Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants: E Pluribus Unions (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society)

The New Americans Recent Immigration and American Society

Edited by Steven J. Gold and Rubén G. Rumbaut

A Series from LFB Scholarly

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Intermarriage across Race and Ethnicity among Immigrants E Pluribus Unions

Charlie V. Morgan

LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC El Paso 2009

Copyright © 2009 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morgan, Charlie V., 1972Intermarriage across race and ethnicity among immigrants : E pluribus unions / Charlie V. Morgan. p. cm. -- (The new Americans : recent immigration and American society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59332-294-6 (alk. paper) 1. Intermarriage--United States. 2. Interethnic marriage--United States. 3. Interracial marriage--United States. 4. Immigrants--United States. I. Title. HQ1031.M67 2009 306.84'60869120973--dc22 2008043887

ISBN 978-1-59332-294-6 Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Table of Contents Chapter One Introduction

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Chapter Two History and Theory

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Chapter Three Conceptualization and Methodology

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Chapter Four Deconstructing Intermarriage in the United States

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Chapter Five Mixed Relationships Among Children of Immigrants in Southern California

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Chapter Six Clarifying Race and Ethnicity in Mixed Relationships

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Chapter Seven Gender and Informality in Mixed Relationships

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Chapter Eight Summary and Conclusions

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Appendixes

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References

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Index

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Acknowledgments I am most indebted to my mentor Rubén G. Rumbaut. This project was born out of innumerable discussions with Rubén in graduate seminars, while teaching “Race and Ethnicity” as his teaching assistant, while “deeply familiarizing” ourselves with various data sources as his research assistant, over meals, at conferences, and even at the airport when we got snowed in and spent the night there. I express my deepest appreciation to Rubén for the numerous ways in which he taught me the true value and spirit of empirical research, as well as his generous financial support. Most importantly, I thank him for granting me access to his data sets. He not only taught me about the profession of sociology, but also “professionalized” me into the discipline—even if it was more than I wanted to know at times. I would like to thank John M. Liu. He was always there when I needed to talk to someone about particular issues and ideas that I was wrestling with. I am most grateful for his openness, time, and patience. In addition, I would like to thank Linda Vo, Jen’nan Read, Dorothy Fujita-Rony, Ted Fowler, Phil Cohen, David Snow, and Matt Huffman (among other professors in sociology and outside of sociology) for their ideas and encouragement. I treasure the memories and friendships that were formed. I received support from so many people (too numerous to name). Here are some of those people who deserve the most thanks: Monica Trieu, Goldie Komaie, Mark Leach, Roberto Gonzales, Makiko Fuwa, and Yuki Kato. I grew close to all of them and made lifelong friends. I am also grateful for others who supported me in various forms along the way: Danielle Rudes, Becky Trammell, Sabeen Sandhu, Sharon Oselin, Rosie Tafoya-Estrada, Carol Glasser, Diana Pan, Hien Park, and Allen Kim. In addition, I would like to thank Arisbeth Diaz and Lisa Nguyen for their invaluable assistance analyzing and writing up the in-depth interviews. Many of my key insights came during our brainstorming sessions. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at Brigham Young University. They have continually encouraged me and made this book possible. vii

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Besides superstardom, Barack Obama, Tiger Woods and Derek Jeter have another common bond: Each is a child of an interracial marriage. —David Crary (2007) Everywhere we turn, we see images of “interracial marriages.” Back in 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, in which Sidney Poitier’s character falls in love with Katharine Houghton’s character, marked the first time a major film featured an interracial couple. Now it is much more common, as witnessed by the numerous movies featuring interracial couples, such as Die Another Day and Monster’s Ball, where Halle Berry falls for Pierce Brosnan and embraces Billy Bob Thornton. Interracial couples are becoming more popular on TV as well: characters played by Sandra Oh and Isaiah Washington on Grey’s Anatomy are just one example. Recently, popular books such as Interracial Intimacies by Randall Kennedy (2003) and Interracial Intimacy by Rachel Moran (2001) have focused on interracial relationships. Newspaper headlines such as “Blacks, Whites and Love” (Kristof 2005) and “Interracial Marriages Surge Across U.S.” (Crary 2007) are commonplace. Even recent research reports, such as the Pew Research Center’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (Taylor, Funk, and Craighill 2006) and the Population Reference Bureau’s “New Marriages, New Families: U.S. Racial and Hispanic Intermarriage” (Lee and Edmonston 2005), have focused on interracial marriages.

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

What with celebrities such as Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Derek Jeter, who are “each . . . a child of an interracial marriage” (Crary 2007), we are continually reminded of intermarriage. It is no wonder there is so much interest in interracial marriages. Most of these examples from media coverage of interracial marriages focus on blackwhite couples. Even Crary’s (2007) article is clearly centered on interracial marriages between blacks and whites: Since the landmark Loving v. Virginia ruling, the number of interracial marriages has soared; for example black-white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 in 2005, according to Census Bureau figures. Factoring in all racial combinations, Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld calculates that more than 7 percent of America’s 59 million couples in 2005 were interracial, compared to less than 2 percent in 1970. However, the story of interracial relationships in the United States is not so simple. What is often left out of these discussions of interracial relationships is that mass waves of immigration started coinciding with the Loving v. Virginia antimiscegenation ruling in the late 1960s. Of the three celebrities mentioned above, Barack Obama is the son of a black Kenyan and a white Kansan. How often do we hear of debates about immigration when discussing Obama? Even more telling is Tiger Woods, the famous “black golfer” who is more Asian than black: Tiger is one-fourth Chinese, one-fourth Thai, one-fourth African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch (Weisman 2001). In focusing on black-white interracial couples, scholarly and popular interests fail to factor in how the recent immigration patterns impact interracial marriages. First, black-white couples represent only 8 percent of all interracial couples in the United States (Lee and Edmonston 2005). 1 The majority of interracial couples involve a partner from either Asia or Latin America, usually as a direct result of post-1960 immigration. Second, the rate of intermarriage increase

1. This number does not include blacks who identify themselves as multiracial. Including those people would not increase the overall percent by much, since only 4 percent of blacks identified themselves as multiracial in the 2000 Census (Lee and Bean 2003).

Introduction

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between whites and blacks is minimal, while the rate of intermarriage increase involving Asians and Hispanics accounts for most of the growth in intermarriage from 1990 to 2000 (Lee and Edmonston 2005). Third, the rate of interracial marriages between Hispanics and whites and between Asians and whites actually declined from 1990 to 2000. For Hispanics, and to a lesser extent Asian Americans the 1990s brought unprecedented declines in intermarriage with whites, which is in sharp contrast to the exceptionally large increases in intermarriage observed in prior censuses . . . the retreat from intermarriage largely reflects the growth in the immigrant population; increasing shares of natives are marrying their foreign-born counterparts. (Qian and Lichter 2007) Many of these immigrants are thus turning from interracial marriages to coethnic marriages, or marriages with individuals from within their same ethnic group. Finally, we can project a decline in interracial marriages in the near future, given present trends in immigration and intermarriage. We must also examine how ethnicity and cohabitation impact interracial relationships. How does intermarriage in the United States change when we talk about interracial and interethnic marriages? Studies have shown that interethnic marriages (for example, FilipinoVietnamese, Japanese-Korean, or even Puerto Rican–Dominican) have been on the rise since at least the 1980s (Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001; Qian and Lichter 2004; Shinagawa and Pang 1988, 1996). We can further complicate discussions of intermarriage by bringing in less formal relationships, such as cohabitation and dating. With cohabitation on the rise in recent decades, it will be increasingly important in discussions of intermarriage to include not only married couples but also cohabiting couples. Additionally, we could examine how interracial and interethnic dating couples might differ from interracial and interethnic cohabiting or married couples. My own interest in this topic was spurred by the lack of discussion on immigration and ethnicity when it comes to intermarriage. While immigration has more recently been picked up by a number of scholars, ethnicity is still ignored for the most part. Even when immigrant groups are brought up, they are generally talked about using catchall terms such as Asian or Hispanic, which are often assumed to have some

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meaning to the individuals who would find themselves in these racialized categories. But Hispanic, for example, is a contested term given that, according to the census, Hispanics can identify with any racial group. Thus, this study is centrally concerned with the role of ethnicity in discussions of “interracial marriages” among children of immigrants in Southern California. How does the landscape of interracial marriage change when we add interethnic marriages? How does it change if we include cohabiting and dating couples to broaden the scope of interracial and interethnic relationships? More specifically, who enters into mixed relationships and why? One of the central goals of this study is to answer these questions. Another reason I have been interested in intermarriage is that it represents the breaking down of social distances between groups; it indicates weakening boundaries between various racial and ethnic groups (Alba and Nee 2003; Yinger 1994). Furthermore, when we include immigrant groups in our discussion of intermarriage, marrying a member of the dominant group has typically been viewed as a way of assimilating into society (Alba and Nee 2003; Gordon 1964). Given our inclusion of immigration and ethnicity, what implications does this expanded view of intermarriage have on patterns and processes of assimilation? Another goal of this study is to closely examine the relationship between assimilation and intermarriage. POINTS OF DEPARTURE FROM PREVIOUS STUDIES ON INTERMARRIAGE Unlike the many studies on intermarriage that focus on black-white couples (Blumberg and Roye 1979; Larsson 1965; McNamara, Tempenis, and Walton 1999; Rosenblatt, Karis, and Powell 1995), this study differs in three important ways: (a) it will focus on immigrants from Asia and Latin America and their U.S.-born children; (b) it makes a key distinction between interethnic and interracial relationships; and (c) it includes not only married couples, but also cohabiting and dating couples. Changing immigration patterns must be considered in any discussion of influences on the number, composition, and identification—by themselves and others—of mixed couples. Before the 1960s, most immigrants to the United States were of European descent. Therefore, most scholars focused their studies mainly on interethnic and interreligious marriages rather than interracial marriages.

Introduction

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More recently, however, black-white interracial marriage has become virtually synonymous with intermarriage. Again, this pattern is drastically changing due to increasing immigration, this time from Asia and Latin America (Vermeulen 1999). Based on Current Population Survey (CPS, 2003–2006) data, the U.S. immigrant–stock population (first and second generations) numbers are close to 70 million—almost one quarter of the national population. Of these, over 60 percent were born in Latin America and Asia. Furthermore, this immigrant population is new: among immigrants arriving since 1960, just over 50 percent came from Latin America (more than 25 percent came from Mexico alone) and close to 30 percent came from Asia, together making up 80 percent of first-generation immigration since 1960. Not only is the composition of immigration different from earlier waves of European immigrants, but the context in which they arrive in the United States is also different: Their incorporation has coincided with a period of economic restructuring and rising inequality, during which the returns to education have sharply increased.…Post-secondary schooling significantly lengthened for young people, with the years from 18 to the mid and even late twenties becoming increasingly devoted, often with continuing parental support, to the accumulation of human capital and college credentials. Women entered the labour market in large numbers and worked longer hours, two-income families became the norm, and the baby boom was followed by a baby bust and delayed childbearing—even as non-marital and early childbearing became defined as a social problem of national consequence. (Rumbaut 2005) The context that greets immigrants and their children is important when looking at mixed relationships, especially during the critical time when young adult children of immigrants are experimenting with dating and cohabiting and are making decisions about family formations via marriage. Immigrants and their families are not equally distributed across the country. For example, although California’s population represents only 12 percent of the native-born population of the United States, one-third of the immigrant population resides in California (Foner, Rumbaut, and Gold 2000). This study examines different minority groups involved in

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intimate relationships in the United States, with a focus on first- and second-generation immigrants from Asia and Latin America living in Southern California, particularly in the San Diego metropolitan area. Mixed couples in San Diego are unique; they differ from those in other parts of the country because of the high proportion of immigrants from the Pacific Rim and their U.S.-born children. In 2000, San Diego was among the top 10 metropolitan areas in the United States in terms of the total number and overall population percentage of first- and secondgeneration immigrants. Specifically, San Diego hosts a wide variety of immigrants from the following Pacific Rim countries: the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Mexico (and to a lesser extent, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, India, and Central/South America). In fact, San Diego is one of the most common destinations for Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian immigrants. Moreover, except for Los Angeles, no other place in the country has a greater number of Filipino immigrants (CPS, 2003–2006). The second way this study differs from previous studies is that I make a distinction between race and ethnicity among mixed couples. Research on intermarriage originated in countries with high rates of immigration, such as the United States, and has focused almost exclusively on “racial” groups. I treat race and ethnicity as two separate but sometimes overlapping phenomena. I refer to racial groups as those groups with an identity that is typically assigned to them by others, based on perceived common physical characteristics that are held to be inherent (e.g., white, Asian, and black). I define ethnic groups as those having common descent, a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements (e.g., Irish, Chinese, Jamaican, and Cuban) (Cornell and Hartmann 2007; Schermerhorn 1978). Most studies on racial intermarriage leave out marriages that I would term interethnic (e.g., Japanese-Korean or Cuban-Mexican). It is therefore imperative that we add interethnic relationships to the category of mixed couples. Finally, I make a distinction between married, cohabiting, and dating couples. In the United States, we have witnessed enormous changes in the realm of marriage and family, including rising divorce rates, growing numbers of women entering the workforce, and increasing non-marital cohabitation and non-marital reproduction. In terms of this study, cohabiting unions are a crucial demographic component of intermarriage. The number of cohabiting couples has been on the rise for decades and now composes 9 percent of all couples

Introduction

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in the United States (Simmons and O'Connell 2003). Marriage is clearly not the same type of experience as cohabiting; indeed, recent studies point to important differences between marriage and cohabitation (Blackwell and Lichter 2000; Guzzo 2005; Lamanna and Riedmann 2003). The current era has even been described as a “retreat from marriage” (Lichter, McLaughlin, and Ribar 2002). Blackwell and Lichter (2000) concluded that “research can no longer ignore the qualitatively different mate selection processes of cohabiting couples” (275). Furthermore, a look at race and ethnicity shows that cohabiting couples are twice as likely as married couples to be interracial or interethnic (Fields and Casper 2001; Landale, Oropesa, and Bradatan 2006; Simmons and O'Connell 2003). Indeed, it appears that we have to at least consider the possibility that marriage and cohabitation are two separate phenomena, especially when it comes to crossing racial and ethnic lines. To not include cohabiting couples in studies of intermarriage clearly biases our sample in important ways. While the lack of research on cohabitation has left us with little knowledge of the phenomenon, even less is known about people who cross racial and ethnic lines while dating (Joyner and Kao 2005). We do not understand their motivations, nor do we understand the connections between dating, cohabitation, and marriage. Given these complications, it is important to be conceptually clear when defining mixed couples. I use the term intermarried to refer to individuals who are married to individuals of another race or ethnicity, the term cohabiting to refer to individuals are not married but live together, and the term dating to refer to individuals who are in committed relationships (measured either by level of commitment or length of time). Finally, I use the terms mixed relationships, mixed couples, and mixed unions interchangeably to include married, cohabiting, and dating couples—although one of the objectives of this project is to investigate the differences among married, cohabiting, and dating couples. Overall, this research will address the following questions: Who enters into mixed relationships? Why? What are the implications? What role do mixed relationships play in the processes of “assimilation”? Which of the two perspectives of assimilation—a straight-line perspective or a segmented perspective (to be discussed in chapter 2)— will Asian and Latin American immigrants and their children follow (Portes and Rumbaut 2005)? I will use a variety of data—census data,

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survey questionnaires, and in-depth interviews—to answer these questions. PLAN OF THE BOOK Chapter 2 examines the literature on assimilation in order to theoretically ground this study. I provide a historical overview of the ways that blacks have been racialized and excluded from the model of assimilation, even when they do cross color lines. The discussion proceeds to examine the connection between ethnicity and intermarriage and the focus on European immigrants’ ethnicization and assimilation into society through intermarriage with other European ethnic groups. A subsequent section provides a historical overview of the different types of boundaries that have defined intermarriage over the years. Next, I discuss the meanings of assimilation and dissimilation and the variables that influence these processes. I then discuss where Asian-origin and Latin American–origin groups fit into the picture of intermarriage along racial and ethnic lines. Will they follow the process of racialization like blacks or the process of ethnicization like southern and eastern Europeans? Will they assimilate along a relativity straight-line process, or will they assimilate along a segmented process? This is especially important, as these processes relate to crossing boundaries through intimate relationships. Finally, the chapter offers a look at interethnic couples and their place within the theoretical debates in the literature. Chapter 3 discusses conceptual issues of interethnic relationships and how they differ from the conceptual issues of interracial relationships. I also outline my research questions in more detail and show how my methodology will answer each of the questions I pose. I propose that the consequences of being classified as an interracial and the consequences of being classified as an interethnic couple are very different, even though the two terms are often used synonymously. This conflation leads us to think that they are the same or, even worse, to leave out the entire category of interethnic relationships. By distinguishing between interracial and interethnic relationships, those couples crossing either racial or ethnic boundaries will be included in discussions of mixed relationships. I follow with a discussion of the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). These two data sets examine the key questions raised in this study from different levels of analyses: from the

Introduction

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quantitative level (CPS), to the survey level (CILS), and finally to the in-depth, open-ended qualitative interviews (also part of CILS). These data sets enable me to look at mixed relationships, at the national level and more specifically at Southern California. Chapter 4 offers a demographic profile of interracial and interethnic relationships in the United States using the CPS. I examine patterns of interethnic and interracial relationships by sex, ethnicity, race, class, education, and generation, using the CPS from 2003 to 2006 to create a demographic profile of mixed unions. First examining “race,” I describe which racial groups exhibit higher percentages of people in mixed relationships. I next use the CPS and its more objective measure of ethnicity—based on national origin—to paint a better picture of mixed relationships. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 offer a more detailed account of mixed relationships in Southern California using the third wave of the CILS. Chapter 5 analyzes the CILS survey to offer a more in-depth look at the characteristics of mixed couples in Southern California and the ways in which people date, cohabitate, and marry across ethnic and racial lines. This level of analysis allows us to look at the processes of assimilation, especially in the area of intimate relationships, through the use of logistic regression models. Chapters 6 and 7 examine a subset of the CILS survey, which includes 134 in-depth interviews, and go beyond the question of who enters into mixed relationships to provide important information about the reasons why and how they enter these relationships. What does it mean to them? What are some of the issues they deal with in negotiating these types of relationships? What implications do these issues have for their assimilation (and dissimilation), in either a straight-line path or a segmented path? Chapter 6 discusses how the couples themselves feel about the supposed racial and ethnic lines they cross. In other words, how do they categorize their relationships? What other lines are important to them, such as class, generation, religion, and language? Chapter 7 examines the role that gender plays in individuals’ decisions to enter into mixed relationships. In addition, the role of informality is investigated among the interviewees; more specifically, the role of dating, cohabiting, and marrying in relation to mixed couples and assimilation paths is discussed. Chapter 8 concludes by questioning the role of mixed unions as it relates to the overall processes of assimilation. We need more studies to

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closely examine the connection between subprocesses (or types) of assimilation with the overall processes of assimilation and dissimilation. Each level of analysis gives us a much different view of assimilation, so much so that we come away from this analysis with more questions than answers. This calls for future studies to explore in more depth the role of “marital assimilation” in the overall processes of assimilation and to explore the various types of mixed relationships—dating, cohabiting, and marrying—in more detail.

