Interracial r*l*ti*nsh*ps

I am officially Jewish and have never been out with a Jewish bloke. However I don't consider that I have been in a mixed race relationship (even with ex from Birmingham).

It should be noted that when I dated white women, I did so primarily because they were the only women around. When the options became more varied, I dated everyone. (Well, I fantasized about dating everyone. I only really dated a few people before meeting my wife. How crushing it is to discover years after the fact that, had I been more confident and callous, I could have been the super pimp daddy mack...)

NOTE: I had initially had a typo where I wrote "teats" instead of "tears". I think we should incorporate the phrase "teats of laughter" into the ILE lexicon.

I'm on the verge of giving myself a brain hemmorhage trying to figure out what this is suposed to mean. Are we supposed to conclude that your friend feels that asian women have explosive flatulence?

So how was itm why did those relationships fail plz

It was kind of depressing. White women in a Portsmouth club who only slept with black men and seemed completely oblivious to Matthews' good-humoured suggestions that it might not be an altogether helpful thing for them to be going on about black men's big dicks and sexual prowess all the time. And yeah, of course there were a whole bunch of black men he interviewed who were playing up to it.

It's getting like America here now, where black women are doing much better in the workplace than their male counterparts, joining the middle classes and finding there are no suitable black men for them. The ones he interviewed didn't want to abandon black men at all, but they just seemed lost in the dating game. They didn't talk about having white partners instead. I don't know the stats. Weird mix of gender and race animosities going on, anyway.

I also dated a girl who was West Indian. We got along well enough, but her sisters hated me for being white (and mercilessly teased her for dating white guys), and her Dad painted me as a crude, uneducated Newfoundlander (ignoring the fact that I grew up hopelessly middle class there and had moved to Toronto to go to university). We didn't last too long.

I'm admittedly confused by this distinction.

in england, asian means the south asia, in north america and canada, it means north/north east asia.

in england, asian means the south asia, in north america and canada, it means north/north east asia.

This is EXACTLY what I meant - thanks!!!

I may be very wrong about this, but I always understood that people from Latin America were, Latinos, and Hispanics had a bit of Spanish blood in them.

Sammy Sosa is Latino. Jimmy Smits is Hispanic.

Chicanos are descended from Mexicans who were living in Mexico until the US took over after the Mexican-American war. In other words, one day they were living in Mexico in Arizona and the next day, they were American.

I've said all this before on another thread here, I think, so I won't go on any more now.

*cringe*

But at the same time that statement implies that "I see other people as black, but not you, baby!"

I since made out with a girl of color, so I suppose that the next time this comes up, I can tell the sweet thing that I've been there and done that and now I just want to be with her. I always consider myself fortunate to be making out with any girl at all.

its like saying, "oh but youre not black babe, youre so much better than that!" you should probably pat the person on the head while saying this for added reassurance.

!!!

I actually do this all the time. I think I've gotten used to it in tandem with the "ever been with a white guy before?" question. I think I'm just wary of those who come across as overly giddy to be hooking up/having sex.

It's more like women are these totally alien creatures in comparison to my body ANYWAY, so being with a girl of a different race or having somewhat different bone structure/defining features is just more 'vive le difference'. Hetero, for me at least, means "drawn to other" and breasts, vaginas, hips and thin wrists are WAY more 'other' than any kind of racial differences; I can't say as I'm especially drawn to the cliched characteristics of another race half so much as I am just drawn to WOMEN. The rest is just whipped cream on the pie, I guess.

I have some sense that I'm going to regret clicking 'submit' here....

I dated a black girl (her folks were from the West Indies) years ago who liked me just fine (well, until I dropped the ball - typical guy/girl stuff, nothing race-related), but she caught a LOT of flak from her two younger sisters for:

a) dating white guys
b) not speaking with a (largely put-on) Trini accent like they did
c) preferring house and alt-rock to hip-hop, r&b, and dancehall

As a result, they were constantly on her case whenever we were on the phone together - they REALLY did not like me, which was a shame, since her folks had no problem with me.

Interracial relationships seem to have problems when outside social factors invade the couple's personal space. This may not be true always - I'm sure there are lots of people who can't get over their own racial hang-ups. But I think it's really shitty when two people of different races care for each other and want to be left in peace, but 'society' fucks it up.

(I guess I could go look for my own damn self.)

THREE LEGS, LAUREL. THREE LEGS.

