & Thompson, J. K. (2010). Body dysmorphic disorder among diverse race/ethnic and sexual orientation groups: Prevalence estimates and associated factors. Sex Roles, 63, 725-737. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9831-1
Boroughs, M., Cafri, G., & Thompson, J. K. (2005). Male body depilation: Prevalence and associated features of body hair removal. Sex Roles, 52, 638-644. doi:10.1007/s11199-005-3731-9
Boroughs, M., & Thompson, J. K. (2002). Body depilation in males: A new body image concern? International Journal of Men’s Health, 1, 247-257. doi:10.3149/jmh.0103.247
Brattain, M. (2005). Miscegenation and competing definitions of race in twentieth-century Louisiana. The Journal of Southern History, 71, 621-658. doi:10.2307/27648822
Brettschneider, M. (2010). Critical attention to race: Race segregation and Jewish Feminism. Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, 15, 20-33. doi:10.2979/BRI.2010.15.2.20
Charles, C. Z. (2003). The dynamics of racial residential segregation. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 167-207. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100002
Cocchiara, F., & Bell, M. P. (2006). Latinas and black women: Key factors for a growing proportion of the US workforce. Equal Opportunities International, 25, 272-284. doi:10.1108/02610150610706258
Camp, S. M. H. (2000). Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. The Mississippi Quarterly, 53, 275-283.
The Statistical Assessment Service (1997). Can intermarriage make you smarter and statistical assessment service, richer? http://www.stats.org/newsletters/9708/interrace2.htm
Carter, R. T., Pieterse, A. L., & Smith III, S. (2008). Racial identity status profiles and expressions of anger in black Americans: An exploratory study. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 36, 101-112. doi:10.1002/j.2161-1912.2008.tb00074.x
Coleman, M. (1998). Homemaker as worker in the United States. Challenge, 41, 75-87.
Collins, J. (2003). “Poor and black and apt to stay that way”: Gambling on a sure thing in Louise Meriwether’s daddy was a number runner. The Midwest Quarterly, 45, 49-58.
Cose, E. (2003). The black gender gap. Newsweek, 141, 46.
Cready, C. M., & Saenz, R. (1997). The nonmetro/metro context of racial/ethnic outmarriage: Some differences between African Americans and Mexican Americans. Rural Sociology, 62, 335-362. doi:10.1111/j.1549-0831.1997.tb00655.x
Crenshaw, C. (1997). Resisting Whiteness’ rhetorical silence. Western Journal of Communication, 61, 253-278. doi:10.1080/10570319709374577
Crowder, K. D., & Tolnay, S. E. (2000). A new marriage squeeze for black women: The role of racial intermarriage by black men. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 792-807. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2000.00792.x
Degloma, T. (2009). Expanding trauma through space and time: Mapping the rhetorical strategies of trauma carrier groups. Social Psychology, 72, 105-122. doi:10.1177/019027250907200203
Drake, K. (1997). Rewriting the American self: Race, gender, and identity in the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Melus, 22, 91-108. doi:10.2307/467991
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1965). The souls of black folk. Three Negro Classics. New York: Avon Books.
Douglas, F. (2002). Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas, An American slave. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.
Edlund, L., & Kopczuk, W. (2009). Women, wealth, and mobility. American Economic Review, 99, 146-178. doi:10.1257/aer.99.3.1082
Fears, D., & Deane, C. (2001). Race, dating and marriage. Washington Post, A01.
Fenyo, M. D. (2001). Cross-cultural marriage; identity and choice. Journal of Third World Studies, 18, 334-335.
Fields, J., & Casper, L. M. (2001). America’s families and living arrangements 2000. US Census Bureau, Table FG3. P20-537. Washington DC: Government Printing Office. Table FG3 at: http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/p20-537/2000/tabFG3.pdf
Firmin, M. W., & Firebaugh, S. (2008). Historical analysis of college campus interracial dating. College Student Journal, 42, 782-788.
Fisher, C., & Wiebe, C. (2003). Race, sex, and redemption in monster’s ball. Ethnic Studies Review, 26, 68-80.
Foster, G. M. (2005). The great southern babylon: Sex, race, and respectability in New Orleans, 1865-1920. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14, 219-223. doi:10.1353/sex.2006.0009
Fryer Jr., R. G. (2007). Guess who’s been coming to dinner? Trends in interracial marriage over the 20th century. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21, 71-90. doi:10.1257/jep.21.2.71
Gordon-Reed, A. (1998). Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American controversy. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
Green, T. L., & Darity Jr., W. A. (2010). Under the skin: Using theories from biology and the social sciences to explore the mechanisms behind the black-white health gap. American Journal of Public Health, 100, S36-S40. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2009.171140
Goss, L. (1997). Bessie Delany and Sadie Delany, with Amy Hill Hearth. Having our say: The delany sisters’ first 100 years. Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 21, 99-103.