CHAPTER 2

History and Theory

In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy, was murdered in Mississippi for allegedly “wolf whistling” at a white female. This is one way social status was maintained in the South during this time period, and it provides an extreme example of the brutal enforcement of social-distance norms and the way blacks were racialized and excluded from the paradigm of assimilation. 2 Racialization is the “process by which groups of persons come to be classified as races. Put more precisely, it is the process by which certain bodily features or assumed biological characteristics are used systematically to mark certain persons for differential status or treatment” (Cornell and Hartmann 2007). The polar opposite of what happened to Emmett Till (racialization) is the reduction of social distance. Social distance is reduced when two persons from different racial backgrounds cross a “color line” and form an intimate relationship—in the form of a mixed union, whether it be by marriage or cohabitation. When mixed unions are formed, a social boundary is crossed, which leads to boundary blurring (Alba and Nee 2003; Alba 2005). It is theorized that boundary blurring leads to greater assimilation or is itself an indicator of assimilation to the “mainstream” (Alba and Nee 2003; Gordon 1964). A classic example of boundary blurring, and the opposite process of racialization, is the process of ethnicization: “Ethnicization is the making of an ethnic group. It is the process by which a group of persons comes to see itself as a distinct group linked by bonds of kinship or their equivalents, by a shared 2. Given the many different uses and definitions of assimilation, I will go over specific definitions and processes of assimilation later in this chapter.

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history, or by cultural symbols” (Cornell and Hartmann 2007). Classic examples of this are the Irish, Italians, and Jews, who were once racialized groups that became ethnic groups. One could argue that this is one of the reasons European Americans have assimilated relatively smoothly in the United States. European immigrants, unlike blacks, were closely associated with a straight-line model of assimilation (Omi and Winant 1994). While assimilation and ethnicization have often been linked positively, assimilation and racialization have also been at odds with each other. In other words, racialization has often been discussed in terms of black-white intermarriage in the literature of racial relations, while ethnicization has been discussed in terms of European immigrants coming to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth century within the literature on immigration. It is imperative that we connect these two bodies of literature in light of the new waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America since the 1960s. The question is whether these groups will experience a process of racialization or ethnicization or if they will initially be racialized and then eventually be seen as ethnic groups in the future. The next two sections discuss each of these bodies of literature as background for my subsequent discussion of the history of intermarriage boundaries. I will then discuss assimilation and dissimilation and place Asian-origin and Latino-origin groups within these processes. RACIALIZATION OF INTIMATE RELATIONS In 1691, Virginia became one of the first colonies to punish interracial sexual relations: “All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process” (Code Ann. A7 20-57). During the centuries that followed, a “one drop rule” of hypodescent that defined anyone with any trace of African American “blood” as black was established and enforced. This rule was established during the days of slavery and strengthened during the Jim Crow era, forming a dichotomous “color line” between whites and blacks in the United States (Davis 2001). Three centuries after Virginia outlawed interracial marriages, Mildred Loving, a black female, and Richard Loving, a white man, were exiled from the same state for 25 years after being convicted under Virginia’s law in 1958. The decision was eventually overturned and ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, along with the

History and Theory

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miscegenation laws of 15 other states (Kennedy 2003; Moran 2001). It was a long journey—three centuries and more than 12 generations—to overrule the de jure bases of interracial segregation of sexual and marital relationships, if not its de facto consequences as reflected in persistently low black-white intermarriage rates to the present day. In the realm of intimate relations that cross the black-white color line, society as a whole—including its most learned scholars—have been historically obsessed with black men and white women marrying, while at the same time displaying a glaring and utter lack of interest in the much more common instances of white men forcing sexual relations with black women ever since the beginnings of slavery. The difference between these two types of relationships highlights an important point about social distance. The latter intimate relationships—between master and slave—do not represent a reduction in social distance since the sexual relations were coerced (i.e., the women were raped). The former type—of black men marrying white women—however, pose a threat to social distance and to the entire edifice of white supremacy because these couples chose to cross the color line to form an intimate relationship (Davis 2001). Indeed, up until Loving v. Virginia and well beyond it, scholars of intermarriage (not to mention literature and popular culture) have primarily researched interracial marriages between black men and white women, and to a lesser extent between black women and white men (Blumberg and Roye 1979; Larsson 1965; McNamara, Tempenis, and Walton 1999; Rosenblatt, Karis, and Powell 1995). Regarding such relationships, scholars have focused on issues such as passing (and “trespassing”), crossing the color line, ways that others try to prevent these marriages, relations with family members, the offspring of these marriages, and the policing of the black-white boundary. While these works are extremely important to our understanding of interracial relationships, they have a number of limitations. From a theoretical perspective, African Americans are different from immigrants in that the concept of assimilation is not applied equally to them by scholars, either historically or currently. Robert Park pointed out in 1930 that African Americans have been a part of U.S. society for three centuries and are thoroughly acculturated English-only-speaking Protestants, yet are still not assimilated (Park 1930). Furthermore, even though Gordon (1964) states that “once structural assimilation has occurred, either simultaneously with or subsequent to acculturation, all

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of the other types of assimilation will naturally follow,” he also states that If a minority group is spatially isolated and segregated…the acculturation process will be very slow…Unusually marked discrimination…if it succeeds in keeping vast number of the minority group deprived of educational and occupational opportunities…may indefinitely retard the acculturation process for the group. (78) Thus, while it is acknowledged that blacks do not fit the assimilation model, the straight-line perspective so often attributed to Gordon (1964) remained unquestioned for decades. ETHNICIZATION OF INTIMATE RELATIONS A separate body of literature focused on the role of intermarriage describes the process of assimilation for European immigrants starting in the nineteenth century up to the present (Alba 1990; Gordon 1964; Lieberson and Waters 1988; Waters 1990). The arrival of southern and eastern Europeans in the United States brought new groups that were initially racialized, as is evident by the fact that the Irish, Jews, and Italians were not deemed “white” when they first started coming the United States. When the Irish first came to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, they worked and lived with African Americans, and thus experienced residential segregation from whites. “Only when these immigrants took their places as the masses of ‘unskilled’ and residentially ghettoized industrial workers did Americans come to believe that Europe was made up of a variety of inferior and superior races” (Brodkin 1998). The Irish immigrants’ phenotype combined with Catholicism did not initially allow them to gain status as whites—precisely because the dominant Protestants saw them as non-white—but their opportunities in the political sphere and in the labor market allowed them to move into ethnic niches. Once in ethnic niches, they were able to gain a “white” status and then completely distance themselves from poor blacks (Brodkin 1998; Ignatiev 1995; Roediger 1991). The implication for this process of becoming an ethnic group (ethnicization)—as opposed to a racial group—is that Irish immigrants as well as other immigrant minority groups can gain “white” status through labor market experiences and

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then use this status to fully assimilate into the white middle-class stratum. The key to achieving such a status, however, hinges on the fact that they were eventually redefined as “white” by the dominant group in society. Milton Gordon, in Assimilation in American Life (1964), was one of the first scholars to place intermarriage at the heart of the assimilation process. Southern and eastern Europeans became an ethnic group and made the switch from being racialized to being ethnicized. It was intermarriage that then allowed them to go from being an ethnic group to becoming “American.” More recent work on intermarriage among European-ancestry Americans finds that they intermarry with other European-ancestry Americans at a higher rate than we would expect by chance (Lieberson and Waters 1988). In fact, these high rates of intermarriage are often used as evidence for a straight-line perspective in the process of assimilation. We saw an emergence, however, of “white ethnicities” in the 1970s—in an era of civil rights, affirmative action, and “ethnic revivals”—and all of a sudden, even intermarriage among European groups apparently did not transform them into a new kind of American. THE HISTORY OF INTERMARRIAGE BOUNDARIES When it comes to research on assimilation and social distance, the study of intermarriage has always been a central point of interest, and for good reason. Intermarriage is the litmus test of whether or not two groups are integrating, or reducing the social distance between them, especially given that marriage is the most intimate relationship two individuals can share. Most recently, intermarriage studies have focused on racial boundaries and how frequently individuals in the United States are marrying across these racial boundaries. This focus on racial boundaries as being the quintessential boundary that is crossed through intermarriage, however, has not always been the case. For example, in the 1940s, Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy studied intermarriage in New Haven, Connecticut where the primary boundaries she examined were ethnic and religious boundaries (1944; 1952). She described her intermarriage findings as entailing a “triple-melting-pot.” Various ethnic groups where much less likely to cross religious boundaries than they were to cross ethnic boundaries. For the most part, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews of various

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nationalities tended to marry within the same religious pot when it came to intermarriage; she predicted that “a triple religious cleavage rather than a multilinear nationality cleavage, therefore, seems likely to characterize American society in the future” (1944). Around this same time, Warner and Srole published The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (1945), in which they posited that the American social system was organized in a hierarchy of racial and ethnic subordinate groups. In such a system, the “greater the racial difference between the populations of the immigrant and the host societies, the greater the subordination of the immigrant group” (286). Furthermore, the same could be said about ethnic groups, only the difference was not racial, but cultural. They further distinguished these cultural differences into differences of language and religion. Table 2.1 is recreated from their book (288) and represents their scale of subordination and assimilation, with groups at the top less likely to be subordinated and more likely to assimilate. As seen in this table, Warner and Srole presented a multidimensional scale of subordination and assimilation based on interactions of race, language, and religion. Their prediction for the future of American society looked very different from that proposed by Kennedy: “The future of American ethnic groups seems to be limited; it is likely that they will be quickly absorbed. When this happens one of the great epochs of American history will have ended and another, that of race, will begin” (295). Will Herberg, in his influential book, Protestant—Catholic—Jew (1960), points out that even before intermarriage was synonymous with religious intermarriage (as Kennedy shows), intermarriage meant ethnic intermarriage. Herberg says that this was because, upon arrival in the United States, immigrants were concerned with maintaining their ethnic identities through their native languages and cultures. The second generation then wanted to forget this ethnic identification and become American. It was the third generation, as pointed out by Marcus Hansen’s “principle of third-generation interest” (Hansen 1996), that wanted to remember what the second generation wanted to forget. The problem, as Herberg points out, was that the third generation had already lost their foreignness by shedding their ancestral language and culture and becoming American—but what kind of American? It was at this stage that religion took the place of language and culture and “became the primary context of self-identification and social location for the third generation, as well as for the bulk of the second generation, of America’s immigrants, and that meant, by and large, for the

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American people” (31). As Herberg correctly notes, part of this change came about because immigration had all but stopped at the time he wrote his book. Ironically, his book was written before the mass waves of immigration from Asia and Latin America in the late 1960s, bringing new groups of immigrants with a renewed sense of religious commitment. And, after all, “the newcomer is expected to change many things about him as he becomes American—nationality, language, culture. One thing, however, he is not expected to change—and that is his religion” (23). Thus, Herberg was justified in seeing religion as a key boundary of intermarriage. Table 2.1 Scale of Subordination and Assimilation Racial Type

Cultural Type

Racial Type I Light Caucasoids

Cultural Type 1 English-speaking Protestants Cultural Type 2 Protestants who do not speak English Cultural Type 3 English-speaking Catholics and other nonProtestants Cultural Type 4 Catholics and other non-Protestants, most of whom speak allied Indo-European languages Cultural Type 5 English-speaking non-Christians Cultural Type 6 Non-Christians who do not speak English

Racial Type II Dark Caucasoids

Cultural typing the same as for Racial Type I

Racial Type III Mongoloid and Caucasoid mixtures wih Caucasoid appearance dominant (appearance of "dark" Mediterranean)

Cultural typing the same as for Racial Type I

Racial Type IV Mongoloid and Caucasoid mixtures that appear Mongoloid

Cultural typing the same as for Racial Type I

Racial Type V Negroes and all Negroid mixtures

Cultural typing the same as for Racial Type I

Source: From W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1945), 288.

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Finally, two influential books came out in 1964: Inter-Marriage: Interfaith, Interracial, Interethnic by Albert Gordon and Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins by Milton Gordon. Albert Gordon argued that there would be an increase in all forms of intermarriage (i.e., interfaith, interracial, and interethnic). Milton Gordon viewed ethnic groups as those encompassing racial, religious, and national origin groups. Therefore, his view of intermarriage coincided with Albert Gordon in that intermarriage could entail interfaith, interracial, or interethnic marriages. What is clear from this body of research is that race, religion, and national origin have all represented important boundaries of intermarriage in our society at some point. Moreover, the works presented above deal with issues of immigrants incorporating into our society through intermarriage. Presently, some scholars have argued that ethnicity is the most salient boundary among European immigrants and their descendants (Lieberson and Waters 1988; Waters 1990). Conversely, other scholars have argued that race is the most salient boundary among post-1960 immigrants who have come predominantly from Asia and Latin America (Alba and Nee 2003; Bean and Stevens 2003; Waters 1999). Furthermore, a close examination of intermarriage literature reveals that most of the studies focus almost exclusively on racial intermarriage (Alba and Nee 2003; Bean and Stevens 2003; Blumberg and Roye 1979; Larsson 1965; McNamara, Tempenis, and Walton 1999; Rosenblatt, Karis, and Powell 1995), whereas only a small number of studies distinguish between racial and ethnic intermarriages (Gilbertson, Fitzpatrick, and Yang 1996; Jiobu 1988; Perlmann 1997; Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001; Qian and Lichter 2004; Qian and Lichter 2007; Shinagawa and Pang 1988, 1996). Even rarer are studies of religious intermarriages (Glenn 1982; Johnson 1980; Kalmijn 1991; Sherkat 2004).3 The reason why the boundaries that define intermarriage are so important is that they give us a glimpse into what the future of American society will look like. Just as scholars in the twentieth century disagreed on the most important social boundaries, scholars

3. Another possible reason for a lack of dialogue on religion and intermarriage is the fact that the census does not ask the religion of respondents. I will use the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) in this study to examine religious diversity and its importance in mixed relationships.

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today are equally in disagreement over what the critical boundaries are in our society. However, the majority of scholars fall on the side of the racial boundary as being the most important boundary in our present day—especially when it comes to intermarriage. ASSIMILATION (AND DISSIMILATION) VIA MILTON GORDON AND J. MILTON YINGER While we have talked briefly about assimilation and intermarriage, such terms can have multiple meanings and be used in a number of ways. Assimilation is one of those words that changes meanings, comes in and out of style, and is fraught with political values. Although there are any number of definitions we could cite, the classic definition of assimilation comes from Robert Park and Ernest Burgess: Assimilation is a process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons or groups, and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life. (1921) Another way we can think about assimilation, via J. Milton Yinger, is by considering it a “process of boundary reduction that can occur when members of two or more societies, ethnic groups, or smaller social groups meet” (1994, 39). While Park and Burgess’s definition focuses on incorporation into a common cultural life, Yinger’s definition focuses on a process of boundary reduction. In addition to this definition, Yinger suggests four principles for using assimilation as an analytic tool: (a) assimilation is a descriptive, not an evaluative, concept; (b) assimilation refers to a variable, not an attribute; (c) assimilation is a multidimensional process; and (d) each process is reversible (1994, 40–41). We can combine these principles using Yinger’s phrase: “the study of assimilation is simultaneously the study of dissimilation” (40). Yinger defines dissimilation as “the process whereby intrasocietal differences are maintained and created around subcultural groups” (41). These definitions allow us to view assimilation as more than a straight-line approach. We can focus on social boundaries and see assimilation as a reduction in the maintenance of boundaries and dissimilation as a sustaining of

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boundaries. Depending on the historical context and the ethnic group we are focusing on, we could see processes of assimilation and dissimilation occurring simultaneously in different spheres of the ethnic group in question. Surprisingly, J. Milton Yinger’s view of assimilation and dissimilation has not been widely applied to studies on the incorporation into U.S. society of post-1960s immigrants and their children. On the other hand, Milton Gordon’s view of assimilation (1964) has been widely applied to studies on the incorporation of the post-1960s waves of immigrants and their children despite the fact that it was written as an analysis of European immigrants who arrived well before 1960. Milton Gordon had no way of knowing how many immigrants would be coming to the United States just a few years later, nor could he foresee the diversity of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean Islands. Despite the incongruous historical context in which he wrote Assimilation in American Life, it is easily the most cited and widely used theoretical statement of assimilation to date. Gordon (1964) posited seven stages of assimilation: cultural, structural, marital, identificational, attitude receptional, behavior receptional, and civic assimilation. Not all of these stages have been studied equally, nor have all scholars viewed the assimilation process as containing these seven steps. Yinger (1994), for example, sees the attitude receptional, behavior receptional, and civic assimilation steps as consequences of assimilation rather than types of assimilation. Instead, he posits four types of assimilation: cultural, structural, biological (amalgamation), and psychological (identification). Rumbaut (2001) further clarifies Gordon’s last three stages as requisite contextual factors applying to the host society and not to the newcomers; thus, complete assimilation cannot happen without the host society accepting the immigrants: “It takes two to tango—and to assimilate” (159). Moreover, Rumbaut (2001) sees assimilation as involving three interrelated processes: cultural, structural (including intermarriage), and psychological. Jiobu (1988) reduces Gordon’s seven types of assimilation to three: subcultural, structural, and socioeconomic. Clearly, cultural, structural (under which some scholars include marital), and psychological processes are all key types of assimilation processes and outcomes. Cultural assimilation, more commonly referred to as acculturation, is the “process of change toward greater cultural similarity brought about by contact between two or more groups” (Yinger 1994). As this