"The truth is that the only time I really noticed it was when friends were around and asked about it."

always makes me laugh when i hear people say this (as if anyone DOESNT notice what race someone is - its okay, you can notice it, just noticing it doesnt mean you are racist!). do you not notice when someone has blonde or black hair either? or if they are tall or short? oh if only everyone in the world was as colour blind as you...

Spaceman came down to answer some things,
The world gathered round from paupers to kings,
I’ll answer your questions, I’ll answer them true,
I’ll show the way you know what to do,
Who is wrong and who is right?
Yellow, brown or black or white?
The spaceman he answered “You’ll no longer mind...
I’ve opened your eyes, you’re now colour blind”.

as if anyone DOESNT notice what race someone is

I suppose in the most literal and absolute sense you are correct. But consider this:

Seeing is much more than light waves striking your retina. It is a mental process. Brains impose filters on the huge mass of sense information they receive at every moment. Attention is highly selective. Peripheral or repetitive information is the most likely to be filtered out. When you first walk into a musty room, the smell is quite obvious and noticeable. Stay in that room for a half hour and soon you will only notice the smell sporadically, if at all. This is called olfactory fatigue, but the principle is similar with every sense.

This is also why, when you are truly enamored of someone, you can look deeply into their eyes and not notice what color their eyes are, or, after you have spent large amounts of time with a lover, you may fail to notice their racial characteristics until someone points them out. Those details have become peripheral to your main concerns and you stop paying attention to them. By doing so, they genuinely disappear from sight, just like the objects at the fringe of your visual field when you are reading.

So, you may stop laughing. They are telling the simple truth.

dud. i think we could do without supposing that something is the norm for decent people everywhere just because it's true for people who are in love--the most irrational people imaginable.

I'm not sure I want to parse that sentence. Are you saying interracial relationships are indecent?

"Jeb".

We've got a long way to go
When snow hits the asphalt, cold looks and bad talk come
We've got a long way to go
It's beyond Martin Luther, upgrade computer

His skin wasn't the same color as mine but he was fine,
he was fine
If all men are made equal then he was fine, he was fine
Up until the time we went out on a date, I was fine, I was fine
Now I'm getting dirty looks I wonder what they'd say if we were
blind,we were blind people
We've got a long way to go
When snow hits the asphalt, cold looks and bad talk come
We've got a long way to go
It's beyond Martin Luther, upgrade computer
We've got a long way to go
When snow hits the asphalt, cold looks and bad talk come
We've got a long way to go
It's beyond Martin Luther, upgrade computer

Beauty is beauty, whether it's black or white
Yellow or green baby, you know what I mean
What if Picasso only used on color?
There shouldn't be a rule how to choose your lover

Lovers in love such a wonderful thing
Maybe in time we'll get together and sing
I really hope so, there's nothing wrong with this picture
We got a long way to go, we gotta get there quicker

We've got a long way to go
When snow hits the asphalt, cold looks and bad talk come

What color is love?
We've got a long way to go
When snow hits the asphalt, cold looks and bad talk come
We've got a long way to go
It's beyond Martin Luther, upgrade computer
We've got a long way to go
When snow hits the asphalt, cold looks and bad talk come
We've got a long way to go
It's beyond Martin Luther, upgrade computer

... the all men are created equal...
... children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by...
... the color of their skin...
... but by the content of their character...
... this will be the day when all of God's children...
... will be able to sign with a new meaning....
... not only that.....

ok, i was being a bit unfair. Abbott was describing that it's perfectly normal for people in love to be unaware of their loved one's superficial features. i thought that this came dangerously close to implying that someone who does see his partner's color does so because he's not sufficiently in love.

That's quite a leap from A to B. Also, I think you meant Aimless, not Abbott.

that doesn't make sense tho. you're not going to be in love the second you meet them - you have to notice the superficial features at that point at the very least.

xpost

That's quite a leap from A to B. Also, I think you meant Aimless, not Abbott

ah, yes, of course: Aimless it was. it's a leap, but the second reasoning follows from the first quite seamlessly i think.

Sorry, Jeb. If the statement "if A then B" is true, it does not logically imply the truth of "if not A then not B".

For example, "if I was singing, then I was breathing" is true, but this does not mean that "if I was not singing, then I was not breathing" is true.

thanks for the logic 101. however, if it could be established that love makes you colorblind, then surely the absence of said colorblindness would suggest that love, too, is absent? i cannot see how it could not be so.

