Why Interracial Dating is still not accepted Essay Example for Free

Why Interracial Dating is still not accepted Essay The representatives of different races have always been founding shelter and new home for them on the U. S territory, but in the last hundred years the quantity of immigrants has increased. Thus, it is no wonder that nowadays dating and marriages between the representatives of different races have also become more often. The main racial groups that live on the U. S territory, White Americans, African Americans and Asian Americans nowadays enter mixed marriages much more often than forty or thirty years ago, as nowadays the impact of social norms that disapprove of interracial relationship has become much weaker. Thus, the Black vice White, and Asian vice White couples with kids can be seen in every American city. Nevertheless, while racial discrimination has diminished its influence in the marital aspect, new problems have appeared for the interracial couples, and new societal attitudes developed, which complicate the life of those, who decided to tie the knot with the representative of the race different than his or hers. The number of people who strongly disapprove of interracial dating has declined since the middle of the 20th century, but still there are citizens, who insist that marriages between the representatives of different races should be banned. They explain their viewpoint by the fear for the future of children born in these kinds of marriages, and by the imbalance in the social and cultural levels of people of different races. Nevertheless, it is not the main reason for the negative attitude towards interracial dating that still exists in the American society. The main cause of disturbance about interracial dating and marriages nowadays is statistical. The history of this phenomenon shows that with the outspread of this kind of marital relationships, the married/single ratios for the representatives of most races that live on the U. S territory has changed dramatically. The roots of this change lie in the lop-sided distribution of people in the interracial marriages. Statistics says that if we talk about marriages between the representatives of different races, than White vice Black and White vice Asian marriages are the most widespread. The problem is that in most White vice Black marriages black men marry white women, and in White vice Asian couples those are white men who have Asian wives. In the 1990 Census, 72 per cent of black-white couples consisted of a black husband and a white wife. In contrast, white-Asian pairs showed the reverse: 72 per cent consisted of a white husband and an Asian wife (Sailer, 1997). The 1992 Sex in America study of 3,432 people found that ten times more single white women than single white men reported that their most recent sex partner was black. In 1990, 1. 46 million Asian women were married, compared to only 1. 26 million Asian men. It is obvious that this distribution creates severe problems among African-American women and Asian males, who feel the scarcity of partners within their own race, and have little possibility to find them outside of it. The reason is that marriages between white man and African-American women, as well as between Asian males and white women are rare. African-American vice Asian marriages are even harder to found. Thus, every year the U. S society gets a considerable quantity of African-American women, and Asian-American men who are unable to find a partner. No wonder that African-American and Asian American communities arent silent about this problem. Numerous talk shows, books, and movies acquainted the American society with the problems African-American women have. The Afro-American activists created a feeling in most of the female representatives of this race that white women steal black man from Afro-American women. This attitude provokes hostility towards white women among the Afro-American ones, and also worsens the attitude towards interracial marriages in the whole society. Asian-American males are also downtrodden by the existing situation. They, in their turn, develop negative attitudes towards white men, who deprive them of the possibility to create families with Asian women. Some researchers propose that to solve this problem white males should be encouraged to marry Afro-American women, and white women be keener on having relationships with Asian males, but the other prove it would be ineffective for purely biological reasons. The thing is that, as the researchers proved, those are mostly hormonal reasons for which black males and Asian females are seen as the most attractive partners. The scientists found out that black men are on average more masculine than the white and Asian ones, while Asian females are the most feminine. In the same time, most men see Afro-American women as less feminine than white females, and Asian males, due to their build, are considered to be less masculine. In addition to the biological reasoning, these images are supported and promoted by the media stereotypes, where Afro-American males are depicted as hyper masculine, and Asian women – hyper feminine. Nature and society dictates that a person should choose a heterosexual partner with the most prominent features of the representative of the opposite gender, thus the Afro-American women and Asian males have problems finding partners, which, in its turn, creates strained attitudes towards interracial dating and marriage in the whole U. S society. The attitudes towards interracial dating and marriages have become much more tolerant in the past forty years, but the strain concerning this question still exists in the society. It is mostly caused by the fact that due to social and biological reasons Afro-American females, and Asian males experience problems trying to find a partner, as the considerable part of males and females who belong to their races prefer to have white partners. Works Cited 1. Sailer, S. Is love colorblind? public opinion about interracial marriage. National Review, 1997