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definition highlights, acculturation is not a one-way process, but a twoway process in which both the immigrant group and the “host” society influence each other in the forms of language, food, music, words, and arts and crafts. Furthermore, cultural assimilation is not a zero-sum game, but includes additive and subtractive (or substitutive) elements (Rumbaut 2001; Yinger 1994). Numerous scholars have shown that groups do not have to fully acculturate to go through other processes of assimilation (Gibson 1988; Zhou and Bankston 1998) nor do groups who fully acculturate necessarily proceed through the other processes of assimilation. African Americans are a case in point: there is no doubt that they are as acculturated as any other group, yet they are still faced with various obstacles in the form of prejudice, discrimination, intermarriage, residential segregation, and inaccessibility to educational and occupational opportunities (Gordon 1964; Park 1930). The next process of assimilation is structural assimilation (or integration), which for Gordon (1964) refers to the “large-scale entrance into cliques, clubs, and institutions of [the] host society” and, at the collective level, taking on large-scale primary group relationships. Gordon distinguishes between secondary and primary groups. The secondary group is made up of those people we can characterize as casual and impersonal. The primary group, on the other hand, is “a group in which contact is personal, informal, intimate, and usually faceto-face, and which involves the entire personality, not just a segmentalized part of it” (31). Yinger (1994) expands on this with impersonal contacts (economic and political institutions) and personal contacts (neighborhoods, friendship circles, and marriages). It is thus easy to see why scholars include marital assimilation within structural assimilation. For Gordon, structural assimilation was the key process because he believed that all of the other processes of assimilation would follow. Whether or not we include marital assimilation as a part of structural assimilation is not as important as scholars make it seem. I will be focusing, however, on this key process of assimilation. Either way, marital assimilation involves primary group relationships and does not come about until some degree of structural assimilation has occurred. If marital assimilation, an inevitable by-product of structural assimilation, takes place fully, the minority group loses its

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants ethnic identity in the larger host or core society, and identificational assimilation takes place. . . . Once structural assimilation has occurred, either simultaneously with or subsequent to acculturation, all of the other types of assimilation will naturally follow. (Gordon 1964)

So important is this concept of marital assimilation that four decades later, scholars still use intermarriage as a litmus test for patterns of assimilation. Although Gordon himself never described his approach to assimilation as a straight-line approach, it has often been attributed to Gordon (in such forms as Gordon’s “straight-line” theory (Stevens, Ishizawa, and McKillip 2006)). It is, however, not too far of a stretch to see why this is the case, given his statement that once marital assimilation takes place, “the remaining types of assimilation have all taken place like a row of tenpins bowled over in rapid succession by a well placed strike” (Gordon 1964). Herbert Gans (1992) later renames the straight-line approach as a bumpy-line approach to accentuate the various kinds of adaptations in a variety of contexts. I do not agree with this ascription of a straight-line approach (or a bumpy-line approach), which does not account for different paths, but ultimately sees immigrants and their descendants ending up in the same place, nor do I think Gordon would, as I will explain in the next section. Of course, marital assimilation cannot be separated from the other types of assimilation, and it affects or is affected by the other types. For analytical purposes, I will try to isolate this important type. The other types are important, but we need to understand the individual types to some extent in order to better understand the whole. I will expand on Gordon’s conception of marital assimilation to include union formations of marriage, cohabitation, and dating relationships. I will focus in subsequent chapters on the role of union formations in the processes of assimilation. Just as Yinger suggests that the study of assimilation is simultaneously the study of dissimilation, the study of marital assimilation (i.e., intermarriage) is simultaneously the study of homophily. Homophily is the “principle that a contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people” (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook 2001). I will be referring to homophily in relation to union formations as individuals marrying, cohabiting with, and dating people from their own ethnic group. In order to understand union formation and the role it plays in the

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processes of assimilation, it is crucial that we also understand why people form unions with others from their own ethnic group, especially since this is by far the norm; the majority of individuals do not cross racial or ethnic lines when it comes to forming an intimate relationship with another person. VARIABLES THAT INFLUENCE ASSIMILATION AND DISSIMILATION Before talking about assimilation in terms of the outcomes or processes, perhaps it will be helpful to bring in Yinger’s conception of dissimilation and talk about the factors that affect the extent and speed of assimilation of ethnic groups. Yinger introduces 20 variables that affect the extent and speed of assimilation of ethnic groups. Each variable can exert assimilative influences, mixed or neutral influences, or dissimilative influences (1994, 53). I will not mention all 20 variables, but will briefly introduce the 10 variables that are most relevant to this study. The first set of factors relates to structural factors such as group size, concentration, length of residency, and transnational travel. A small group size (relative to the total population) is likely to be more open to change via assimilative influences, while a large group is likely to exert dissimilative influences. Group size is related to, but is not the same as, group concentration. Living in a residentially concentrated area is more likely to be a dissimilative force than is being scattered spatially by region and community. Length of residency in a country also impacts a group’s assimilation or dissimilation. Long-term residency (or a low proportion of newcomers) has assimilative influences on communities, while short-term residency (or a high proportion of newcomers) has dissimilative influences on the said communities. Finally, in relation to structural factors, especially geographic location, the ease and frequency in which immigrants and their children are able to return to their homelands is a factor in the extent and speed of assimilation. Returns can speed up assimilation if they are difficult and infrequent but will exert dissimilative influences if they are easy and frequent. The next set of factors relates to ascribed statuses such as language, religion, race, and cultural differences. Speaking different languages, belonging to different religions and racial categories (or at least being

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assigned to different racial categories by the host society), and coming from culturally different societies all have dissimilative influences on ethnic groups. Conversely, those ethnic groups that speak English, share one of the majority religions, are considered “white” by the host society, or come from a society that is culturally similar to the receiving society are likely to assimilate more quickly and more thoroughly. The last set of factors relates to achieved statuses such as social class (as indexed by education, occupation, and income). Diversity in social class is more likely to have assimilative influences on ethnic groups, while homogeneity in social class will have dissimilative influences on ethnic groups. What exactly does “dissimilative influences” mean? What are the implications? What is the end result of assimilation or dissimilation? Aside from the processes of assimilation (whether they be straight-line or segmented), theoretical models also formulate the preferred goals of adjustment for immigrants and their descendants. These goal-systems of assimilation extend beyond the processes of assimilation and gauge how society will look once these newcomers have settled into the host society. Gordon proposed three ideological tendencies for predicting what the larger American society would look like: (1) Angloconformity; (2) the melting pot; and (3) cultural pluralism (1964). Anglo-conformity “demanded the complete renunciation of the immigrant’s ancestral culture in favor of the behavior and values of the Anglo-Saxon core group” (85). Gordon found this dominant position largely unchallenged in 1964, when he wrote his book. His analysis of this position found that there was some validity to the argument as an empirical outcome, but that it was only with respect to acculturation (cultural assimilation). That is, immigrants will, for the most part, acculturate to the language and basic values of American society, but other types of assimilation will not necessarily follow—especially structural assimilation. In fact, Gordon concludes that “acculturation without massive structural intermingling at primary group levels has been the dominant motif in the American experience of creating and developing a nation out of diverse peoples” (114). In the present day, we see vestiges of Anglo-conformity in the way proponents want to make English the official language of the United States. These notions have become more prominent as mass waves of immigrants have come into this country since the 1960s. At the turn of the twentieth century, when the United States saw peak number of immigrants coming from Europe, the ideologically

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charged image of the “melting pot” became popular with Israel Zangwill’s play The Melting Pot (Gordon 1964; Rumbaut 2005). “To a self-professed nation of immigrants, that vivid and seductive image serves to answer the challenges of social justice and diversity posed by immigration—by offering an inclusionary image of the mechanism by which an unum is forged from the pluribus” (Rumbaut 2005). The metaphor of the melting pot romanticized the ultimate endpoint of assimilation for all of the European immigrant groups that came to the United States. Gordon concluded that this did not match the reality of immigration to the United States and instead proposed that American society has come to be composed of a number of “pots,” or subsocieties, three of which are the religious containers marked Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, which are in the process of melting down the white nationality background communities contained within them; others are racial groups which are not allowed to melt structurally; and still others are substantial remnants of the nationality background communities manned by those members who are either of the first generation, or who, while native born, choose to remain within the ethnic enclosure. (1964, 130) The image of a “melting pot” has become more problematic with the diversity of more recent immigrants, who come predominantly from Latin America and Asia. The view of American society made up of a number of melting pots more closely fits with a segmented model of assimilation, with multiple paths that lead to a variety of melting pots. In Gordon’s view, the melting pots are structural—not cultural—in nature. Horace Kallen largely developed the model of “cultural pluralism” and was a major proponent of its tenets (Gordon 1964). Cultural pluralism saw immigrant groups maintaining the cultural elements they brought from their homelands while still incorporating into American society and saw the host society accepting and embracing these cultural differences. Gordon finds fault with cultural assimilation in the following manner: “A more accurate term for the American situation is structural pluralism rather than cultural pluralism, although some of the latter also remains” (159). This is where Yinger’s term dissimilation fits in. Milton Gordon, in his review of Yinger’s book, described

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dissimilation as “tendencies toward pluralism” (1995). I agree with this assessment and see dissimilative forces as those forces that direct people along any assimilation path that does not lead to convergence with the dominant majority (i.e., the white middle class). FROM ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA: STRAIGHT-LINE OR SEGMENTED? While it is not clear whether immigrants from Asia and Latin America will eventually intermarry at the same rates as European immigrants once did or at the same rates as their descendants now do, there are those who hypothesize that this will be the case (see Alba and Nee 2003; Bean and Stevens 2003). In other words, these scholars argue that the adaptation process of these immigrants (or at least their children and grandchildren) will follow the expectations of a linear assimilation process. The following quote from Alba and Nee aptly describes the stance that these authors take on immigration and how it will relate to today’s newcomers: [A]ssimilation has been the master trend among the descendants of prior waves of immigration, which originated predominantly in Europe but also in East Asia. Groups once regarded as racial and religious outsiders, such as Jews and Italians, have joined the American institutional mainstream and social majority. Among whites, ethnic boundaries have not entirely disappeared, but they have become so faint as to pale beside other racial/ethnic boundaries. Assimilation is unlikely to achieve the same preeminence among the descendants of contemporary immigrants, but that it will be a force of major consequence we have no doubt. In arguing for the importance of assimilation as a social process, we are not asserting its inevitability, as the early writing on assimilation appeared to. Perhaps in the long run, assimilation will turn out to be as predominant in the future as it has been in the American past. (2003) Alba and Nee also make it clear that the picture is not as simple as it was in the past because of the great diversity that we see in the types of immigrants that are now migrating to the United States and in “the forms of capital immigrants bring, the nature of the communities they

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enter, and their race and legal status” . They are, however, optimistic that Asians and Latinos will have a good chance at assimilating into the American institutional mainstream—though not necessarily through being included in the white category, but instead by being included in a “non-black” category through a process where racial and ethnic boundaries will eventually break down and become blurred. Bean and Stevens (2003) ask a similar question about the incorporation of new immigrants in contrast to the incorporation of older immigrants: [H]igh levels of intermarriage between Americans of various European nationalities in succeeding generations over the course of the mid-twentieth century were evidence of the diminution of social and cultural distinctions among Americans of European descent. Will the same happen to the different national origin groups that arrived in the latter third of the twentieth century? . This question gets at the heart of the increase in racial and ethnic groups immigrating to the United States starting in the 1960s and asks whether or not they will incorporate into the “mainstream” or at least remain somewhat marginal to the dominant “non-Hispanic white” population. Bean and Stevens use the Current Population Survey (CPS) data to show patterns of intermarriage across generations and suggest that newer immigrants predominantly from Asia and Latin America are assimilating: “The increasing levels of intermarriage across generations strongly suggests that the intermarriage patterns of Asians and of Hispanics will parallel those of European immigrants and their descendants over the course of the twentieth century” . Not everyone is as optimistic as Alba and Nee (2003) and Bean and Stevens (2003) about the position that Asian-origin and Latinoorigin groups will occupy in our society. Hollinger (2003) examines “ethnoracial” groups (the combined term he prefers to racial and ethnic groups) from a macro-historical perspective. He looks at history through an ethnoracial mixture lens and uses amalgamation and the “one-drop rule” to show how blacks have been continually subjugated to the bottom rung of the stratification ladder. Miscegenation (despite antimiscegenation laws) has continually shaped the racial position not only of blacks, but also of Native Americans, Asians, and Latinos,

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albeit to a lesser degree. Despite the degree of amalgamation that has occurred in the history of these aggregates, they have not fully assimilated and remain racialized. Similarly, Olsen (2001) relies on an ethnographic study of a high school in northern California to provide evidence for what she sees as a racialization of immigrants (Asians and Latinos) as they incorporate into their new environment. The immigrant students are marginalized (in large part because of their language), put in their “place” within a subordinate racial panethnic category (as opposed to their national origin), and sorted and segmented into paths that limit their education opportunities. This line of thinking fits more closely with immigration scholars who see a shift in the role of assimilation among post-1960 immigrants and, especially, their children. Children of immigrants—whether born in the United States or who came to the United States at a young age—account for approximately one out of every five American children. Conditions for the children of post-1960 immigrants are different from those of pre-1960 immigrants in two ways. First, the majority of pre-1960 immigrants was European and white, whereas most post-1960s immigrants are non-European and non-white and to varying degrees experience barriers to adaptation based on their phenotype. Second, as a result of national deindustrialization and global industrial restructuring, the structure of economic opportunities has changed dramatically. This is the society and “context of reception” into which these new immigrants and their children are trying to incorporate. In other words, the new second generation forms a diverse population, which further complicates their adaptation process. Portes and Zhou (1993) propose the idea of segmented assimilation for understanding the process of social adaptation by the immigrant second generation and illustrate it with ethnographic accounts of Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Punjabi Sikhs in California, and Caribbean youths in southern Florida. These case studies point out the different groups’ modes of incorporation and base these differences on resources (such as government programs and the availability of coethnic resources) and their interaction with other negative forces like difference in phenotype, concentration in central cities, and absence of mobility ladders—which create vulnerability to downward assimilation. Therein lies the paradox: “adopting the outlooks and cultural ways of the native-born does not represent, as in the past, the first step toward social and economic mobility but may lead to the exact opposite”

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(Portes and Zhou 1993). For example, the Cubans who attend private school do very well despite the fact that they are not very likely to leave their coethnic community. On the other hand, the more disadvantaged Haitians are more likely to go outside of their ethnic community. Second generation immigrants are incorporated into society in different ways from their parents. The socioeconomic status of their parents, coethnic resources, and contexts of discrimination all impact the speed in which they will assimilate into society. Rather than just a “straight-line” (or even a “bumpy-line”) model of assimilation (Gans 1979, 1992), the new second generation experiences many different or segmented ways of assimilating. To what sector of American society will a particular immigrant group assimilate? The sectors can vary from “straight-line” assimilation at one extreme to assimilation into the underclass at the other extreme. “[R]apid economic advancement with deliberate preservation of the immigrant community’s values and tight solidarity” (Portes and Zhou 1993) defines the sector that falls in the middle of the two extremes. Portes and Rumbaut (2001) expound on the outline of the process of segmented assimilation, filling in the analytical gaps, and use a wide range of survey and interview data from the census and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) conducted in Miami and San Diego to test the various factors with empirical data. These rich sources of data—especially the surveys and in-depth interviews from the CILS—sort through the complex factors that eventually lead to one of three expected outcomes. For example, this can be seen in how Portes and Rumbaut (2001) explain the background factors of parental human capital, family structure, and modes of incorporation in the first generation, which in turn affect the level of acculturation experienced by the second generation. These factors can lead to intergenerational patterns of dissonant, consonant, and selective acculturation. External obstacles such as racial discrimination, the bifurcated labor market, and inner-city subcultures also affect the form of acculturation. Overall, parental human capital and demographic characteristics have positive influences on second-generation outcomes. These factors in turn directly affect the structure and achievement of immigrant families. The ranking of Asian families as most stable, followed by Latin families and then black Caribbean families, illustrates the fact that while parental human capital can explain different family structures,

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characteristics of their original culture and modes of incorporation also play as important a role in explaining how the second generation will acculturate. Ultimately, and as an ideal type, we can expect one of three outcomes: (a) downward assimilation; (b) mostly upward assimilation, blocked at times by discrimination; and (c) mostly upward assimilation combined with biculturalism (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Upon a close examination of Gordon (1964), we can see that he was at least open to the possibility of a segmented assimilation process—i.e., different paths to assimilation for different groups. In fact, he never called his assimilation a “straight-line” model as many scholars have claimed—a text search through his book reveals that the word “straight” does not appear once in his book (www.amazon.com). While he saw how European Americans were likely to proceed relatively smoothly through the seven types of assimilation, he also saw that African Americans and Puerto Rican Americans were not following the same path as European Americans. He qualifies his generalizations of assimilation by stating that a minority group that is “spatially isolated or segregated (whether voluntary or not)” or a group that experiences “unusually marked discrimination” will invariably slow down the acculturation process for the group (75–79). Both sides of the argument make important points about whether or not Asian-origin and Latin American–origin immigrants and their children are assimilating (through a process similar to the ethnicization of earlier Europeans) or whether they are remaining a racialized minority in the United States. Rather than arguing for one side or the other, I hypothesize that both processes are going on simultaneously. In other words, the debate is not about whether the adaptation process of assimilation will be linear or segmented. We can see evidence that both processes are valid, depending on which groups we observe intermarrying and in what contexts. More importantly, we can see evidence for both processes when we make a distinction between race and ethnicity. Increased intermarriage rates among the second and third generations of Asian immigrants potentially point to a process of ethnicization, which may eventually lead to a linear process of assimilation. That assumes, however, that all Asians are homogeneous and go through the same processes and, more importantly, that they are not also being racialized. When we break down intermarriage rates by ethnic groups within the Asian category, we find that rates of intermarriage vary greatly (Jiobu 1988; Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001; Shinagawa and Pang 1996). Thus, while the Japanese (well-known for