You are missing a "can" in your assertion.

xpost -- Aimless just explained why it might not be so. Sub-Limbaugh, sub-Manalishi "I'm not really a racist"-ism at best.

oh well.

Aimless is spot-on. We should all be able to think of situations where secondary features (or even PRIMARY features for those who think of ones''race' or phenotype as being such) do not register on a minute to minute , day to day basis once someone has been 'individualized'. Hell, I forget that I am tall the majority of the time until some dimwit says 'huh, you're tall'; if one can forget to 'profile' themselves I don't see how they wouldn't with others especially when intimacy comes into play.

functional necesity to compartmentalise information

not sure what to say to aimless and tremendoid other than that they sound full of shit.

I never forget how god damned fly I am even though it's been the case for as long as I can remember

Titchy the dogma is

DOH DIMWIT HOW DARE YOU REMIND ME I FORGOTS MYSELF being so TALL ERGO I CAN FORGOTS YOUR WHATEVAS BABY (ESP WHEN I WANNA GET JIGGI WITH IT).

Penance will be severe

"that not paying attention to certain details = those details disappear from sight" x1000

MOD PLEASE BAN all DISSENTERS. TA

I am married to someone who is of a different race and she is always racist to me. However, we are both brown so we sometimes manage to forget our differences.

uh, so you people don't believe me or something? spit it out.
yeah, 'you people'

the early romance is the easy part... the hard part is the cultural mix that might happen later. the wife and i both compromise a ton. i've got to deal with her southernness and her conservative religious background, etc. and i love the south on many levels and am religious... yet it's still a cause for shit.

that could be a good natured reason for people to warn... i mean, i know a jewish rabbi who won't marry a jew to a christian because he knows there's gonna be some serious compromise ...

it's just human nature, especially as a parent, to return to your roots to some degree. you play off your experiences. what worked. what didn't. that goes for anything.

?
m.

x post
No I dont believe you! You dont "forget" you're tall, you just file that info away when you dont need it. It's called keeping sane.

I'm white and have a black brother (same mom as me, his dad is Nigerian). We grew up together where there were barely any other black people. I was always interested to see whether he would date black women. When he moved to a city, he dated some black and some white ladies. Now he's married to a woman who is half Korean and half black. Ultimately, he found he was most comfortable with someone else from a mixed family.

In the US, being of a different race certainly does not always mean coming from a different cultural background.

xpost it's called the exact same thing aimless and i were saying. "forget" doesn't mean "forget". oh you semantic magicians you.

I don't think it's a matter of whether or not you "notice" per se, but whether sometimes you realise people think it's such a big fucking deal.

like you wouldn't think you go out with someone and they're like "OMG YOU'RE GOING OUT WITH SOMEONE WITH BIGGER SHOE SIZE THAN YOU OMG WTF LOL", i mean, you may NOTICE it, MAYBE EVEN REMEMBER IT, but you just think "er, like woah, shit, better write it in my diary to remind myself every morning when i wake up that I am going out with someone with bigger feet than i". You don't do that, do you?

i think someone should start a thread on "is there a band whom i can describe as 'the saviour of modern music' since the pixies?" cos that was a very interesting and controversal topic that was discussed in a party this weekend before i fell asleep.

In my class at school, between ages about 6 and 10, there were four or five kids of mixed or other races. For the place and time, that was a remarkably high number. The funny thing is, us kids honestly never noticed. The exception was the Indian kid, but he had a funny name so it was kind of obvious that he was different. But the point is that, at least at that time and age, there really were other things that were more important (people's names clearly being one of those) and racial stuff didn't really exist.

Now I'm a bit older, though, I just can't think about anything else. Mixed-race couples, politically-correct language, girls of all kinds, I notice them all the time. What the hell happened? Has anyone else found this? Either: (a) race consciousness is something you grow into; or (b) the UK has changed dramatically over the past twenty-five years or so. I suspect it's mostly the former (particularly the girls part), but I also think that we've imported a lot of US-style race awareness that wasn't really here before, and it makes people more conscious of race differences when otherwise other things might have been more important. Do Americans become aware of race at an earlier age?