Granger, D. (2002). Friendships between black and white women. The American Behavioral Scientist, 45, 1208-1213. doi:10.1177/0002764202045008004
Groves, C. P. (1989). Fauna of Australia. 44. Hominidae. In D. W. Walton, & B. J. Richardson (Eds.), Fauna of australia volume 1B: Mammalia. Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS). Collingwood: CSIRO Publishing.
Hama, A. (2010). The curse of ham: Race and slavery in early judaism, christianity and islam. Mankind Quarterly, 50, 174-177.
Hadaway, C. K., Hackett, D. G., & Miller, J. F. (1984). The most segregated institution: Correlates of interracial church participation. Review of Religious Research, 25, 204-219. doi:10.2307/3511119
Harris-Perry, M. V. (2011). Sister citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and black women in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Heep, H. (1995). The American body as a semiotic sign. The American Journal of Semiotics, 12, 261-272. doi:10.5840/ajs1995121/414
Henry, W. J. (2008). Black female Millennial College students: Dating dilemmas and identity development. Multicultural Education, 16, 17- 21.
High Beam Research (2003) Vital signs: Statistics that measure the state of racial inequality.
Hughes, Z. (2003a). Why some sisters only date whites & “others”. Ebony, 58, 55-58,70-74.
Hughes, Z. (2003b). Why some brothers only date whites and “others”. Ebony, 58, 70-74.
Jacobs, M. D. (2002). The Eastmans and the Luhans; interracial marriage between white women and native American men, 1875-1935. Frontiers, 23, 29-54. doi:10.1353/fro.2003.0009
Jeter, K. (1982). Analytic essay: Intercultural and interracial marriage. Marriage and Family Review, 5, 105-111. doi:10.1300/J002v05n01_10
Jin, W., Xu, S., Wang, H., Yu, Y., Shen, Y., Wu, B., & Jin, L. (2011). “Genomeide detection of natural selection in African Americans pre- and post-admixture. Genome Research.
Jordan-Zachery, J. S. (2007). Policy interaction: The mixing of fatherhood, crime and urban policies. Journal of Social Policy, 37, 81-102.
Jones, A. (2010). “Stability of men’s interracial first unions: A test of educational differentials and cohabitation history. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 31, 241-256. doi:10.1007/s10834-010-9186-3
Jones, C., & Shorter-Gooden, K. (2003). Shifting: The double lives of black women in America. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Joyner, K., & Kao, G. (2000). School racial composition and adolescent racial Homophily. Social Science Quarterly, 81, 810.
Kaba, A. J. (2008a). Race, gender and progress: Are black American women the new model minority? Journal of African American Studies, 12, 309-335. doi:10.1007/s12111-008-9043-8
Kaba, A. J. (2008b). Sex ratio at birth and racial differences: Why do black women give birth to more females than non-black women? African Journal of Reproductive Health, 12, 139-150.
Kaba, A. J. (2008c). Review of race mixing: Black-white marriage in postwar America. The Journal of African American History, 93, 119-121.
Kaba, A. J. (2010). Educational attainment, population increase and the progress of african americans. Journal of Pan African Studies, 3, 106-127.
Kaba, A. J. (2011a). Inter-ethnic/interracial romantic relationships in the United States: Factors responsible for the low rates of marriages between blacks and whites. Sociology Mind, 1, 121-129. doi:10.4236/sm.2011.13015
Kaba, A. J. (2011b). The family and political unity between blacks and Jews in the United States. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1, 167-177.
Kaba, A. J. (2011c). Race, conquest and revenge: Why do black people resist racial revenge? International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 1, 92-106.
Kaba, A. J. (2011d). Explaining the causes of the black-white wealth gap in the United States. Sociology Mind, 1, 138-143. doi:10.4236/sm.2011.13017
Kaba, A. J. (2011e). African American women voters: Review article. The Review of Black Political Economy, 38, 183-203. doi:10.1007/s12114-011-9092-4
Kaba, A. J. (2012a). The exclusion of black women from national leadership positions in the United States: Taxation with Limited representation. Sociology Mind, 2, 133-140. doi:10.4236/sm.2012.22017
Kaba, A. J. (2012b). Talented tenth: An analysis of the 2011 root magazine’s 100 most influential young black Americans. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2, 1-31.