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their high rates of intermarriage) may be following a linear path, other Asian ethnics may be following segmented paths. WHAT ABOUT INTERETHNIC COUPLES? Gordon refers to an ethnic group as “a type of group contained within the national boundaries of America . . . defined or set off by race, religion, or national origin, or some combination of these categories” (1964). In this view, race is essentially seen as a subcategory of ethnicity. Alba and Nee share this same view: “we prefer to cast ‘ethnicity’ as the general concept and to see ‘race’ as a form of ethnicity” (2003). In this view, ethnicity can mean race and thus conflates the two concepts. I argue that the two terms are indeed different and that intermarriage is a good example of how the conflation of these two terms has important consequences. I prefer Schermerhorn’s definition of ethnicity: “a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their peoplehood” (1978). Thus, the key to this definition is a common ancestry (real or imagined), history, and culture. Certainly, “races” of people can exhibit these same characteristics, and thus we would naturally expect there to be some overlap between these two concepts. I use Cornell and Hartmann’s definition of race: We can define a race, then, as a human group defined by itself or others as distinct by virtue of perceived common physical characteristics that are held to be inherent. A race is a group of human beings socially defined on the basis of physical characteristics. Determining which characteristics constitute the race—the selection of markers and therefore the construction of the racial category itself—is a choice human beings make. Neither markers nor categories are predetermined by any biological factors. (2007) The key to this definition is that persons belonging to a race have perceived common physical characteristics. The words perceived and putative are key words that point to the way in which I think of race and ethnicity. I see elements of a primordial approach and a

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circumstantialist (or instrumentalist) approach in the definition of these terms, but I find that we get the most utility from a constructionist approach that combines both of these approaches (Cornell and Hartmann 2007). Consider two recent examples of how the terms race and ethnicity are operationalized in studies of assimilation and intermarriage and why it matters. First, Alba and Nee argue that 63 percent of children with Japanese ancestry born in the 1980s “have mixed ethnic ancestry, suggesting the erosion of a racial boundary” (2003). This statement appears to be true if we believe that race is merely a subcategory of ethnicity. If we believe otherwise, however, then such a statement begs to be further broken down into ethnic and racial groups. For example, if we break down those of Japanese descent into the different types of groups which they are intermarrying, we could roughly break them into two types of intermarriage: interethnic and interracial marriages. The people involved in interethnic marriages are those that cross an ethnic line and marry other Asians. On the other hand, interracial marriages involve those Japanese who marry whites, blacks, and other races. Indeed, if the trend is reversing from interracial to interethnic marriages, that tells us a lot about the color line and the differences between racial and ethnic identities. In addition, it calls into question the idea that racial boundaries are eroding. Despite their recent prevalence, only a limited number of studies have examined interethnic marriages (Gilbertson, Fitzpatrick, and Yang 1996; Jiobu 1988; Perlmann 1997; Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001; Qian and Lichter 2004; Qian and Lichter 2007; Shinagawa and Pang 1988, 1996). Indeed, by 2000, a dramatic rise in interethnic marriages, coupled with a relative decrease in interracial marriages, probably indicates that more Asian men and women outmarried across ethnic, as opposed to racial, lines (Shinagawa and Pang 1996). The increase in interethnic marriages can largely be accounted for by significant increases in the size of the foreign-born population and their greater propensity to marry within their own or other Asian groups (Shinagawa and Pang 1996). Alba and Nee to their credit, point out this trend: “The outmarriage rate of the group [Japanese Americans] is such that without sizable new immigration from Japan, which is unlikely, this ethnic group appears to be on the road to amalgamation with whites and, to a lesser but growing extent because of pan-Asian marriages, other Asian groups” (2003). If one views race and ethnicity as basically

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interchangeable, then this statement makes sense. However, if we do not treat these two terms as one, then we could argue that an increasingly larger percentage of Japanese Americans marrying other Asians could do an about-face “on the road to amalgamation.” Conceptually, this is an example of what Yinger refers to as dissimilation (1981; 1994). In other words, there is evidence to suggest that Asian ethnics are less willing to cross racial lines than to cross ethnic lines. Crossing racial lines clearly denotes a decrease in social distance and a type of assimilation, but crossing ethnic lines might be more closely associated with dissimilation or a segmented assimilation path other than the straight-line path. It is important to note that these points are theoretical and have yet to be tested empirically; in fact, that is what I put to the test in this book. Second, Bean and Stevens (2003) show that 21 percent of “Asian wives” and 18 percent of “Latino wives” have husbands of different “race or ancestry”; they also show that 10 percent of “Asian husbands” and 15 percent of “Latino husbands” have wives of different race or ancestry. Their focus on racial terms, however, also tends to diminish the importance of ethnic distinctions between the various groups that are fitted with such panethnic labels. One of the major issues that needs to be addressed is what the terms “Asian” or “Latino” really mean. Are we really talking about intermarriage among Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, and Mexicans, since these groups dominate the current literature on intermarriage? What about the growing Asian Indian population in the United States—mainly due to recent immigration—or the growing number of immigrants from Central and South America, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic? The complete story of intermarriage is not being told when scholars use panethnic terms such as Asian or Latino. In terms of intermarriage, we do not know how many of them are involved in interethnic marriages (as opposed to interracial marriages). The percentage of Asians and Latinos involved in interethnic marriages could change the picture of social and cultural assimilation—or significantly cloud the picture. As a partial answer to the above questions, recent research suggests that among those Asians that are outmarrying (whether across racial or ethnic lines), there are more Asian ethnics marrying other Asian ethnics than there are Asian ethnics marrying other races (Shinagawa and Pang 1996). While even less is known about Latin American–origin groups, there is evidence that they are also marrying

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other Latin American–origin groups at high rates (Gilbertson, Fitzpatrick, and Yang 1996; Qian and Lichter 2004). These findings do not discredit Alba and Nee (2003) or Bean and Stevens (2003) but instead make matters of social and cultural assimilation by means of intermarriage more problematic. A large increase in interethnic marriages in the past several decades among ethnic groups in the Asian and Hispanic categories could simply be “viewed as part of a larger process of assimilation in which social barriers created by ethnic boundaries attenuate as social relations expand across ethnic groups” (Alba and Nee 2003), or it could mean that it is easier to cross ethnic lines than racial lines, thus signaling a more difficult assimilation path for these groups than European immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As early as 1967, Parkman and Sawyer found that ethnic groups in Hawaii tend to marry within an “East-West” dichotomy (Parkman and Sawyer 1967). Massey adapted this to what he coined a “double melting pot” in which “new immigrants exhibit some tendency to maintain endogamy within ‘Asian’ and ‘Hispanic’ clusters” (1981). Gilbertson, Fitzpatrick, and Yang (1996) found this same thing among Latin American–origin groups in New York City. Furthermore, Qian, Blair, and Ruf (2001) and Qian and Corbas (2004) used the 1990 census to confirm that large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America and their descendants are marrying across ethnic lines within these panethnic racial categories. Finally, Qian and Lichter used the 1990 and 2000 Censuses and saw “declines” in intermarriages with whites and large increases in marriages between native- and foreignborn coethnics: For Hispanics, and to a lesser extent Asian Americans the 1990s brought unprecedented declines in intermarriage with whites, which is in sharp contrast to the exceptionally large increases in intermarriage observed in prior censuses (Qian 1997). This finding represents a significant departure from past trends. As we have shown, the retreat from intermarriage largely reflects the growth in the immigrant population; increasing shares of natives are marrying their foreign-born counterparts. (2007) It is important to note that natives marrying their foreign-born counterparts consist of native ethnic groups marrying foreign-born

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persons from the same ethnic group or foreign-born persons from different ethnic groups within the same racial categories. In other words, given their reliance upon racial categories, it is impossible to know if they are talking about coethnic marriages or interethnic marriages. What are we to make of these interethnic couples? What are they assimilating or dissimilating to? Minority groups who marry whites are assumed to be integrating into the dominant society at some level, but what about Asian ethnic groups marrying other Asian ethnic groups or Latino ethnic groups marrying other Latino ethnic groups? It could be argued that they are assimilating into the panethnic categories that we often refer to as Asian and Latino (Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001). In other words, ethnic groups marrying other ethnic groups within the same racial category can be thought of as going through a process of racialization, which tends to slow down or stop the process of assimilation (Gordon 1964). On the other hand, ethnic groups marrying across racial boundaries have traditionally represented a smooth and steady path along the road to assimilation. On the other side of this entire debate lies the vast number of these ethnic groups who are marrying within their ethnic group and possibly going through a process of ethnicization. Homophily is still the norm, and the majority of first- and second-generation immigrants are still entering coethnic relationships. In other words, they are maintaining their parental language and cultural traditions and are staying embedded in extended family networks of coethnics—all signs of dissimilation. It is not clear at what rate the above processes are occurring, for who they are occurring, or what this means for the individuals involved. It is clear that it will have important implications for the way we think about assimilation (and dissimilation) in the years to come; and more importantly, it implies that, at the very least, a segmented perspective of assimilation will more accurately portray the experiences of immigrants and their children from Asia and Latin America in the near future.

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CHAPTER 3

Conceptualization and Methodology

MIXED COUPLES One of the difficulties in studying a topic such as intermarriage (or what I prefer to call “mixed relationships”) is that of defining exactly what we mean by these terms. These issues of conceptualization are often directly linked to issues of methodology. Furthermore, conceptual issues are directed by the limitations of a data set. For example, it is difficult to measure ethnicity in the decennial census—the closest that we can come to measuring ethnicity is to look at the foreign-born respondents by using their national origin as a proxy—and thus, most studies that look at mixed relationships are in fact studies of interracial relationships (to the exclusion of interethnic relationships). Surely a part of this focus on interracial relationships comes from failure to distinguish between race and ethnicity; for example, using the common expression “race/ethnicity” as if they were the same thing. However, some of this is also driven by methodological limitations. After all, it is much easier to justify reasons for extensive time and effort put into measuring something—even with its limitations—by buying into the categories that are generally only a proxy for other social realities (assuming we can even measure “social realities”). I suspect that similar limitations apply to scholars who study intermarriage yet are reluctant to include a detailed analysis of racially and ethnically mixed, cohabiting couples. Part of this reluctance comes from the fact that until recently, cohabiting couples were relatively rare. But according to the 2000 Census, 10 percent of all couples are now 37

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cohabiting couples. I learned firsthand while analyzing research on intermarriage that it is much more difficult not only to identify cohabiting couples (i.e., the process of identifying them in the census is complex) but also to analyze what the results mean. Thus, I suspect that some of these methodological issues are central to studying why literature on mixed relationships has been stuck in the same rut for decades. Of course I am not immune to the dialectical relationship between conceptual and methodological issues. I have, however, chosen data sets that allow for the conceptual issues to dictate what methodology I employ (and not the other way around), and how I code and create variables to measure race, ethnicity, marriage, cohabitation, and generational status. In this section I will propose a new way to talk about intermarriage. Instead of intermarriage, the terms interethnic relationships and interracial relationships are more appropriate for a number of reasons. For convenience, I will occasionally refer to interethnic and interracial relationships as mixed couples or mixed unions, which include both interethnic and interracial couples. First, the consequences of being classified as an interracial versus an interethnic couple are very different, even though the two terms are often conflated. If we do not make this distinction, we risk confounding these two different types of couples. This conflation leads us to think that they are the same or, even worse, to leave out the entire category of interethnic relationships. Many studies in the field have pointed out the differences between race and ethnicity (Cornell and Hartmann 2004, 2007). Indeed many studies have pointed out differences between interracial and interethnic couples (Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001; Qian and Lichter 2004; Qian and Lichter 2007; Shinagawa and Pang 1988, 1996). However, whether or not interracial and interethnic couples are distinct and should be treated as such in research situations is still an empirical question that has not been answered by existent literature. Therefore, I propose a systematic study that clearly distinguishes and compares these two types of mixed relationships to see if these distinctions make sense. I will specifically focus on immigrants from Latin America and Asia and their children. Immigrants from these two areas represent the largest percentage of total immigrant flow to the United States over the past several decades and are increasingly more likely to find themselves in mixed relationships. We can propose three possible conclusions that could result from a close measurement of the number and composition of mixed couples:

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(1) interethnic couples more closely resemble coethnic couples and thus should not be included in studies of mixed relationships, (2) interethnic and interracial couples are different from each other and from other coethnic couples and should thus be looked at as separate phenomena, and (3) interethnic and interracial couples are similar to each other but different from coethnic couples and should thus be considered together when speaking of mixed unions. Of course it is also possible that the categories of interethnic and interracial couples overlap and could therefore be considered separately in some contexts and considered together in other contexts. In this study I found that interethnic and interracial couples are distinct in many ways; therefore, I will be arguing the second point. Second, I prefer the terms relationship, couple, union, or partner to the often-used term marriage. Marriage is clearly not the same type of experience as cohabiting, and recent studies point to important differences between marriage and cohabitation (Blackwell and Lichter 2000; Guzzo 2005; Lamanna and Riedmann 2003). The current era has even been described as a “retreat from marriage” (Lichter, McLaughlin, and Ribar 2002). Blackwell and Lichter (2000) concluded that “Research can no longer ignore the qualitatively different mate selection processes of cohabiting couples” (275). Furthermore, a look at race and ethnicity shows that cohabiting couples are twice as likely as married couples to be in a relationship with someone of a different racial or ethnic background (Fields and Casper 2001; Landale, Oropesa, and Bradatan 2006; Simmons and O'Connell 2003). Other studies point to important cultural differences among different national-origin groups and their patterns of cohabitation (Manning and Landale 1996; Oropesa 1996), thus underscoring the importance of examining cohabitation and marriage rates by ethnic groups as opposed to one-size-fits-all racial categories. Moreover, a recent study found that 84 percent of married Mexicans are endogamous, while only 74 percent of cohabiting Mexicans are endogamous, thus highlighting important differences between marriage and cohabitation. Cohabiting couples are more likely to cross various ethnic boundaries, as evidenced by the fact that they are more likely to marry Hispanic nationals of different ethnic origin than their own non-Hispanic whites, and non-Hispanic blacks (Landale, Oropesa, and Bradatan 2006). Just as cohabiting unions follow qualitatively different mate-selection processes compared to married unions, the same could be said for dating couples (Joyner and Kao

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2005). Indeed, it appears that we must at least consider the possibility that marriage, cohabitation, and even dating are separate phenomena, especially when it comes to crossing racial and ethnic lines. As the number of cohabiting couples continues to increase, so will the number of interracial and interethnic relationships. Thus, to continue to use the term intermarriage implies that only married couples matter, and entirely misses those couples that are cohabiting. For example, 10 percent of couples marrying between the years 1965– 1974 cohabitated before marriage, whereas over 50 percent of couples who married between 1990–1994 did so (Smock 2000). Considering that only 10 percent of all cohabiting couples remained in the relationship for more than five years, what implications does this have for cohabiting couples who are already more likely to be in mixed relationships than married couples? Finally, I think it is important to note that many of the ways that I conceptualize interracial and interethnic unions are generalizations and will change vis-à-vis place, groups, and time. I also acknowledge that sometimes it is not as important to distinguish between racial and ethnic differences, as there are also overlapping characteristics. What is crucial is that we carefully study those characteristics within their social, political, and historical contexts before we make that judgment. Obviously geography, group size, and the historical time period will all affect the number and types of mixed relationships that result within any population. Furthermore, I do not expect that all regions in the United States will yield the same results from an in-depth look at mixed couples. Each region of the country has a different makeup of racial and ethnic groups, a different history of migration patterns—both from within the country and from outside of the country—and different sizes of minority populations. All of these factors affect the types of mixed relationships we will see, especially at the macro-structural level (Blau, Beeker, and Fitzpatrick 1984; Blau, Blum, and Schwartz 1982). The historical time period in question will drastically change the context in which people from different racial and ethnic groups will come together. Thus, I do not make claims for all times and places, but locate my study within the present day in Southern California. Given the social context, it is important to have a word that can include both types of couples. Unlike the term intermarriage, which typically refers to married interracial couples, mixed unions, mixed couples, or mixed relationships can include both interracial and interethnic couples. From

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this point forward, I will use these terms when talking about interracial and interethnic couples, whether married, cohabiting, and dating. RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODOLOGY In this research study I will be examining two general questions, one empirical and the other theoretical. The empirical question addresses who enters into mixed relationships. This allows us to create a demographic profile of mixed couples in the United States. The theoretical question addresses the mechanisms and processes of marital assimilation, especially as they relate to mixed unions. Are these processes best described as a linear or a segmented approach to assimilation in union formation? I chose two data sets that allow us to measure mixed couples according to the conceptual issues related above: (1) the Current Population Survey (CPS) and (2) the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). These rich data sets examine the above questions from different levels of analyses: from the quantitative level (CPS), then to the survey level (CILS), and finally to in-depth, open-ended interviews (also part of CILS). I will begin by looking at data from the United States and will then focus more specifically on Southern California. Current Population Survey (CPS) Data The CPS is the principal nationwide survey that allows for the breakdown of generations into first, second, and third-plus by racial and ethnic categories. I have broken down my two general questions into four specific questions to match the strengths of the CPS: (a) How many married and cohabiting mixed couples (both interracial and interethnic) are there in the United States and, more specifically, in California?; (b) What are the patterns of mixed couples by sex, race, ethnicity, generation, age cohorts, and type of mixed relationship (i.e., coethnic, mixed with someone outside one’s racial category, or mixed with someone within one’s racial category)?; (c) What do patterns of mixed relationships tell us about the mechanisms of marital assimilation?; and (d) Do these patterns fit a linear or segmented approach to the processes of assimilation? The CPS is a monthly survey of about 50,000 households with a special Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) supplement published