PS I notice the largest numbers of interracial couples when I'm in France - and officially there aren't any races there. Maybe race-consciousness is actually a hindrance to these things?

we've imported a lot of US-style race awareness that wasn't really here before

I doubt it. I'm American but spent a lot of time in Britain (my brotha is Scottish and I went to Uni there), and believe me you guys have your own race problems and don't need our help. In 2000/2001, when there were race riots in Northern England, I was saddened to find that people approached me in a hostile manner (since I'm half-Japanese so could look Middle-Eastern / Indian-ish), until they learned I was from the US, and therefore not 'one of THEM.' I was with my mother (who is white) doing a tour of the Highlands when a B&B owner went into a diatribe about how Asians in his country don't integrate and blah-blah-blah. So again, I believe that's homegrown.

I notice the largest numbers of interracial couples when I'm in France - and officially there aren't any races there. Maybe race-consciousness is actually a hindrance to these things?

I don't think being aware of race in an official sense makes much difference at all. Having data that indicates race with which to conduct research is a good thing, and covering up 'race' the way France has done is clumsy and harmful.

What I do think is bad is not race-consciousness per say but a race-consciousness amongst people such that cultural islands form that have no connection with other islands in the community. This kind of allegiance to race is very harmful but it's relatively rare.

"What I do think is bad is not race-consciousness per say but a race-consciousness amongst people such that cultural islands form that have no connection with other islands in the community."

Yeah. It always gets me that for such a melting pot, visible American symbols like music videos, TV comedy, or even celebrity couples, seem to effortlessly coalesce into the cultural islands you describe. There's obviously also some invisible American force keeping it all together. What I'm worried about is that we develop the islands but not the force.

Then again, perhaps the magic ingredient is time. Maybe the US, instead of aiming at perfection, has just had enough time to realise that it's best to settle for being comfortable with where it's at. Despite the official line about the UK being 'a nation of immigrants', we really haven't had the same practice.

Things work in a Democratic society when people believe that there are differences but that those differences are not creating wholesale repression of minority groups.

Here's an example. Los Angeles has a large and growing Korean community, and they seem to fit rather effortlessly into the larger society as a whole. This is in despite of the fact that Koreatown is full of Korean signs, food, and Korean language. But this group of people believes that if they work hard, they can get whatever they want. As a result, they are not reactive against society, and their kids easily begin to integrate into the larger social norms. This was true of the Japanese Americans before them (even despite internment, which is interesting).

Now take the flip-side. You have a group of African Americans in South Central Los Angeles who felt repressed by the Korean Americans because Korean Americans would often open liquor stores in South-Central. There was a perception that these Korean business owners were victimizing the community, and that these Korean business owners were in fact just another example of the 'black community' being victimized by the larger society (with the most notable author of that victimization being the LAPD).

As a British example, you have fundamentalist Muslims in Britain on one side, and United Front type whites on the other. Both of these groups are definitely not integrated into the wider society.

Now, notice that I haven't said whether any actual repression is occurring or not. The perception is enough. And so I guess my point is that one, removal of actual repression has to occur first, and two, perception of repression that isn't there can't be a cultural norm. Time is something, but it's not enough.

"perception of repression that isn't there can't be a cultural norm"

But everyone believes themselves to be repressed! Think of those white student guys in the Borat film, whining about how minorities get all the breaks. Or in Britain, try having a sensible conversation about Northern Ireland with anyone with an interest in the place, and see how long before you get the feeling that they've been shafted. Your LA Koreans are admirable for going all out and getting whatever they want, but even they probably think they'll have a harder struggle than they would if they were white.

I think the perception of repression becomes explosive when combined with a closed community. In fact any 'community' will generate the feeling all on its own anyway (see e.g. those repressed white anglo-saxon males again), but in a closed community you can have people exercising power over others without taking into account society-as-a-whole. Multiculturalism as it was developing in Britain made me worry - you had self-nominated guys with the loudest voices claiming to be, and being treated by the government as representative of whole swathes of people - and using it to push their own islamist agendas. The people they were 'representing' were mostly exactly the same as the rest of us, but you could see a kind of pigeonholing developing, with otherwise averagely-autonomous people being sucked/pushed into a community that was having a wall built round it - the increased wearing of the veil being an example.

Anyway, to get back to interracial relationships, what struck me about France was that the lack of these community pressures to conform might free people up to be more selfish and just go for whoever turned them on. Of course, I'd be a bit naive to think it was as easy as that, but my impression is that it probably works a bit. I'm certainly conscious of seeing more mixed groups (not just couples) when I go out in Paris than when I go out in London (and I'd imagine fewer still in most of America). The paradox being that community relations as a whole are probably inversely proportionate.

the lack of these community pressures to conform might free people up to be more selfish and just go for whoever turned them on.

a lot of times i think what turns these ppl on is often a reaction to community pressures to conform.

also, dude weren't there a bunch of cultural/race related riots in the paris suburbs just a year or two ago?

yeah--just cause france has a lot of interracial couples (and is this true statistically?) doesn't mean that it doesn't have a whole HOST of really fucked-up attitudes and behaviors related to anti-immigrant racism.