Kaba, A. J. (2012c). African Americans in the US women’s national basketball association, 2006: From the NCAA to the WNBA. Sociology Mind, 2, 95-108. doi:10.4236/sm.2012.21013
Kalmijn, M. (1998). Intermarriage and homogamy: Causes, patterns, trends. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 395-421. doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.395
Kalmijn, M. (1993). Trends in black/white intermarriage. Social Forces, 72, 119-146. doi:10.2307/2580162
Kennedy, R. (2002). Interracial intimacy. The Atlantic Monthly. URL (last checked 4 May 2012). http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/12/kennedy.htm
Kitwana, B. (2002). The hip hop generation: The crisis in African American culture. New York: Basic Civitas Books.
Kosmin, B. A., & Keysar, A. (2009). American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2008). URL (last checked 10 April 2009). http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf
Lawson, C. (2007). The most segregated hour in America: Protesting segregation in the church. URL (last checked 2 April 2009). http://dam.rhodes.edu;8080/dspace/handle/10267/2420
Leslie, A. R. (1996). Multiracial couples. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 58, 530-531. doi:10.2307/353519
Lewis, D. L. (1993). W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a race. 1868-1919. New York: John Macrae Book, Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Lichter, D. T., LeClere, F. B., & McLaughlin, D. K. (1991). Local marriage markets and the marital behavior of black and white women. The American Journal of Sociology, 96, 843-867. doi:10.1086/229610
Malherbe, V. C. (2006). Illegitimacy and family formation in colonial Cape Town, to c. 1850. Journal of Social History, 39, 1153-1176. doi:10.1353/jsh.2006.0047
Manning, W. D., & Smock, P. J. (1995). Why marry? Race and the transition to marriage among cohabitors. Demography, 32, 509-520. doi:10.2307/2061671
Mare, R. D. (1991). Five decades of educational assortative mating. American Sociological Review, 56, 15-32. doi:10.2307/2095670
McClain, C. S. (2004). Black by choice: Identity preferences of Americans of black/white parentage. The Black Scholar, 34, 43-54.
McClintock, E. A. (2010). When does race matter? Race, sex, and dating at an elite university. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 45-72. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00683.x
McCreary, D. R., Hildebrandt, T. B., Heinberg, L. J., Boroughs, M., & Thompson, J. K. (2007). A review of body image influences on men’s fitness goals and supplement use. American Journal of Men’s Health, 1, 307-316. doi:10.1177/1557988306309408
McWhorter, J. (2003). Authentically black. Essays for the black silent majority. New York: Gotham Books.
Mills, C., Green, M., & Lawson, S. (1999). Black women speak out... about their interracial relationship. Interrace, 45, 4.
Millward, J. (2010). “The relics of slavery”: Interracial sex and manumission in the American South. Frontiers, 31, 22-30.
Mitchell, A. (2001). Not enough of the past: Feminist revisions of slavery in Octavia E. Butler’s kindred. Melus, 26, 51-75. doi:10.2307/3185557
Mitchell, M. N. (2006). Righteous propagation: African Americans and the politics of racial destiny after reconstruction. The Journal of Southern History, 72, 688-690. doi:10.2307/27649192
Model, S., & Fisher, G. (2001). Black-white unions: West Indians and African Americans compared. Demography, 38, 177-185. doi:10.1353/dem.2001.0019
Morgan, M., & Bennett, D. (2006). Getting off of black women’s backs: Love her or leave her alone. Du Bois Review, 3, 485-502. doi:10.1017/S1742058X06060334
Nealy, L. N. (2009). African American women voters: Racializing religiosity, political consciousness and progressive political action in US presidential elections from 1964 through 2008. Lanhan: University Press of America.
Newman, A. A. (2010). No body hair left behind. New York Times, E6.
O’Brien, C. C. (2006). What the Dickens?: Intertextual influence and the inheritance of virtue in Julia C. Collins’s The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride. African American Review, 40, 661-685.
O’Brien, C. C. (2003). Racing toward civilization: Sexual slavery and nativism in the novels of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins and Alice Wellington Rollins. Legacy, 20, 118-133. doi:10.1353/leg.2003.0059
Oakley, S. (2007). The libertine colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean. Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diaspora, 10, 104-109.
Oliver, J. E., & Wong, J. (2003). Intergroup prejudice in multiethnic settings. American Journal of Political Science, 47, 567-582. doi:10.1111/1540-5907.00040
Ondaatje, C. (1998). Journey to the source of the nile. New York: Harper Collins Publishers Ltd.
Perry, B., & Sutton, M. (2008). Policing the colour line violence against those in intimate interracial relationships. Race, Gender & Class, 15, 240-261.