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every March. The ASEC supplement is a survey of over 200,000 households and is conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPS sample provides estimates for the nation, as well as for states and other geographic areas; it also represents the civilian, non-institutional population. Estimates obtained from the CPS include a variety of demographic characteristics including age, sex, race, marital status, and educational attainment, as well as information about employment, earnings, and occupation, all of which are weighted to produce national-level estimates. I combined the ASEC supplements from 2003 to 2006 to increase the sample sizes (to more than 800,000 potential cases that involve someone in a mixed relationship). Unfortunately, it is not possible to include years prior to 2003 because key variables such as race and occupations changed in 2003 and make any year prior to 2003 incompatible. The key advantage of the CPS is that it is the only nationally representative sample that can estimate numbers of interethnic and interracial relationships by detailed generational breakdowns (first, second, and third-plus). The CPS’s break down for Hispanic nationalities allows respondents to identify their nationality based on a breakdown of only a few of the larger Latino groups from among the possible 19 Spanishspeaking countries in Latin America. While limited in its scope, we can estimate the numbers of Latino interethnic couples as they subjectively responded for these few ethnic groups. The Hispanic question is coded in the following manner: PRDTHSP - Subjective Hispanic Variable 0 1 2 3 4 5

Not in universe Mexican Puerto Rican Cuban Central/South American Other Spanish

The CPS race question is somewhat limited in that it measures race in one way, which is different than the decennial census. The census breaks down most of the larger Asian groups by nationality, so it is possible to compare the ethnicity of couples within Asian groups in a subjective manner—that is, in the way that they choose to define their

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“race” via nationality. The race question in the CPS is coded in the following manner: PRDTRACE - Subjective Race Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

White only Black only American Indian, Alaskan Native only (AI) Asian only Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (HP) only White-Black White-AI White-Asian White-HP Black-AI Black-Asian Black-HP AI-Asian Asian-HP White-Black-AI White-Black-Asian White-AI-Asian White-Asian-HP White-Black-AI-Asian 2 or 3 races 4 or 5 races

Both of the above variables on Hispanic origin and race are selfreported, subjective questions that allow us to compare the U.S.-born versus the foreign-born respondents. The one element missing from these variables is ethnicity, which would offer additional detail in the breakdown of the Hispanic groups, as well as a breakdown of Asian groups. While there is no perfect variable to measure ethnicity, we have a close proxy in national origin. The CPS is unique from the census data (both the 5 percent Integrated Public Use Microdata Series [IPUMS] and the American Community Survey [ACS]) in that they ask the nativity of the respondents’ parents, which allows us to impute a national origin for the first generation (via where they were born), and more importantly for the second generation (via where their parents were born). The Census Bureau dropped the parental nativity question in the 1980 decennial census, just at a time when the United States

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started experiencing a mass flow of immigrants from Asia and Latin America—and unfortunately the ACS follows the same practice as the decennial census. I cannot underscore this point enough. Without the parental nativity question, it is impossible to examine the second generation in isolation—we are limited to a breakdown of the foreignborn respondents compared to the U.S.-born respondents. Thus, the CPS is the only nationwide survey that allows us to compare the first, second, and third-plus generations, which is extremely important in trying to determine prospects of assimilation for the various immigrant groups that have migrated since the 1960s. This ethnicity variable—constructed via the respondent’s country of birth and the parental nativity question—is different from the race and Hispanic variables because it is more objective in the sense that we impute the variable based on the place of birth for foreign-born respondents and the parents’ place of birth for U.S.-born respondents. While there are inaccuracies resulting from people of various ethnic groups giving birth to children in countries other than their native country, these inaccuracies represent only a small fraction of the total, making this proxy a reasonable measure of ethnicity. There is also some ambiguity for those respondents who have parents born in different foreign countries—although these cases are also few in number. For these cases I assigned the country of the mother as the respondents’ ethnicity because of the role of the mother in socializing children, as well as the higher percentage of families where the father is absent (see Rumbaut 2004). In cases where only one parent is foreignborn, I assigned the respondent the ethnicity of the one foreign-born parent. In addition to racial and ethnic variables, it was necessary to construct a variable to measure generation. While it is easy to distinguish between first, second, and third-plus generations, we are able to further break down the first generation based on the year they arrived in the United States. We can subtract this from the year they were born to calculate an age of arrival. It is important to study the differences among the foreign-born based on what age they were when they arrived in the United States, as well as to isolate the 1.5 generation. Many scholars lump immigrants who came to the United States at a young age together with U.S.-born children of immigrant parents into a de facto second generation. Empirical evidence suggests that the distinctions between the 1.5 (immigrants who come to the United States at an early age) and the second generation (U.S.-born) are very

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important (see Rumbaut 2004 for a detailed examination of the definition and empirical identification of immigrant first and second generations in the United States). This project builds on this evidence to see if people are more or less likely to cross generational boundaries, along with racial and ethnic boundaries when it comes to forming intimate relationships. While there are many advantages to using the CPS, there are also clear disadvantages. Because the CPS represents much smaller sample sizes, especially in comparison to the 1 percent or 5 percent IPUMS of the decennial census and the ACS, we must be cautious in interpreting the results of the CPS. Once we start breaking down racial and ethnic groups by generation and age cohorts, we are limited as to which ethnic groups we can analyze because of the small cell sizes. The other major disadvantage of the CPS is that is does not have questions on language as the IPUMS and ACS do. Language is a key indicator of acculturation, which in turn tells us a lot about the processes of assimilation. Furthermore, the CPS does not have data on religion, as the CILS does. Despite these limitations, the advantages of analyzing generational breakdowns (first, second, and third-plus) outweigh the disadvantages for the purposes of this study. I will use the CPS from 2003–2006 to investigate the characteristics of mixed couples in four ways. First, I estimate the numbers of interethnic and interracial couples, both married and cohabiting. This was accomplished by concatenating couples on the same row (see appendix A for how I concatenated the married and cohabiting couples, as each had to be done separately) and allows us to compare their ethnic and racial labels. Second, I will examine patterns of interethnic and interracial relationships by sex, race, ethnicity, generation, age cohorts, and type of mixed relationship (i.e., coethnic, mixed with someone outside one’s racial category, or mixed with someone within one’s racial category). This will give us a more detailed demographic profile of the types of people who choose to enter mixed unions. Third, I examine what these patterns tell us about the mechanisms of marital assimilation. Are Asian and Hispanic ethnic groups assimilating via marriage or cohabitation with other racial and ethnic groups, and which of these ethnic groups are doing so at a faster pace? Are some groups not assimilating, but in fact dissimilating? Fourth, I conjecture as to whether these patterns fit a linear or

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segmented approach to assimilation, specifically as it relates to marital assimilation. Finally, I will do a similar analysis of mixed relationships in California, which can then be compared to the results of the CILS respondents who reside mostly in the state of California. This bridge will allow me to directly compare the CPS results to the CILS survey. The purpose of this analysis is not to present statistical models, but rather to understand mixed unions at a national and regional level using CPS data. The ultimate goal of this research is to link the CPS findings with the CILS survey in order to compare the CILS sample with the national picture and determine how representative the CILS survey is. Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) Survey Data The CILS is the largest and longest study of its kind conducted in the United States (see Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Once again, I have broken down my two general questions into four specific questions to match the strengths of the CILS: (a) What are the patterns associated with the various types of relationships under examination (in a relationship versus not in a relationship, a mixed relationship versus a coethnic relationship, and an interethnic relationship versus an interracial relationship) based on sex, age, marital status, children, race, ethnicity, generation, parental socioeconomic status, nativity of parents, education, religion, and language for children of immigrants in Southern California? (b) What are the predictors of the various types of relationships (controlling for all of the above mentioned factors using logistic regression models)? (c) What do predictors of mixed relationships tell us about the processes of marital assimilation among children of immigrants in Southern California? and (d) Do these findings fit a linear or segmented approach to assimilation? In California, the CILS baseline sample was drawn from eighth and ninth graders enrolled in all San Diego City schools in 1991–1992, with respondents ranging from thirteen to seventeen years of age. Eligible respondents were either foreign-born youth who had come to the United States before age twelve or U.S.-born children of immigrants with at least one foreign-born parent. The respondents were subsequently surveyed in 1995 and again in 2001–2003. In the qualitative phase of data collection, 134 respondents were interviewed in addition to completing surveys. These in-depth, open-ended interviews were taped, transcribed, and coded for qualitative analysis.

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The CILS data includes responses from children who were born in or whose parents are from Asia (the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, China, Taiwan, and other Asian countries) and from several Latin American countries (overwhelmingly Mexico, with smaller samples from other Latin American countries). The sample composition, combined with its longitudinal aspect (spanning over a decade), makes this one of the best immigration surveys in the country, as well as one of the best for examining mixed relationships. Of key importance to this study is the way that CILS measures race and ethnicity in the longitudinal survey. The CILS survey instruments ask separate questions for both the race and ethnicity of the respondents at three points in time (1991–1992, 1995, and 2001–2003). The race question is self-reported, but the respondents have to choose from structured answers (“forced” choice). The ethnicity question, however, is open ended and allows respondents to write in their ethnicity, thereby enriching the pool of information about racial and ethnic selfidentification. What follows is the exact wording of the race and ethnicity questions from the CILS questionnaires: Which of the following race categories listed do you consider yourself to be? (Circle number or fill in) 1. White 2. Black 3. Asian 4. Multiracial 5. Other (specify): ___________ How do you identify, that is, what do you call yourself? (Examples: Asian, Hispanic, Latino, American, Mexican, Mexican-American, Filipino, Filipino-American, Vietnamese, Vietnamese-American, Lao, Lao-American, Hmong, HmongAmerican, Cambodian, Cambodian-American, Chinese, Chinese-American, Black, African-American, etc.) In the most recent questionnaire (2001–2003), when the respondents were in their mid 20s, respondents were asked to identify the race and ethnicity of their “spouse or partner.” This allows us to ascertain whether or not respondents might be considered a mixed couple. The CILS data set offers a number of advantages and disadvantages. As mentioned above, one of the key advantages is the measure of both a racial and ethnic identity—especially with a write-in option that allows the respondent to self-identify their ethnicity as

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opposed to limited forced options. To complement this, it also has the partner’s racial (close ended) and ethnic (open ended) identification, which allows us to ascertain whether or not they might be considered an interracial and/or interethnic couple. Respondents in CILS can be either married, cohabiting, dating, or not in a relationship. This allows us to analyze the different stages of relationships they are in, as well as to compare these various groups with each other. Aside from the racial and ethnic questions, the CILS questionnaires ask dozens of questions about sociocultural and economic characteristics, living situation, identity issues, and opinions about various issues (see appendix B for the actual questionnaire used for the third wave), including key questions on generation, language, and religion. On the other hand, one of the key disadvantages is that the CILS does not ask the respondents the generation, language, and religion of their spouse or partner. Finally, CILS is not a nationally representative sample and thus we find different immigrant groups than in other parts of the country. I have tried to balance this disadvantage by supplementing the CILS study with the analysis of the CPS. I will use the CILS questionnaire to illuminate interpretations of the CPS, such as differences in patterns of interethnic or interracial relationships observed by sex, age, marital status, generation, and, most importantly, race and ethnicity. I then extend this analysis using a bivariate analysis (i.e., cross tabulations) to compare the various types of relationships under examination according to parental socioeconomic status, nativity of parents, education, religion, and language for children of immigrants in Southern California. The bivariate analysis will give us a better picture of mixed relationships, but it cannot control for other factors. Finally, I will further extend this analysis by using a multivariate analysis (i.e., logistic regression) to examine the predictors of the various types of relationships. I will control for all of the abovementioned factors using logistic regression models with the various types of relationships as the dependent variables, and the variables used in the bivariate analysis as independent variables. These predictors will give us insights into the mechanisms of assimilation, as well as insights into the most appropriate model of assimilation or dissimilation in order to describe the experiences of these children of immigrants—either a straight-line or segmented approach to assimilation and union formation.

Conceptualization and Methodology

49

CILS Interview Data The CILS data provide important information about who enters into interethnic and interracial relationships, but it does not illuminate the reasons why people enter into these relationships and what this says about the mechanisms and processes of assimilation. What do interracial relationships mean to those engaged in them? What are the key issues children of immigrants deal with in negotiating these types of relationships? In other words, how do the couples themselves feel about the supposed racial and ethnic lines they cross? How do they categorize their relationships, and to what extent are other lines important to them, such as generation, religion, and language? The 134 in-depth interviews were taken from the sample of CILS in 2001–2003, when the respondents’ ages ranged from twenty-three to twenty-seven years of age. The interviews, which form a representative 10 percent sub-sample of the original CILS survey sample, range from one hour to several hours in length and cover a wide variety of questions related to, but not limited to, living conditions, education, work, leisure, family, immigration history, ideas about success and aging, and relationships. The questions about relationships focus on present as well as past relationships and ask questions about the types of people the interviewees became involved with and the issues that came up in these relationships. Many of the interviewees indicate they are dating, cohabiting, marrying, or divorcing across racial and ethnic lines. There are also questions that address the reactions from family members to respondents’ relationships, reasons for entering and exiting mixed relationships, living arrangements, and issues that could come up in the future, such as children (see appendix C for the qualitative interview schedule that was used for the in-depth interviews). The interviews contain a wide range of people in various stages of relationships. In addition to dating, cohabiting, and marrying across racial and ethnic lines, there are also those interviewees who are either not in relationships or who are dating, cohabiting with, or married to someone from their own racial and ethnic group. These coethnic couples offer an important basis for comparison with mixed couples; they also help us see whether or not some of the issues for mixed unions are unique to mixed unions, or whether these are also issues for coethnic unions. For those interviewees not in relationships, we are able to see how they feel about the future possibility of dating across

50

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

racial and ethnic lines. Furthermore, the interviews also include data about past relationships, enabling us to see how the interviewees’ relationships have changed over time. For the analysis of the in-depth interviews, I used NVivo, a qualitative software program. I entered the transcriptions into the program and proceeded to code each of the interviews individually, line by line. Some of the codes came deductively from my theoretical framework, while other codes came up inductively as I coded the interviews and found issues that I had not previously thought of. NVivo does not help in the actual coding of the interviews—other than making the actual process of coding go smoother—but it does help pull out all of the quotes that were coded similarly throughout the interviews. It is also possible to pull out codes based on attributes of the respondents by age, sex, generation, type of mixed relationship (mixed, coethnic, etc.), and marital status (not dating, dating, cohabiting, married, etc.). It was not until I pulled out all of these codes that I started to see key patterns in the interviews. I will use these patterns and quotes from the interviews to illustrate and understand the patterns and characteristics of mixed couples that we see in the CPS and CILS data. Each data set answers the general questions of who enters into mixed relationships—albeit from different perspectives—and identifies their processes of union formation and marital assimilation. The strengths of both the CPS and the CILS are that they allow for the conceptualization of mixed relationships (married, cohabiting, and dating couples crossing both racial and ethnic lines) to determine which methods we should employ. Together the analyses of these data sets provide for a comprehensive understanding of mixed couples, where the combined explanatory power of the data far exceeds the sum of the individual components. Furthermore, these data allow us to examine processes of assimilation and union formation at both the group level and the individual level for a more comprehensive view of mixed unions and their role in assimilation, whether it be a linear, segmented, or an altogether different process, such as dissimilation.

CHAPTER 4

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

How similar is California to the rest of the United States? Before I examine mixed couples in Southern California, it is important to understand how this regional story fits in with the United States as a whole. This chapter will focus on mixed couples—especially those mixed couples that result from newer waves of immigration—at the national level using the Current Population Survey (CPS). “RACE” IN THE CPS Broadly speaking, there are three ways that we can represent the respondents’ racial identities: (a) self-identification, (b) census categories, and (c) reconstituted categories that researchers construct. Self-identification is determined by a question that allows respondents to choose how they would like to identify themselves (typically in the form of a fill-in-the-blank question). Census categories allow respondents to choose their identities, but their choice is from among a limited number of options (rather like a multiple-choice question). Reconstituted categories are those that researchers might construct when the data is not presented in its original form, or when they want to emphasize certain points. For example, rather than list all of the possible racial combinations—especially now that respondents can choose more than one box—it is common to collapse all of these categories into a category labeled “multiracial.” Another example in the census is when researchers put Hispanics—which is a separate question 51

52

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

from the one about race—as a category along with white, black, Asian, etc. In other words, the data is not presented as it was originally filled out by the respondents, but it is presented in some variation. This chapter will focus on the census and reconstituted categories, while the remaining chapters will analyze the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) with a focus on self-identification. These different types of racial classifications are important because classifications affect the estimates, patterns, and meanings of mixed relationships. Table 4.1 shows the percentage of respondents from the CPS (2003–2006) who are in an interracial marriage. I chose to break this table into two of the many possible ways to classify race using the CPS, both of which are reconstituted from the census. I did so to illustrate the point that the way we categorize people into fixed “racial” categories determines the percentage of people who will be classified as “outmarrying.” In other words, our view of intermarriage will change dramatically based on which racial category we assign people to. This assignment is done at a number of levels, from the individuals themselves choosing their own racial category to the Census Bureau’s list of possible categories on the census form, and finally to researchers and their categories, which are based on how they recode the race variable. One problematic area is how we categorize Hispanics in the census. Should we assign them to the category they choose, or should we assign them to a new racial category altogether? This becomes especially difficult in the CPS, since 94 percent of all Hispanics in the CPS check or are assigned to only one box—“white.” This differs dramatically from the 2000 decennial census, in which 47.9 percent of Hispanics identify as only white, 2 percent as only black, 6.3 percent as two or more races, and 42.2 percent as “some other race.” This last category, “some other race,” does not exist in the CPS, and thus most of the respondents are “forced” to check the white box or are assigned to that box by the Census Bureau CPS staff. Another example of how this assigning of respondents into racial categories can change our outlook on intermarriage4 is high-lighted by the top two panels in table 4.1. The top panel represents my own truncation of the original CPS race variable (see methodology chapter for how the original variable appears in the CPS). First, I amalgamated the 16 different combinations where the respondents checked two or

4

I use the terms outmarriage, intermarriage, and exogamy interchangeably.

