Racism Down, Interracial Marriage Up

I was listening to a podcast, and one of my favorite political and cultural commentators, Jonah Goldberg, happened to mention rates of interracial marriage as one possible measure of levels of racism in America over the years.  I was curious; so I looked them up.

According to the Pew Research Center, between 1980 and 2017, intermarriage rates roughly tripled:

Share of black Americans marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity in 1980 — 5%
In 2015 — 18%

Share of white Americans marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity in 1980 — 4%
In 2015 — 11%

Looking further back, Pew estimates that intermarriage accounted for 3% of all marriages in the United States in 1967, but 17% by 2015, a nearly six-fold increase.

Goldberg isn’t saying there aren’t still racists and racism in America today, but he does argue that in some ways we’ve made a lot of progress.  Maybe that’s something we can all celebrate.

 

For purposes of this study, Pew defines the racial options as white, black, Asian, American Indian, multiracial, and other, and defines intermarriage as any marriage of two people from different racial categories (interracial), or between a Hispanic and a non-Hispanic person (inter-ethnic).