Philpot, T. S., & Walton Jr., H. (2007). One of our own: Black female candidates and the voters who support them. American Journal of Political Science, 51, 49-62. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00236.x
Pittman, C. (2007). Black women writers and the trouble with ethos: Harriet Jacobs, Billie Holiday, and Sister Souljah. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 37, 43-70. doi:10.1080/02773940600860074
Porter, M. M., & Bronzaft, A. L. (1995). Do the future plans of educated black women include black mates. The Journal of Negro Education, 64, 162-170. doi:10.2307/2967239
Qian, Z. (1997). Breaking the racial barriers: Variations in interracial marriage between 1980 and 1990. Demography, 34, 263-276. doi:10.2307/2061704
Robnett, B., & Feliciano, C. (2011). Patterns of racial-ethnic exclusion by internet daters. Social Forces, 89, 807-828. doi:10.1353/sof.2011.0008
Roland, Charles P. 1982. The ever-vanishing South. Journal of South- ern History, 48, 3-20. doi:10.2307/2207294
Rogers, J. A. (1952). Nature knows no color-line (3rd ed.). St. Petersburg, FL: Helga M. Rogers.
Rogers, J. A. (1944). Sex and race vol. III. St. Petersburg, FL: Helga M. Rogers.
Romano, R. C. (2006). Race mixing: Black-white marriage in postwar America. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.
Saint Louis, C. (2009). Do women like men quite that clean shaven? New York Times, E3.
Scanlon, M. (1998). The divine body in Grace Nichols’s The Fat Black Woman’s Poems. World Literature, 72, 59-66. doi:10.2307/40153535
Simmons, C. (2003). Women’s power in sex radical challenges to marriage in the early-twentieth-century. Feminist Studies, 29, 168-198.
Sivanarayanan, A. (2005). The black female body: A photographic history. Callaloo, 28, 1108-1113. doi:10.1353/cal.2006.0036
Soomer, J. (2000). The manipulation of the production and reproduction of African women in the caribbean during slavery. Negro History Review, 63, 1-7.
Sowell, T. (1978). Essays and data on American ethnic groups. Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press.
Storrs, D. (1997). Multiracial couples: Black and white voices. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 28, 325-327.
Strub, W. (2007). Black and white and banned all over: Race, censorship and obscenity in postwar Memphis. Journal of Social History, 40, 685-715. doi:10.1353/jsh.2007.0072
Taslitz, A. E. (2009). Judging Jena’s D.A.: The prosecutor and racial esteem. Harvard Civil Rights, 44, 393-459.
Tobin, D. J. (2006). The genetically programmed hair growth cycle and alopecia: What is there to know? Expert Review of Dermatology, 1, 414-427. doi:10.1586/17469872.1.3.413
Toldson, I. A., & Marks, B. (2011). New research shatters myths and provides new hope for black love and marriage. URL (last checked 20 March 2012). http://www.empowernewsmag.com/listings.php?article=2051
Tucker, M. B., & Mitchell-Kernan, C. (1990). New trends in black american interracial marriage: The social structural context. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 52, 209-218. doi:10.2307/352851
US Census Bureau (1999). Interracial married couples: 1960 to present. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.
US Department of Education (2012). Revealing new truths about our nation’s school. URL (last checked 9 March 2012). http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/crdc-2012-data-summary.pdf
Walsh, E. T. (2012). How “commonsense” notions of race, class and gender infiltrate families formed across the color line. Sociology Mind, 2, 75-79. doi:10.4236/sm.2012.21010
Washington, E. (2006). How black candidates affect voter turnout. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, 973-998. doi:10.1162/qjec.121.3.973
Washington-Williams, E. M., & Stadiem, W. (2005). Dear senator: A memoir by the daughter of strom thurmond. New York: Regan Books.
Wickham, D. (2002). Bill clinton and black America. New York: Ballantine Books.
Wilensky, J. (2002). Relationships. Human Ecology, 30, 16-18.
Williams, A. W. (2003). Our collective responsibility to black males. Black Issues in Higher Education, 20, 19.
Williams, M. E. (2009). “Meet the real lena horne”: Representations of lena horne in ebony magazine, 1945-1949. Journal of American Studies, 43, 117-130. doi:10.1017/S0021875809006094
Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wong, L. Y. (2003). Why do only 5.5% of black men marry white women. International Economic Review, 44, 803-826. doi:10.1111/1468-2354.t01-1-00090
Wright, J. W. (2004). The New York Times Almanac. New York: Penguin Group.
Yancey, G. A., & Yancey, S. W. (1997). Black-white differences in the use of personal advertisements for individuals seeking interracial relationships. Journal of Black Studies, 27, 650-667.
Yarbrough, F. A. (2005). Power perception, and interracial sex: Former slaves recall a multiracial south. The Journal of Southern History, 71, 559-588. doi:10.2307/27648820
Zernike, K. (2004). Sizing up America: Signs of expansion from head to toe. New York Times, A.1.