Original CPS Reformulated with

Hispanic separated Hispanic separated

Reformulated with

Racial Categories

Table 4.1 Deconstructing Interracial Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States

White only

Black only

Married Couples Two or more races Asian only

Indigenous a other only

--

Total

% outmarried

2.0

6.4

13.3

64.6

40.1

--

3.8

N outmarried

2,064,021

541,096

740,467

822,680

381,625

--

4,549,889

Total married

102,070,449

8,515,288

5,549,833

1,274,242

951,111

--

118,360,923

Asian only

Two or more races

Indigenous other only

Hispanic

White only

Black only

b

Total

% outmarried

4.1

7.2

13.7

75.9

50.0

15.3

6.9

N outmarried

3,646,731

591,166

753,109

781,317

350,844

2,096,835

8,220,002

Total married

89,251,749

8,203,476

5,504,573

1,029,761

702,118

13,669,245

118,360,922

White only

Black only

Cohabiting Couples Two or more races Asian only

Indigenous other only

Hispanic

Total

9.4

15.3

51.0

26.2

15.0

% mixed

c

N mixed Total cohabiting

46.5

76.0

618,490

176,357

85,871

135,862

68,077

354,643

1,439,300

6,579,960

1,151,173

184,791

178,734

133,431

1,355,865

9,583,954

Source: Numbers represent weighted sample sizes from the Current Population Survey, 2003–06, merged files of the (March) ASEC Supplement. 'Indigenous other only' is a combination of "American Indian only" and "Hawaiian/Pacific Islander only." b According to the Census, Hispanics may be of any race. c Mixed refers to a couple where neither partner is from the same racial category and they can either be married or cohabiting. a

54

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

more boxes into one category called “two or more races.” The difficulty of examining 16 different categories—not to mention smaller sample sizes—partially justifies making this new category. Second, I combined “American Indian only” and “Hawaiian/Pacific Islander only” into “Indigenous Other only.” I did this partially because my research focuses on immigrant groups, partially because of their small sample sizes, and more importantly because there is not much intermarriage between these two groups—there were only nine couples where one spouse was American Indian only and the other was Hawaiian/Pacific Islander only. Thus what we lose in detail we gain in simplicity of the presentation. I am sympathetic to the number of ways in which researchers re-categorize racial categories depending on methodological, conceptual, and empirical issues. All of this illustrates, however, how difficult it is to capture the nature of race, especially since race is socially constructed at various levels—by individuals, the census, and researchers. The category “two or more races” is especially problematic. The fact that 64.6 percent of individuals who fall under this category are married to someone from a different racial category is somewhat misleading. What exactly does it mean when we say that over 60 percent of those people consider themselves to be multiracial? For example, all of the following combinations would be considered intermarried according to the “two or more races” category: black/black-white, white/white-black, Asian/Asian-white, and American Indian/American Indian-white. Is someone who is a blackwhite multiracial married to a white person really a case of interracial marriage? It can really go either way depending on how we define intermarriage. In fact, if we consider these couples where the multiracial person shares one of the races with their partner as not being a case of interracial marriage, then the final percentage of intermarriage changes from 3.8 percent to 2.7 percent. In other words, approximately 1.4 million intermarried couples would fit this category, which is no insignificant percentage of the total outmarried couples. I have not presented this analysis in table 4.1, but it is an important consideration whenever we see the category “two or more races.” This category is especially important since it is new to the 2000 Census and

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

55

we are not sure what meaning it has to those who check more than one racial box.5 A BREAKDOWN OF “RACE” AND MIXED RELATIONSHIPS The top panel of table 4.1 shows that 3.8 percent of all married respondents in the merged CPS (2003–2006) are crossing a racial boundary—at least according to how we defined race in the top panel. This translates into 4.5 million respondents among the total 118 million respondents who are outmarried (these numbers are weighted and thus represent population estimates). If we break this down into the various racial groups, we see that 2 percent of whites, 6.4 percent of blacks, 13.3 percent of Asians, 64.6 percent of those that identify with more than one race, and 40.1 percent of those in the “Indigenous Other only” category are racially intermarried. We see from the second panel, however, that once we exclude Hispanics—predominately from the white category—the picture of racial intermarriage changes dramatically with the total number of respondents almost doubling from 4.5 to 8.2 million. In the second panel, we technically cannot consider those people who outmarry interracial marriages. Just because someone is Hispanic does not mean they are a separate race, especially as Hispanics can identify with any racial category, since the Hispanic question is separate from the racial question in both the 2000 Census and the CPS. Let us look at the example of a Hispanic person married to a white person. In the CPS, most of the Hispanics identify as white or are assigned to the white category, so it is not interracial but a white Hispanic married to a nonHispanic white. Therefore when I examine characteristics of outmarriage using the categories in the second panel of table 4.1, I will refer to these couples using the phrase “outmarriage by race and Hispanic origin.” I present this second panel as another example of how researchers create their own racial categories, and thus affect the way we think about intermarriage. The second panel represents a common way that social scientists racialize Hispanics and thus perpetuate the belief that

5

Despite the importance of this category, going into further detail would take away from the focus of this chapter. In any case, we do not have enough respondents in these categories to perform any kind of systematic analysis.

56

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

Hispanics represent a different race. I do not agree with this practice and use this method merely to highlight the way that race is socially constructed and the way that Hispanics are often racialized, not only in social science research but also by the media (Chavez 2001; Rodriguez 2000). Notice that while most of the percentages of outmarriage increase only slightly in the second panel, the white percentage doubles from 2.0 percent to 4.1 percent. This is significant when we consider the large number of whites. The white category changed because over 13 million of the “whites only” in the top panel were moved to the “Hispanic” category in the second panel. Thus, instead of the top panel classifying a white Hispanic/white non-Hispanic couple as endogamous, the bottom panel classifies them as exogamous. Aside from the fact that most Hispanics identify themselves as racially white (in the CPS), the catch-all racial category of Hispanic can be very misleading—although this can equally be true of the white, black, and Asian categories. The important question is whether a Mexican-American married to an IrishAmerican can really be classified as a racial intermarriage. If the answer to that question is yes, then we are partially justified in separating Hispanics into their own racial category. However, if the answer is no, then we should assign them into the racial category with which they choose to identify. While I do not agree with the separation of Hispanics into their own racial category, I will use this categorization in this analysis for a number of reasons: (1) This is the conventional way that scholars have characterized intermarriage and thus it offers us a common starting point (Bean and Stevens 2003); (2) This will only be a starting point for my analysis of the CPS and will thus be used as a launching point into a discussion of interethnic relationships; (3) There is no “other” category in the CPS, unlike the 2000 Census, and thus most of the Hispanics in the CPS are forced to answer “white”; and (4) With the focus of this research centered on the “intermarriage” of immigrants from Asian and Latin America and their children, it is crucial that we know what these groups look like before we break them down into interethnic couples. The third and final panel of table 4.1 represents an important element of intermarriage that is often ignored by researchers: cohabiting couples. If we look at the total number of cohabiting individuals in the United States, we see that there are almost 10 million.

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

57

Cohabiting individuals make up around 7.5 percent 6 (9,659,302 / 127,944,877) of all people living with a partner (either married or cohabiting). Not only is this a significant number of people, but the percentage of people cohabiting has also been increasing over time and will probably only get larger—especially given this era of a “retreat from marriage” (Lichter, McLaughlin, and Ribar 2002). Even more surprising is the number of cohabiting people who are in mixed relationships, especially compared to married people who are in mixed relationships: 1.4 million people in mixed cohabiting unions compared to 4.5 million people in mixed married unions. Thus, while cohabiters represent only 7.5 percent of all people living together, people in mixed cohabiting unions represent almost a quarter (1,439,300 / 5,989,189 = 24 percent) of all people in mixed unions (married or cohabiting). We would thus be underrepresenting mixed couples if we left out those in cohabiting unions. The more important question is why there are so many people in mixed unions who are cohabiting? This question will be further addressed in later chapters. For the time being, notice that most of the racial categories have higher percentages of people in mixed cohabiting unions than mixed married unions, with most of the percentages doubling. The notable exceptions are those respondents classified as Asians, among whom the percentage more than tripled. Table 4.2 is in the same format as the last two panels of table 4.1 but divides the racial categories into males and females. The differences in percentages of outmarriage between males and females for most of the racial groups are within 2 percentage points. The two exceptions are blacks and Asians. Ten percent of black males marry someone from a different race or Hispanic origin, while only 5 percent of black females marry someone from a different race or Hispanic origin. The exact opposite is true of Asian percentages: 19.1 percent of Asian females outmarry, while only 7.4 percent of Asian males outmarry. Hispanic males and females both outmarry at similar rates, 14.8 percent and 15.8 percent, respectively. When we look at gender differences for cohabiting couples, we see a similar pattern. The notable exception is black males, who are over two times more likely to

6

The percentage of cohabiting couples in the CPS is slightly lower—and thus more conservative—than tin he 2000 Census, which reported the percentage of cohabiting couples at 9 percent of all reported couples (Simmons and O’Connell 2003).

Table 4.2 Deconstructing Interracial Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States, by Gender

Married Couples

White only Male Female

Black only Male Female

Asian only Male Female

% outmarried

4.3

3.8

9.5

4.8

7.4

19.1

N outmarried

1,934,619

1,712,112

399,320

191,846

191,101

562,008

Total married

44,737,128 44,514,621

4,205,475 3,998,001

2,566,833 2,937,740

Two or more races Male Female 76.2

75.5

Indigenous a other only Male Female

Hispanic Female Male

50.5

14.8

49.4

b

15.8

398,376 382,941

179,118 171,726

1,007,467 1,089,368

522,598 507,163

354,755 347,363

6,793,672 6,875,573

Cohabiting Couples

White only Male Female

Black only Male Female

Asian only Male Female

Two or more races Male Female

Indigenous other only Male Female

Hispanic Female Male

% mixed

8.4

10.4

22.3

6.9

27.4

57.6

75.8

76.2

51.0

51.0

27.1

25.2

N mixed

273,677

344,813

139,959

36,398

18,689

67,182

67,221

68,641

34,060

34,017

186,044

168,599

3,254,412

3,325,548

627,367

523,806

68,149

116,642

88,657

90,077

66,737

66,694

686,655

669,210

Total cohabiting

Source: Numbers represent weighted sample sizes from the Current Population Survey, 2003–06, merged files of the (March) ASEC Supplement. 'Indigenous other only' is a combination of "American Indian only" and "Hawaiian/Pacific Islander only." b According to the census, Hispanics may be of any race. c Mixed refers to a couple where neither partner is from the same racial category and they can either be married or cohabiting. a

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

59

be in a mixed cohabiting union, while black females are only 1.4 times more likely. A careful study of this table begs the question of which racial groups are marrying or cohabiting with which ethnic groups within each racial category. For example, close to a fourth of all Asian females outmarry and more than half of all Asian females are in mixed cohabiting unions, but this table does not tell us which Asian ethnic groups are more likely to be in a mixed relationship. None of these interracial breakdowns tell us which ethnic groups among these various racial groupings are outmarrying at higher percentages but rather lumps them all together. For example, are Mexicans more likely to be in a mixed relationship than Cubans, or are Asian Indians more likely to be in a mixed relationship than Filipinos? Ultimately, the goal is to answer these more important questions, which will give us a more complete picture of both interracial and interethnic relationships. Table 4.3 examines outmarriage by race and generational status. Looking at the total percentages of outmarriage by generational status, we see that the highest percentages of outmarriage are for the 1.5 (foreign-born who arrived at 12 years of age or younger) and the 2.5 (one foreign-born parent and one U.S.-born parent). Therefore, we see the importance of a more detailed generational breakdown; a simpler breakdown of first, second, and third-plus generations masks this important finding. There are really two ways to view this finding: either we are seeing an increase in outmarriage among the 1.5 and 2.5 generations, or we are seeing a decrease in the 2.0 and 3.0 (or higher) generations. When it comes to generations, we are likely seeing an increase in the 2.5 generations rather than a decrease in the 3.0+ generations. It is not hard to imagine why respondents with parents who are already outmarried—at least according to nativity—are more inclined to outmarry themselves. They are probably more open to dating people of various backgrounds because they themselves grew up in a family with multiple cultural experiences, and studies show that exposure to multiple cultures early on leads to more tolerance of different racial and ethnic backgrounds (Bullock 1976; Wood and Sonleitner 1996). Furthermore, they are less likely to experience outside pressure from their immediate family and more distant relatives, which has been shown to decrease intermarriage rates (Kalmijn 1998).

Table 4.3 Outmarriage by Race and Generational Status in the United States

Racial Categories + Hispanic Origin (Ethrace) Generation Status

White only

Black only

Asian only

Hispanic

a

Total

1.0

Foreign-born 13 or older at arrival

5.2

5.9

10.3

6.0

6.9

1.5

Foreign-born 12 or younger at arrival

6.6

13.9

24.2

15.6

13.7

2.0

U.S.-born 2 foreign-born parents

3.5

--

23.3

19.5

10.7

2.5

U.S.-born 1 foreign-born parent

4.5

--

43.4

38.7

11.4

4.0

7.0

24.9

32.8

5.2

3.0+ U.S.-born 2 U.S.-born parents

Note: "--" = fewer than 50 cases in racial/Hispanic origin-generation group. Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06, merged files of the (March) ASEC Supplement. a According to the census, Hispanics may be of any race.

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

61

Although we know that the respondents’ parents are both born in different countries, we do not know to what extent their parents come from different racial or ethnic backgrounds. For example, many of these couples could be first-generation Mexicans marrying second-, third- or fourth- generation Mexicans. Thus these marriages would be intergenerational marriages, but not interracial or interethnic marriages. Unfortunately, such an analysis is not possible with the CPS. The other query—whether we are seeing an increase in mixed relationships in the 1.5 generation or a decrease in the 2.0 generation— is more difficult to confirm. It is possible that immigrants who come to the United States at a young age (1.5 generation) are also caught between two cultural orientations: that of their parents’ culture and that of the new host society’s culture. This might lead to a higher percentage of intermarrying. This increase alone, however, would not necessarily explain why the 2.0 generation is less likely to intermarry than the 1.5 generation. The 2.0 generation, after all, is also caught between two cultures, and in many ways, they are even more likely to become immersed in the host society (being born and raised in the United States), and thus we would expect them to outmarry at higher rates than the 1.5. A look at the different racial categories reveals some interesting differences in this pattern of 1.5 and 2.5 generation peaks in intermarriage percentages. This same pattern applies to non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Asians. For blacks, we do not have a large enough sample of 2.0 and 2.5, but we do see a significant increase from 1.0 to 1.5. Furthermore, we see a sharp decrease for blacks in the 3.0-plus generations, which is an indication of not fully integrating into the “core society” (i.e., middle-class white Protestant American 7 ), as underscored by Gordon (1964), who claims that they have not completed the latter stages of assimilation because of segregation and “unusually marked discrimination.” We do not see a peak in the 1.5 generation for Hispanics, but rather a steady increase from the 1.0 to the 2.5, and then a slight decrease in the 3.0 (or higher) generations. Interpreting such trends and patterns from racial categories is almost futile because racial categories cannot account for the historical context of different ethnic groups and different migrations within those ethnic groups.

7

As defined by Gordon (1964) on pages 73–4.

Table 4.4 Outmarriage by Race, Generational Status, and Sex in the United States

Generation Status

White only Male Female

a

Asian only Female Male

Black only Male Female

Hispanic Male Female

Total Female Male

1.0

Foreign-born 13 or older at arrival

5.0

5.4

5.4

6.5

4.3

15.5

***

5.3

6.8

5.0

8.8

1.5

Foreign-born 12 or younger at arrival

8.0

5.4

--

--

15.3

31.0

***

15.8

15.4

13.0

14.3

2.0

U.S.-born 2 foreign-born parents

3.8

3.2

--

--

18.4

28.0

20.4

18.8

10.0

11.4

2.5

U.S.-born 1 foreign-born parent

5.2

3.8

--

--

37.7

47.6

40.8

36.6

11.8

11.0

4.2

3.8

9.6

4.2

18.1

31.1

32.8

32.9

5.6

4.9

3.0+ U.S.-born 2 U.S.-born parents

***

Note: "--" = fewer than 50 cases in racial/Hispanic origin-generation group. Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06, merged files of the (March) ASEC Supplement. a According to the census, Hispanics may be of any race. ** Significant to the 0.01 level. *** Signifcant to the 0.001 level.

**

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

63

Lest we think the results for men and women look the same when it comes to outmarriage by generation, I have broken down the rates we saw in table 4.3 into males and females categories (see table 4.4). Notice how the high rates of outmarriage in the 1.5 generation are limited to non-Hispanic white males and Asian females. In other words, these two groups are mostly responsible for the high rates of outmarriage in the 1.5 generation—this is especially true of the total numbers because of the high proportion of whites. The trend of outmarrying at higher rates over generations holds true except for nonHispanic white females, who are actually reversing the trend: white females are more likely to outmarry in earlier generations than in later generations. Overall, non-Hispanic white males and Hispanic females are slightly more likely to outmarry than their counterparts. On the other hand, non-Hispanic black males and Asian females are much more likely to outmarry than their counterparts. The closest groups that exemplify a linear story of outmarriage over generations are Asian and Hispanic males and females, where we see increases in the percentages of outmarriage, starting with the 1.0 all the way to the 2.5, only to see substantial decreases in the 3.0 (or higher) generations. Given the fact that most immigrants have only recently arrived to the United States, the only ethnic groups likely to be in this 3.0 (or higher) generation are Mexican and Japanese. It is possible that these groups are concentrated in ethnic communities and marrying other Mexicans or Japanese from the 3.0-plus generations, or even marrying within their own racial categories, which would lead to a drop in their interracial marriages. RACE, GENERATION, AND ASSIMILATION I have presented a detailed generational breakdown by racial categories, but this type of generational analysis is rare among scholars who study intermarriage. Allow me to digress slightly to address why they would be less inclined to do so and thus these scholars present a “straightline” picture using only the first, second, and third-plus generations of intermarriage. Indeed, such an analysis offers a much different picture (Stevens, Ishizawa, and McKillip 2006). Figure 4.1a shows the percentages of women outmarrying, broken down by race, Hispanic origin, and generation; a similar breakdown for men is shown in figure 4.1b. I have included only Asians, Hispanics, blacks, and whites as comparison groups. For blacks and whites, we see a slight decrease in outmarriage from the first to the third-plus

64

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

generations, except for a sharp increase in the U.S.-born children of immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean Islands. The key to this figure, however, is the general increase in outmarriage among Asian and Hispanic women from the first to the third-plus generations. We do see a slight decrease in outmarriage among the third-plus generation Asian women, but this difference is not statistically significant. Thus, at least initially, this figure appears to support Gordon’s “straight-line” assimilation approach. In fact, Stevens and others (2006) found that to be the case in a similar analysis,8 also using the CPS: The low levels of intermarriage in the first generation are followed by higher levels of intermarriage in the second generation for all nonwhite women. Among Asians and Hispanics, the increase in levels of intermarriage continues into the third generation. For Asian and Hispanic women, then, the pattern fits the expectations generated by the “straightline” assimilation theory, with steady increases in intermarriage across generations. Based on a quick glance at figure 4.1a (a replication of the Stevens and others piece), this seems to be a fair assessment of what we are seeing. There are numerous problems, however, with such an analysis. The first problem is conceptual: “the increase of levels of intermarriage” does not continue “into the third generation.” The CPS does not ask about the nativity of grandparents; what Stevens and others

8

The only difference between Stevens and others (2006) and my analysis is that the outmarriage percentage of 3.0-plus-generation Asian women in their study is higher than the 2.0 generation of Asian women. I can think of only two possible reasons why our analyses would be slightly different: (1) a difference of one year in the number of pooled years used (2003–2005 versus 2003– 2006), which may account for the difference, especially when we consider the fact that some of these samples sizes are relatively small; or (2) a difference in the way the couples were concatenated. The simple way to perform the concatenation is to obtain information for married couples where one is the head of the household; the other way is more complicated and involves taking not only the head of the household into account but also other married couples who may be living in the same household. It is possible that Stevens and others computed it the former way, while I used the latter method.