But everyone believes themselves to be repressed

Here I think you're misuderstanding my use of the term 'repressed.' While Koreans (using the example) may feel that it would be easier if they were white, they don't seem to feel, or at least don't convey, that they are unable to advance in society due to racism, although they surely feel instances of individual or even collective racism.

I agree with your assessment of the closed community, and I think it's an important insight. This again suggests to me that time in and of itself has some corrosive impact on our cultural / racial islands, but it's a very slow process. However, I don't know how much I think your 'self-nominated' guys really influence a whole community, although I do think that communities can hinder people who would like to gravitate toward others who are not in their assigned community.

As to your example of France and how it compares to the US / London, I don't think that if we ignored race in the way the French do it would make a difference. If you go to LA or New York, I think you will see a lot of interracial couples and groups, and you'll see them all the time. I think one of the keys to this whole thread is whether we are really talking about 'inter-racial' relationships or whether we are really talking about 'inter-cultural' relationships. When new cultures come together there may not be much mixing initially, but as those cultures go through a generation or two together, that's when things really change. And that is much more powerful than any kind of artificial attention / ignoring.

And the Paris riots seem to confirm my viewpoint, by the way. Weren't these new immigrants, versus the interracial group members you see in Paris being originally born in France?

No.

o

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2009/10/05/your-race-affects-whether-people-write-you-back/

unpredictable but kinda fascinating imo

also depressingly predictable in parts

cool http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/16/louisiana.interracial.marriage/

"I'm not a racist," Bardwell told the newspaper. "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children."

yeah just read this on the bbc http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8310509.stm

"I try to treat everyone equally"

What a scumbag. This guy's like everything I hate all rolled into one.

Any day now I'm about to become an uncle to a mixed race kid and I can quite easily say fuck this guy. Not that I needed to be around an inter-racial relationship to say fuck this guy, I'm just excited about becoming an uncle.

My main concern is for the children.

I mean
http://img5.allocine.fr/acmedia/rsz/434/x/x/x/medias/nmedia/18/65/29/44/18844340.jpg

you know this guy also lets his black friends use his toilet
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091016/ap_on_re_us/us_interracial_rebuff

He said he had "piles and piles of black friends"

uh

he is just trying to protect the kids from the horrible stigma of growing up to be president

http://www.blvdst.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/plies.jpg

oh wait

those okcupid stats are grim

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this country really is moving fucking backwards.

would be curious how much variety there is within their different demographics, I'm wondering if there are groups within these demographics who get almost no/loads of replies and swing the stats. Also curious what a UK breakdown would look like.

assumed this thread was bumped to talk about the balloon boy's parents...

http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs31/f/2008/234/b/d/Of_Wolf_and_Man_by_urban_barbarian.jpg

are JPs really allowed to reject marriages?

I often wonder about the interracial couples I know who don't speak much of the same language. (Okay, fuck it, they're all Japanese-Belgian.) They'll speak mangled (?) English to eachother. (One guy's English is just so Oo I often think he should just stick to his own language, she'll probably figure the message out just as well. I get a headache from only listening to him for five minutes, how the fuck does she get through the day with him yapping away in fucked up English????) I just wonder how well they really know eachother. (And it doesn't help that almost all couples have broken up: the divorce rate is just sky high.) But y'know fuck it if they are happy and in love (until it ends in divorce hah), I am happy for'em, even if it's not "real" love. :-)

Oh yeah that guy said:"I don't want no Flemish women, they're not worthy. I just want Japanese women." Sigh.

I am happy for'em, even if it's not "real" love. :-)

sub geir territory

hahah Well, there you go. We always end up there. And then crawl back out. I was referring to people who claim it isn't real love. Me, I don't give a fuck, as I said before.

"I'm not a racist," Bardwell told the newspaper. "Except that i really am."

I still can't stop laughing about the firecracker ass comment above???? I have no idea what it's suppose to mean, but the imagine it gives me has me laughing. I used to work with a guy who referred to every attractive hispanic girl he would see as Hot Tamale. It became so grating that I told, why don't you ever talk to any of these Hot Tamales you go on about. He said, I don't actually want to sleep with a mexican???