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

65

mean to say is that the “third [or higher] generations,” which is very different from the third generation. The third (or higher) generations include third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. generations, like MexicanAmericans who have ancestors who were born areas of Mexico that later became part of the United States. Thus, to lump all of these generations into one category and then compare them to the first and second generations of immigrants does not make analytical sense; this type of logic makes it seem as if intermarriage is increasing from the first generation all the way to the third, when in fact all we really know is that intermarriage is increasing from the first generation to the second. To avoid this confusion, I will label the third-plus generations “NBNP,” which stands for “native-born of native parentage” (see figure 4.1a). Figure 4.1a Percentages of Women Outmarrying by Race and Hispanic Origin and Generation 35

Asian 30

Hispanic Black

25

White

20

15

10

5

0

First

Second

NBNP

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

The second problem with the Stevens and others (2006) analysis is that they studied only women. While it is true that Hispanic men and women show very similar patterns, Asian men not only have lower percentages of intermarriage, but the second-generation intermarriage percentage is higher for Asian men and thus does not fit the same pattern as for Asian women. The biggest problem with this analysis, however, is that we make the assumption that all age cohorts have the same rates of outmarriage and thus ignore important age-cohort effects

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

66

(as well as period effects) that have been shown to have significant effects on the percentages of groups outmarrying (Joyner and Kao 2005; Shinagawa and Pang 1996). Waters and Jimenez (2005) argue that generation alone is not a good measure of assimilation during periods of protracted immigrant replenishment. “By using birth cohort in conjunction with generation, sociologists will better capture processes of ethnic change internal to the group that generation captures as well as the historical fluctuations in opportunities and constraints external to groups that birth cohort captures” (121). Figure 4.1b Percentages of Men Outmarrying by Race and Hispanic Origin and Generation 35

Asian 30

Hispanic Black

25

White

20

15

10

5

0

First

Second

NBNP

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

Unfortunately, I was not able to break down the age cohorts into more than three categories because of the restriction of sample sizes. I was, however, able to break down the age cohorts into meaningful distinctions that represent “waves” of immigration. Those belonging to the “under age 30” cohort were born between 1975 and 1990 and most likely married between 1995 and 2005 (if they married after the age of 20). Those belonging to the “30–44” age cohort were born between 1960 and 1975 and most likely married between 1980 and 1995. Finally, those belonging to the “45+ years” age cohort were born before 1960 and married before 1980. This means that either those in this age cohort or their parents migrated to the United States before 1960 and thus do not represent the newer waves of immigration, coming in a

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States

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different time and under different circumstances. I make this distinction because 1960 is a key division of immigration, since most of the contemporary immigration waves started in the 1960s. The 1960s also brought about the end of anti-miscegenation laws. Thus the 45+ age cohort represents a very different immigration history as well as a different legal view of race relations and interracial marriage in the United States, and we will notice significant differences between this age cohort and the earlier cohorts. Figure 4.2a shows the percentages of women outmarrying by age cohorts. Here we see that black women and white women follow the expected path of straight-line assimilation with younger age cohorts outmarrying at higher percentages. In other words, based on trends of increased intermarriages in every decade since the 1960s (Lee and Edmonston 2005), we would expect more tolerance and acceptance of outmarriage among the younger cohorts. The pattern is different for Asian and Hispanic women, however, with the youngest age cohorts less likely to outmarry. Figure 4.2a Percentages of Women Outmarrying by Race and Hispanic Origin and Age 25

Asian Hispanic 20

Black White

15

10

5

0

Under 30

30-44 years

45+ years

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06

We see similar patterns for black and white men, along with the obvious difference of Asian men being much less likely to outmarry than Asian women (see figure 4.2b). Moreover, we see a steady decline in outmarriage in the older cohorts among Asian men, more closely

68

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

following the pattern of blacks and whites. The results for Hispanics are mixed, meaning we do not see a clear pattern: the percentages do not differ significantly among Hispanic men of all three cohorts. Figure 4.2b Percentages of Men Outmarrying by Race and Hispanic Origin and Age 25

Asian Hispanic 20

Black White

15

10

5

0

Under 30

30-44 years

45+ years

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06

What we see in the analysis of age cohort breakdowns appears to be in opposition to the straight-line model for Asian and Hispanic women, with unclear results for Hispanic men, and some support for the straight-line approach among Asian men. The problem with these figures, however, is that we do not know what generation most of the Asian and Hispanic people in these younger cohorts represent, and that would significantly affect the proportions that are outmarried. Thus, looking at age cohorts within each generation will help clarify the results shown in these figures. Since Asian and Hispanic women show the clearest pattern, we will start by looking at their outmarriage by generation and age cohort9 (see figure 4.3a). For the first generation, we see that women from both groups are less likely to outmarry in the youngest cohort, although it is

9

Age at the time of arrival in the United States is especially important for the first generation; unfortunately, we are not able to break these figures down any further because of the restriction of sample sizes.

Figure 4.3a Percentages of Asian and Hispanic Women Outmarrying by Generation and Age 50 45 40

Asian Hispanic

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Under 30 First

30-44 years

45+ years

Under 30 Second

30-44 years

45+ years

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

Under 30 NBNP

30-44 years

45+ years

Figure 4.3b Percentages of All Asians and All Hispanics Outmarrying by Generation and Age 50 45

Asian

40

Hispanic

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Under 30 First

30-44 years

45+ years

Under 30 Second

30-44 years

45+ years

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

Under 30 NBNP

30-44 years

45+ years

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difficult to interpret this data considering that many of the first generation may already be married before they migrate to the United States, and we are not talking about an integration story in the United States. Nonetheless, it is interesting that the younger, the cohort the less likely they are to outmarry. The key finding will be in the second generation. Since we are able to control for generation by looking at just the second generation, we can see that the under 30 cohort is much less likely to outmarry. Notice how sharply the percentages of outmarriage decline for the youngest cohort—those born after 1975 and probably married after 1995—as compared to the 30–44 age cohort—those born between 1960 and 1975 and most likely married between 1995 and 2005. For Asian women it drops from 44 percent to 24 percent, and for Hispanic women we see a similar drop, from 31 percent to 15 percent, which are both statistically significant differences. The 45+ cohort does not fit this pattern, but that is not surprising considering that these people represent the pre-1960 waves of immigration and are coming into the United States in a very different context and marrying at a much earlier time period. For this reason, we will focus mainly on the first two age cohorts, which represent the post-1960 immigration waves. This same pattern for Asian and Hispanic women in the second generation holds for those in the NBNP generations, although the difference between Hispanic women in the two younger cohorts is not statistically significant. This same general pattern of outmarriage also applies to Asian and Hispanic men, although the NBNP generations are slightly different. Again, we must use caution in interpreting the results for the NBNP generations, since this category includes all generations from third and beyond. Even when we include Asian and Hispanic males, we see that the same patterns hold (see figure 4.3b), although Asian females seem to be driving the numbers for the Asians, since they outmarry at much higher percentages than Asian men. The only exception to the pattern for Asian women was the NBNP generations for Asian men, where the under 30 cohort are more likely to outmarry. What are we to make of these patterns? These analyses go against the expected patterns of straight-line assimilation and seem to show a reversal (or at least a stall) in the process of assimilation—if we, in fact, assume that there is only one process and not several. In other words, boundaries between the minority groups and the majority group are being maintained and probably strengthened to the point that these younger cohorts in the second generation are less likely to marry

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

someone outside of their racial category (i.e., a pattern of dissimilation). This is even more important when we consider that these younger cohorts of newer waves of immigrants will make up a significantly large portion of the number of mixed couples in the years to come; as they age, the overall composition of mixed couples in the United States will change. The more difficult question that the CPS cannot answer is why we see such a dramatic trend in decreasing percentages of outmarriage in the younger cohorts. Previous literature suggests that this is most likely due to two important trends among newer immigrant groups: group size and group concentration (Blau and Schwartz 1997). There is abundant evidence to show that immigrants are concentrated in certain locations in the United States. Furthermore, along with this concentration and increased migration comes a larger pool of people to marry from the same racial, and even the same ethnic, group (Portes and Rumbaut 2006). ETHNICITY AND MIXED RELATIONSHIPS What ethnic groups make up the NBNP “native-born of native parentage” category? For Hispanics, it is mostly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, and for Asians it is mostly Japanese, with some Chinese and Filipinos. Even though these findings clearly put some important doubts into the process of a straight-line assimilation pattern for newer waves of Asian and Hispanic immigrants since the 1960s, we cannot assume that all ethnic groups that fall under the racial umbrella of “Asian” or “Hispanic” exhibit the same outmarriage patterns. As we will see from the figures that follow, the differences in percentages of outmarriage between ethnic groups within racial categories can be as significant as the differences between racial groups. I will now move beyond an analysis of racial categories to an analysis of ethnic categories. I will start with the Hispanic ethnic groups—Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central/South Americans. When we look at ethnic groups, we are able to look at a much more nuanced picture of mixed relationships. For this analysis, I have divided mixed relationships into four distinct and mutually exclusive categories:

Deconstructing “Intermarriage” in the United States 1. 2.

3.

4.

73

Coethnic relationship—married to or cohabiting with someone from the same ethnic group. Mixed relationship within one’s racial category—married to or cohabiting with someone from the same racial or Hispanic group, but not from the same ethnic category. (For Hispanics, if they are Mexican, then someone who is Puerto Rican, Cuban, or Central/South American. For Asians, if they are Korean, then someone who is Japanese, Filipino, or Asian Indian, etc.) Mixed relationship with white—married to or cohabiting with someone who is non-Hispanic white (the majority of Hispanics identify themselves as white in the CPS). Mixed relationship with black—married to or cohabiting with someone who is non-Hispanic black.

In previous studies, the first category has represented a form of dissimilation (see Yinger 1981, 1994), while the last three categories have represented different paths to assimilation (Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001; Qian and Lichter 2004). A mixed relationship with someone who is white represents an assimilation path to the white middle class. A mixed relationship within one’s racial category represents a path to an ethnic community or panethnic identification. Finally, a mixed relationship with someone who is black represents a path to an inner city, or in other words, a downward path of assimilation. I find this analysis overly simplistic and furthermore do not think it represents the real-life experiences of these couples. On the other hand, it is easy to see why scholars use this analytical framework when investigating intermarriage, given the severe limitations of census data. I will use this analytical framework only as a starting point and a bridge between the CPS data and the CILS data. Most of my contribution to the literature on intermarriage will come through the CILS in-depth interviews, which allows us to view the mechanisms of assimilation at a very personal and individual level. Among the Hispanic ethnic groups, Puerto Ricans are least likely to be in coethnic relationships (60 percent) and Mexicans are most likely (85 percent), with Cubans and Central/South Americans falling in the middle (see figure 4.4). When it comes to outmarriage, all of the Hispanic ethnic groups were most likely to outmarry with non-Hispanic whites, followed by other Hispanic ethnic groups, and then a much smaller portion with blacks. This is not surprising given that whites are

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

the largest population group, while blacks are a much smaller group. Excluding Mexicans, over 10 percent of all the other groups are married to other Hispanics (and this percentage would be much higher for the Central/South Americans if we disaggregated them). The obvious piece missing from this picture is regional differences in the United States.10 In the future, it will be important to take a closer look at key regional differences, especially since we know that these groups concentrate in different parts of the country. Figure 4.4 Hispanic Intermarriage by Ethnicity and Type of Intermarriage 90

Puerto Rican 80

Central-South American

70

Cuban

60

Mexican

50

40

30

20

10

0

Coethnic Relationship

Mixed Relationship with Hispanic

Mixed Relationship with White Mixed Relationship with Black

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06

The problem with figure 4.4, however, is that it is hard to interpret it without breaking each group down by generation and age cohorts. (See table 4.5 in appendix D for a detailed breakdown of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central/South Americans by generation for both married and cohabiting couples.) Since we are talking about ethnic groups instead of racial groups, smaller sample sizes will become an issue. Moreover, among the Hispanic groups, only Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have a sizable third-plus generations contingent; for all others, over 90 percent of their population are in the first and second generations. Therefore, I will do the tabulation for Mexicans, who 10

Smaller sample sizes make it difficult to analyze regional differences with the CPS.

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75

represent over 50 percent of all Hispanics, and Puerto Ricans only to show how different these two groups are from other Hispanic groups. Figure 4.5 shows the different types of mixed relationships for Mexicans by generation and age cohort. (I excluded the category “mixed relationship with black” because there were so few respondents in this category.) For the first generation, those in coethnic relationships make up 90 percent of relationships for all three cohorts, with a small percentage in mixed relationships with ethnic Hispanics or with non-Hispanic whites. As in previous figures (4.3a and 4.3b), however, the key finding is in the second generation. Comparing age cohorts among second-generation Mexicans reveal that the “under 30” age cohort has a higher percentage in coethnic relationships and less people marrying non-Hispanic whites than the 30–44 age cohort for both generations. This indicates that the process of assimilation will probably not go in a straight-line for Mexicans as it did for the earlier waves of European immigrants of a century ago. Puerto Ricans exhibit very different intermarriage patterns compared to Mexicans, which indicates that each ethnic group must be considered separately when looking at patterns of marital assimilation and dissimilation. Similar to the figure for Mexicans, figure 4.6 shows a breakdown of generation by age cohorts for Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans within every age cohort—regardless of generation—have lower percentages of coethnic relationships and higher percentages of mixed relationships with whites in comparison to Mexicans (as seen in figure 4.5). This likely has to do with the fact that Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth (since the 1917 Jones Act) and are able to travel freely between the United States and Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are also a much smaller group in comparison to Mexicans and thus have a smaller pool of potential spouses in their local marriage market. One key point from these two figures is that intermarriage looks different for Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, making it difficult to understand whether “Hispanic intermarriage” really helps us understand the processes of assimilation or dissimilation for the groups that fit under this racialized category. We could say the same thing about “Asian intermarriage” not being a concept that aptly applies to or realistically portrays the mixed relationships of the ethnic groups that fit under that racial label. I will now proceed to a breakdown of Asian intermarriage by ethnicity and

Figure 4.5 Intermarriage Among Mexicans by Generation and Age Cohort 100 Coethnic Relationship 90 Mixed Relationship with Hispanic 80

Mixed Relationship with White

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Under 30 First

30-44 years

45+ years

Under 30 Second

30-44 years

45+ years

Under 30 NBNP

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

30-44 years

45+ years

Figure 4.6 Intermarriage Among Puerto Ricans by Generation and Age Cohort 80 Endogamous 70 Exogamous Hispanic 60

Exogamous NH White

50

40

30

20

10

0 Under 30 First

30-44 years

45+ years

Under 30 Second

30-44 years

45+ years

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

Under 30 NBNP

30-44 years

45+ years

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

78

type of mixed relationship: coethnic relationship, mixed relationship with Asian, and mixed relationship with white. Figure 4.7 shows that Asian ethnic groups do not share the same patterns between ethnicities for mixed relationships, as is evident by the difference between coethnic relationships among Asian Indians (90 percent, and the most recently arrived group) and Japanese (44 percent, and the only Asian group with a sizable third-plus generation), and mixed relationships with whites (6 percent and 40 percent, respectively). We see a clear pattern of decreasing percentages of endogamous relationships as we move from Asian Indians to Vietnamese to Chinese to Koreans to Filipinos and finally to Japanese. The opposite pattern is true for those outmarrying with whites, with the Japanese outmarrying at a higher percentage than all other groups. The Japanese and the Chinese also have high percentages of respondents marrying into other Asian ethnic groups, thus representing a path that potentially leads to a panethnic category. Figure 4.7 Asian Intermarriage by Ethnicity and Type of Intermarriage 100 Asian Indian 90 Vietnamese 80

Chinese Korean

70

Filipino 60

Japanese

50 40 30 20 10 0

Coethnic Relationship

Mixed Relationship with Asian

Mixed Relationship with White

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06

Unfortunately I cannot cross these Asian ethnic groups by generation and age cohort because of the small sample sizes. A generational breakdown, however, shows that in most cases the second generation is less likely to be in coethnic relationships and more likely to outmarry with other Asians as well as with non-Hispanic whites than

Figure 4.8 Asian Intermarriage by Ethnicity, Type of Intermarriage, and Gender 100 Asian Indian

90

Vietnamese 80

Chinese Korean

70

Filipino 60

Japanese

50 40 30 20 10 0 Coethnic Relationship Female

Mixed Relationship with Asian

Mixed Relationship with White

Coethnic Relationship Male

Mixed Relationship with Asian

Source: Current Population Survey, 2003–06; NBNP = native-born of native parentage (i.e., third-plus generations)

Mixed Relationship with White

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

the first generation (see table 4.6, appendix A). The only exception is that second-generation Japanese have the same (if not higher) rate of endogamy as first-generation Japanese. Furthermore, second-generation Japanese appear to be less likely than the first generation to outmarry with non-Hispanic whites. This is surprising, given that the Japanese are often touted as the Asian group most likely to follow a straight-line assimilation model, especially given their long history in the United States (see Alba and Nee 2003). Therefore, it appears that even the Japanese are not following this straight-line model as closely as we would expect. Cohabitation rates exhibit the same patterns as those for outmarriage except that they are more extreme in comparison to the marriage percentages (see table 4.6). A breakdown of these Asian ethnic groups by gender reveals an interesting finding: overall, Asian women participate in coethnic relationships at much lower percentages and in mixed relationships with whites at much higher percentages than Asian men do (see figure 4.8). Explanations for this phenomenon, however, remain rather elusive, especially since we do not find such gender differences among Hispanic ethnic groups. The most common explanation lies in cultural stereotypes—that Asian women are exotic and submissive, characteristics that men from other racial categories find attractive in a partner. On the other side, Asian men are often seen as non-masculine and overbearing or controlling (Espiritu 2000, 2003; Fong and Yung 2000; Fujino 1997; Le 2007; Weiss 1970). I will rely on the in-depth interviews to offer more insight into this pattern of intermarriage that is obviously gendered for Asian ethnic groups. We see similar patterns of mixed relationships when it comes to cohabitation; the main difference being that Asian ethnic groups who are cohabiting do so at much higher rates than those that are married (see table 4.7, appendix A). Overall, the ethnic groups that have higher percentages of males or females outmarried are also the same groups that are cohabiting outside of their ethnic group at higher percentages.11

11

Caution should be used when interpreting the information in tables 4.6 and 4.7, considering that some of the groups have rather small sample sizes, especially among cohabiting couples.