Wow. I've NEVER heard the perspective that black men are exoticized or fetished.

btw I am looking back in time 8 years and wondering exactly wtf I was talking about here; was it sarcasm or was I making a commentary on how white and sheltered my hometown was?

"I have piles and piles of black 'friends'," said Bardwell, punctuated by a barely concealed sinister chuckle and a tender stroke of his traditional Klansman robe.

I took that as sarcasm.

xpost hi dere

hahaha "oh I have SO MANY black friends... just piles of 'em *eye roll*"

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this country really is moving fucking backwards.

WESSON, MS (WLBT) - A picture is causing quite the controversy down at Wesson Attendance Center in Wesson, Mississippi. A female student chose to wear a garment that most males wear. And now, she's fighting to get that photo in her senior yearbook.

"I tried on the drape and it looked ridiculous. It was terrible" said Sturgis.

So Ceara put on a tuxedo instead.

"She's a very athletic person" said Veronica Rodriguez, Ceara's mother.

She says her daughter should be allowed to wear whatever she likes.

"And the tuxedo is what she wore to make her feel more comfortable" added Rodriguez.

But Wesson Attendance Center officials are refusing to put her photo in the school yearbook.

"It makes me feel i'm not important enough. Like just because I'm wearing a tux I can't be in my senior yearbook. It's like i never even went there. That's my yearbook. This is my senior year and i'm not gonna be able to be in there because I'm wearing a tux. I don't think it matters what we're wearing" said Ceara.

A spokesperson for the Copiah County School District refused an on camera interview. However she did admit that there is no such policy dealing with yearbook pictures in their student handbooks.

She says in these cases, they leave it up to the individual principal of the school to make the final decision.

Principal Ronald Greer wouldn't talk to us either, but he did issue a statement.

"I am not going to be able to make a comment on that particular situation" the statement read.

"She's a very athletic person" said Veronica Rodriguez, Ceara's mother.

that's code for something...

"piles and piles of black friends"

the friends are sorted into piles based on skin tone, btw

Interracial marriage still rising, but not as fast

By HOPE YEN (AP) – 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Melting pot or racial divide? The growth of interracial marriages is slowing among U.S.-born Hispanics and Asians. Still, blacks are substantially more likely than before to marry whites.

The number of interracial marriages in the U.S. has risen 20 percent since 2000 to about 4.5 million, according to the latest census figures. While still growing, that number is a marked drop-off from the 65 percent increase between 1990 and 2000.

About 8 percent of U.S. marriages are mixed-race, up from 7 percent in 2000.

The latest trend belies notions of the U.S. as a post-racial, assimilated society. Demographers cite a steady flow of recent immigration that has given Hispanics and Asians more ethnically similar partners to choose from while creating some social distance from whites due to cultural and language differences.

White wariness toward a rapidly growing U.S. minority population also may be contributing to racial divisions, experts said.

"Racial boundaries are not going to disappear anytime soon," said Daniel Lichter, a professor of sociology and public policy at Cornell University. He noted the increase in anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as well as current tensions in Arizona over its new immigration law.

"With a white backlash toward immigrant groups, some immigrants are more likely to turn inward to each other for support," Lichter said.

Broken down by race, about 40 percent of U.S.-born Asians now marry whites — a figure unchanged since 1980. Their likelihood of marrying foreign-born Asians, meanwhile, multiplied 3 times for men and 5 times for women, to roughly 20 percent.

Among U.S.-born Hispanics, marriages with whites increased modestly from roughly 30 percent to 38 percent over the past three decades. But when it came to marriages with foreign-born Hispanics, the share doubled — to 12.5 percent for men, and 17.1 percent for women.

In contrast, blacks are now three times as likely to marry whites than in 1980. About 14.4 percent of black men and 6.5 percent of black women are currently in such mixed marriages, due to higher educational attainment, a more racially integrated military and a rising black middle class that provides more interaction with other races.

The numbers reflect in part an internal struggle that Asians and Hispanics say they feel navigating two cultural worlds — the U.S. and their parents' homeland.

Hai Nguyen, 37, of Houston recalls the instant connection she felt after meeting her first Vietnamese boyfriend, Greg, in college. Nguyen says while she had to explain herself to white boyfriends, with Greg it was a feeling that "he so gets me, because we eat the same food, we like the same things, our families know each other and there is so little that needs to be said."

With the enthusiastic support of her parents, she and Greg married. But their connection soon began to fade, due partly to Nguyen's budding career as a business analyst, which clashed with more traditional expectations for her to "always have fresh food on the table." The two divorced and Nguyen is now remarried to Jon, who is white.

"My parents have prejudices, but they've accepted it," said Nguyen. She described occasionally feeling different with her parents and other single-race couples. "They know it's inevitable. My native tongue will eventually fade, and history will take its course."

The demographic shifts can complicate conventional notions of racial identity.

Due to increasing interracial marriages, multiracial Americans are a small but fast-growing demographic group, making up about 5 percent of the minority population. Together with blacks, Hispanics and Asians, the Census Bureau estimates they collectively will represent a majority of the U.S. population by mid-century.

Still, many multiracial people — particularly those who are part black — shun a "multi" label in favor of identifying as a single race.

By some estimates, two-thirds of those who checked the single box of "black" on the census form are actually mixed, including President Barack Obama, who identified himself as black in the 2010 census even though his mother was white.

Census figures also show:

_Hawaii had the highest share of mixed marriages, about 32 percent. It was followed by Alaska, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Nevada, which ranged from 15 percent to 19 percent. The bottom five states were Pennsylvania, Maine, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia, each ranging from 3 percent to 4 percent.

_Mississippi had the fastest growth in mixed marriages from 2000-08, a sign of closer ties between blacks and whites, though it still ranked second to last in overall share of mixed marriages.

_Mixed marriages jumped from 2.25 million to 3.7 million, or 65 percent, from 1990-2000, as such unions became more broadly accepted in Southern states.

_Among U.S.-born whites, about 0.3 percent married blacks in 1980; that figure rose to about 1 percent in 2008. About 0.3 percent of whites married Asians in 1980 and about 1 percent in 2008. About 2 percent of whites married Hispanics in 1980, rising to about 3.6 percent in 2008.

Juan Thurman, 37, a Houston sales account manager, says both family pressure and a strong ethnic identity weighed heavily on him as a Hispanic when he was dating, even as he found himself interacting more with other races in school.

In high school and at Rice University, Thurman said, he had fewer opportunities to meet Hispanic women in his honors classes. Ultimately, he married Emily, who is white, based on shared life views of gender equity and a liberal outlook toward religion. He relishes having friends of many different backgrounds.

"Interracial marriage is not a big deal," Thurman said. "Still, from a family standpoint, I did feel culturally different and I continue to feel so."

The figures come from previous censuses as well as the 2008 American Community Survey, which surveys 3 million households. The figures for "white" refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. For purposes of defining interracial marriages, Hispanic is counted as a race.

I am mixed of A (mom) & B (dad) and when my last serious relationship was someone of C.

Mom complained "why don't you marry an A?" and Dad was like "you should marry a B", but before I knew it I had met C's parents and things didn't work out, mostly because I wasn't a C.

Now I am now with someone who is also mixed of D & E and everything seems to be cool so far.

Keep your filthy Alsatian Belarussian hands offa our pure Danish Eritrean daughters.

By some estimates, two-thirds of those who checked the single box of "black" on the census form are actually mixed, including President Barack Obama, who identified himself as black in the 2010 census even though his mother was white.

By non-insane estimates, PRACTICALLY EVERYONE who checked "black" on the census form is "actually mixed." I mean WTF is this nonsense sentence.

"we have a mixed president and you do not"

mixed people check census forms like this

I'm sort of wondering if they published a related op-ed arguing that the census should just have a single box that says "I was raised in a vacuum-sealed laboratory and, having no social sense of racial constructs, have attached a complete genetic profile with significant markers highlighted in blue"

totally using my Greek Cypriot heritage to identify as Moorish you guys

i checked "i'm white but if it was 1830 i would not be white"

(Hey BTW I realize this is off-topic for a romance thread, but did anyone watch that Skip Gates genetic/genealogy series, and if so can you remember who was the one person who turned out to be 0% European? I feel like it was Oprah but I could be wrong.)

i watched it but i don't remember anyone being 0% european, i remember some 0% native americans

About 8 percent of U.S. marriages are mixed-race, up from 7 percent in 2000...The latest trend belies notions of the U.S. as a post-racial, assimilated society.

It was just a silly notion to begin with, but for those who clung to this notion I fail to understand why statistic would belie anything of that sort.