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81

CONCLUSION It is important to look at both race and ethnicity in understanding mixed unions in the United States. We have examined mixed relationships at the national level using the CPS. Given that there are many ways to examine intermarriage, we have looked at two ways of classifying mixed couples: by race and by ethnicity. Each of these two ways of looking at mixed couples portrays a different story. We first looked at race and relied on the CPS definition of race to describe which racial groups exhibit higher percentages of people in mixed relationships. We went beyond married couples to include cohabiting couples. We saw similar patterns of crossing racial lines for both married and cohabiting unions, although cohabiting unions are almost always many times more likely to be mixed relationships—as defined by our way of classifying race using the CPS. At first glance, we see that all racial groups are more likely to be in a mixed relationship in later generations. This appears to support the straightline assimilation process. When we include an analysis of age cohorts and cross generation by age cohort, however, we see almost the opposite pattern: controlling for generation, younger cohorts are less likely to be involved in mixed relationships. This does not support the straight-line assimilation projection and actually seems to offer support for the idea that this assimilation process is reversing, or at least slowing down. I conjecture that this is a function of increased group size and increased concentration of racial groups. The CPS does not offer conclusive evidence—especially considering that we have to be cautious of the smaller sample sizes—but it will be used as an important way for us to see how the CILS compares to the national picture. We next used the CPS and its more objective measure of ethnicity—based on national origin—to paint of a picture of mixed relationships (using both marriage and cohabitation). The most telling finding from this analysis was the great variation in percentages of mixed couples between ethnic groups within the same racial category. In many instances, these ethnic differences were greater than the racial differences in percentages of couples in mixed relationships. Unfortunately, smaller sample sizes did not allow us to cross generations by age cohort. Still, we saw evidence to support an idea of segmented assimilation trajectories, thus more accurately representing the reality of incorporation as opposed to a single path to assimilation.

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

Each ethnic group within the “Asian” or “Hispanic” categories seem to exhibit unique patterns of mixed relationships, which suggests a multitude of assimilation (and even dissimilation) paths. We are limited by the types of questions that are asked of the CPS respondents. All of this, of course, is a descriptive process to lead us into an analysis of the CILS. The CILS is a regional survey in Southern California, which allows us to examine more detailed characteristics of mixed couples in a particular region. Another way of thinking about the differences between the CPS and the CILS is the difference between identification and identity. Identification is the way that outsiders identify a group of people either by race or ethnicity, or the way individuals identify themselves on surveys and censuses where they have to choose from a limited number of categories. Identity, on the other hand, is how individuals identify themselves regardless of what others may call them; they are not forced to choose from a category, but can identify however they wish (Brunsma 2005). Identification personifies the CPS, with its racial categories that the respondents are forced to choose. Even the ethnicity variable that I analyzed is somewhat of a forced choice, because it is not how they identify themselves but is based on nativity—where they or their parents were born. The advantage of the CILS is that while it has a racial identification variable, it also has an open-ended self-identity question: “How do you identify, that is, what do you call yourself?” This allows us the unique opportunity to compare the extent to which the CILS respondents’ identification is the same as their identity, especially given that identity and identification “represent two related yet distinctly different outcomes” (Brunsma 2005). It goes without saying that the way we think about mixed relationships—whether by race or ethnicity—should reflect the way the individuals in those relationships think about their mixed relationships.

CHAPTER 5

Mixed Relationships Among Children of Immigrants in Southern California

This chapter provides a bridge from the interpretation of mixed couples at the national level using the Current Population Survey (CPS) to the interpretation of mixed couples at a regional level using the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). The CILS study will give us a more nuanced picture of mixed couples that is complementary to what we have already seen from the CPS data presented in the previous chapter. Moreover, the CILS allows us to look at a number of important variables that are not available in the CPS. The CILS is an ideal sample of young adult children of immigrants who are varied in the types of relationships they are in—a portion are not in relationships (which makes for a good comparison group), and the remainder are in coethnic, interethnic, and interracial relationships. COMPARISONS BETWEEN MIXED UNIONS IN THE UNITED STATES AND CALIFORNIA Table 5.1 provides a bridge between the CPS and the CILS. The CPS portion of this table also shows a comparison between California and the United States for a number of important variables that have to do with mixed relationships: generational status, racially mixed couples, and ethnically mixed couples. This table forms a link from the national picture of mixed relationships to the picture in California, and finally to

83

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

the picture in Southern California, via the CILS.12 The main purpose of this table is to show how the CILS sample compares to the United States and more specifically to California. Since the CILS sample is not representative of the United States, it is important to understand how to interpret its findings in relation to other regions of the country, especially given the fact that California has a longer history of mixing than most areas of the country—as evidenced by the fact that the California Supreme Court ruled anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional Perez v. Sharp in 1948, more than 20 years before the United States Supreme in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 (Kennedy 2003; Moran 2001). This first table is only a rough sketch of the comparisons between these various samples and includes only those respondents who are married or cohabiting for both data sets. I have purposely not included those respondents in the CILS who do not fit this criterion so that it can be comparable to the CPS. The CILS sample sizes do become considerably smaller, but even these smaller sample sizes fit the national pattern to a reasonable degree. Only a third of the respondents in the CILS sample are married, with another 10 percent cohabiting, for a combined 40 percent in a married or cohabiting relationship. The rest are in a dating relationship, with 8 percent of those dating also engaged. Obviously, it would not help us to include those people who have a partner in a dating relationship and then compare these people to those who are married and cohabiting. Even though we do not have any information for dating relationships in the CPS, we will be able to look at those people in the CILS who are not married or cohabiting but are in a dating relationship after this initial comparison. Although the California CPS sample and the CILS sample are not the same, Southern California is somewhat comparable to California, especially given that the majority of the population of California lives in the southern half of the state (roughly 70 percent of the 35 million people in California reside in Southern California). At any rate, the CPS is the only data

12

Because the CILS sample was drawn in 1991, some differences are expected due to the fact that we are capturing different groups of immigrants that are coming to the United States, especially compared to the CPS, which was drawn some 12 years later. In addition, all age groups are considered in the CPS sample, while the average age of the CILS respondents is 24.

Table 5.1 Comparisons between Mixed Relationships in the United States and California, and between CPS and CILS

Characteristics

CPS (sample of married & cohabiting persons) Rest of the Number Number California United States (weighted) (weighted) (%)

CILS Southern Number California (%) (sample)

Generations: 1.0 foreign-born, 13+ 1.5 foreign-born, under 13 2.0 U.S.-born, 2 fb parents 2.5 U.S.-born, 1 fb parent 3.0 U.S.-born

11.3 2.2 3.0 3.3 80.2

12,743,455 2,503,238 3,370,922 3,749,886 90,612,118

33.5 5.7 5.7 4.7 50.4

4,887,918 828,795 836,536 679,735 7,336,635

5.1 45.4 30.7 18.9 0.0

18 161 109 67 0

White Female Male

3.9 3.9 3.9

3,418,210 1,716,071 1,702,139

11.4 9.3 13.3

847,011 340,854 506,157

37.5 37.5 0.0

3 3 0

Black Female Male

7.7 4.7 10.5

668,848 197,419 471,429

15.8 10.5 20.5

98,675 30,824 67,851

33.3 50.0 0.0

1 1 0

Asian Female Male

16.4 22.2 9.6

613,752 446,926 166,826

11.6 17.5 4.8

225,229 182,266 42,963

19.8 22.0 14.3

25 20 5

Multiracial Female Male

74.9 74.5 75.4

793,260 386,401 406,859

82.6 83.3 81.8

123,920 65,182 58,738

63.8 62.5 66.7

30 20 10

Hispanic / Other Female Male

17.4 17.4 17.4

1,854,724 927,462 927,262

13.7 15.0 12.4

596,753 330,505 266,248

22.1 25.5 17.4

36 24 12

% of Mixed Couples by Race:

Note: The % of mixed couples by race is the % of females and males by race that are in mixed relationships.

Table 5.1 (continued )

CPS (sample of married & cohabiting persons) Rest of the Number Number California United States (weighted) (weighted) (%)

Characteristics

CILS Southern Number California (%) (sample)

% of Mixed Couples by Ethnicity: a

Coethnic couples Mixed within same race Mixed with White Mixed with Black Mixed with Asian Mixed with multiracial

79.5 15.8 2.5 0.4 1.3 0.5

6,196,118 1,207,916 185,587 31,427 98,121 34,420

81.9 13.1 2.2 0.1 2.1 0.5

2,485,383 384,084 59,083 3,257 60,784 13,310

58.5 20.3 10.6 2.1 3.0 5.5

193 67 35 7 10 18

Mexican Coethnic couple Mixed with Hispanic Mixed with White Mixed with Black

82.7 3.0 12.7 0.7

5,249,796 188,780 806,309 45,785

84.4 3.9 10.0 0.6

3,031,392 139,702 360,682 21,098

64.2 15.2 6.6 2.6

97 23 10 4

Filipino Coethnic couple Mixed with Asian Mixed with White

57.6 4.1 31.1

352,476 25,014 190,154

78.0 4.0 11.4

399,356 20,590 58,150

45.6 14.9 15.8

52 17 18

Vietnamese Coethnic couple Mixed with Asian Mixed with White

85.2 5.2 7.4

292,372 17,881 25,526

86.0 7.9 5.6

241,284 22,035 15,665

40.0 40.0 16.0

10 10 4

Cambodian, Lao, Hmong Coethnic couple Mixed with Asian Mixed with White

81.2 6.4 7.6

109,696 8,662 10,286

78.9 12.5 5.0

55,744 8,814 3,510

67.3 22.4 2.0

33 11 1

Source: Children of Immigrant Longitudinal Study (CILS), third wave. Does not include those couples where one person is 3.0+ because we do not know their ethnic identity.

a

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available that allows us to compare the CILS to a nationally representative sample. I will start with a look at generational status because it will show the largest differences between these three samples. Starting with the first generation who arrived in the United States at 13 years or older, we see that they represent 12 percent of the national population, 35 percent of the population of California, and only 5 percent of the CILS sample. On the other end, the third-plus generations represent 80 percent of the national population, 50 percent of the population of California, and 0 percent of the CILS population. This should be evident in the fact that the CILS survey is a survey of children of immigrants. Thus, with the CILS, we are targeting a specific segment of the immigrant generation: the 1.5 (those who arrived under 13), the 2.0 (U.S.-born, with both of the parents foreign-born), and the 2.5 (U.S.-born, with one parent foreign-born and one parent U.S.-born). These three groups represent the de facto “second generation.” This de facto second generation represents 95 percent of the CILS sample, 15 percent of the population of California, and only 8 percent of the U.S. population. The second thing to take note of is the large percentage of the population that is of immigrant stock (first and second generations) in California as compared to the rest of the United States: half of the population of California. Since over one-third of the entire immigrant stock in the United States live in California, we can see how important this state will be for studying mixed relationships. This is perhaps an indicator of future trends, as a lot of this mixing will start in California and spread as immigrants move all over the country. There is ample evidence to show that immigrants and their children are slowly moving away from the main areas of destination (such as New York, Florida, Texas, and Illinois, to name a few of the major destination states) and spreading out all over the country (Brown and Leach Forthcoming; Waters and Jimenez 2005). The second reason that this CILS sample of children of immigrants is particularly important for this study is because these are the people who are not yet married when they come to the United States. They are raised—at least for a significant period of their life—in the United States and they first form significant romantic relationships on U.S. soil. In other words, the future of intermarriage is going to come not from the immigrants, but from among their children (and grandchildren).

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The next two sections of table 5.1 look at mixed relationships first by race and then by ethnicity. The first panel looks at those respondents who classified themselves in a separate racial category than their partner. Whites, blacks, and multiracials—both males and females—in California are more likely to be in an interracial relationship (either married or cohabiting) than their counterparts in the rest of the United States There is no significant difference for Hispanics, but we do see a decrease in interracial couples for both Asian males and females in California. This is probably due to the opportunity for them to meet other Asians because of the large concentration of Asians in California. This translates into a larger marriage pool of Asians in California, and thus a larger portion of the respondents in California are coethnic couples (couples from the same national origin background) or couples where both partners are from Asia, but have different ethnic origins within Asia—interethnic couples. When we compare these numbers to the CILS sample, we see much higher percentages with a large percent of CILS respondents in mixed relationships—20 percent of Asians and 22 percent of Hispanics. In most cases, females from the CILS sample are more likely than males to be in mixed relationships—although the white and black samples are not large enough to be meaningful. The one surprising finding is the fact that more Hispanic females are in mixed relationships than Hispanic males in the CILS even though they are both equally likely to be in mixed relationships in United States and only slightly more likely in California. In the last panel of table 5.1 we move beyond racial categories and look at ethnic identities. The first breakdown we see is into coethnic couples, and then a breakdown of the various types of mixed relationships. The CPS sample is somewhat skewed because we are not able to include those couples where one of the partners is third-plus generations because we cannot identify their ethnicity. While we are confident in the coethnic percentages, most of the mixed percentages are underrepresented. The number of couples in which someone from the first or second generation is married to a third-plus generation white, black, or other race category is not included in this representation (notice how small the weighted numbers are for these mixed categories).13 Here the United States and California are fairly close in

13

This limitation is unfortunate, but this is the closest data set that allows us to compare the CILS to a national sample.

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percentages—the differences we do see are probably not significant. All of the CILS ethnic groups are less likely to be in coethnic relationships than both the United States and California. They are also more likely to be in relationships with people within their same racial group, but not from the same ethnic group—i.e., interethnic relationships. For all of the ethnic groups in the CILS sample, they are more likely to be in interethnic relationships than they are to be in interracial relationships with whites. Previous studies (Qian and Lichter 2004; Qian and Lichter 2007) have shown that a large portion of mixed relationships is with whites, but the data also show that in the region of Southern California, more people are getting into interethnic relationships with someone from their same racial group, rather than an interracial relationship.14 AN ANALYTICAL MAP OF RELATIONSHIPS IN CILS Figure 5.1 gives a detailed breakdown of the types of relationships the CILS respondents are in at the third wave (2001–2003). Of the 1480 respondents in the third wave, 60 percent are in a relationship based on the marital status question (married, cohabiting, engaged, divorced, separated, or single). In addition, the respondents are considered to be in a relationship if they identify their spouse or partner’s racial and ethnic identity. The identity respondents report for their partner is then the basis for determining whether or not they are in a coethnic or a mixed relationship. If the race or ethnicity they report for their partner is different from their own, then they are classified as being in a mixed relationship. Notice that the 843 people in relationships were split evenly between coethnic and mixed relationships. Mixed relationships can then be broken down into interethnic and interracial relationships. Any respondent who identifies the ethnic identity of their partner as different from their own is classified as having an interethnic relationship, whereas any respondent who identifies the racial identification of their partner as different from his or her own is classified as having an interracial relationship. The ethnic identity is open ended and the question asks, “How do you identify, that is, what do you call yourself?” and then gives a list of appropriate choices, such

14

Again, some of these differences are due to the different demographic characteristics of these samples.

Figure 5.1 Mixed Relationships and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), Wave III (N=1480)

Coethnic Relationships 50% (N = 422)

Interethnic Relationships 38% (N = 160)

Mixed Relationships 50% (N = 421)

Overlap 54% (N = 226)

In a Relationship 60% (N = 843)

Not in a Relationship 40% (N = 637)

Interracial Relationships 8% (N = 35)

Source: Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), Wave III Survey, San Diego Sample, 2001–2003. Percentages are column percentages for the displayed categories in each column.

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as Vietnamese, Mexican-American, etc. The racial identification is a partially forced choice from the following racial categories: white, black, Asian, multiracial, and other. It is easy to see why 54 percent of mixed relationships overlap and are considered both an interethnic and an interracial relationship. Note, however, that 38 percent of the mixed relationships are interethnic relationships but not interracial relationships. These are couples where both are racially Asian or Hispanic, for example, but each partner is from a different ethnic group, Filipino-Chinese, Mexican-Salvadoran, Vietnamese-Cambodian, or Hispanic-Mexican. In this last example of someone who identifies his or her ethnic identity as Hispanic and then identifies his or her partner as Mexican, it is unclear what national origin the respondent identifies with, but we can still consider this an interethnic couple based solely on the fact that the respondent identified his or her own ethnic identity and then chose a different ethnic identity or label for his or her partner. Thus, these classifications are subjective; if the respondent considers his partner’s ethnic identity to be different from his or her own—no matter how someone from the outside might view that person—we will classify them as interethnic. The more unusual subsample comprises 8 percent of mixed relationships where the respondents identify with the same ethnicity as their spouse or partner but identify a different racial category for their partner or themselves. This is the case, for example, for people who may both be Mexican or Cuban but consider themselves as belonging to a different race. Most of these 35 cases were either a Filipino with a Filipino partner or a Mexican with a Mexican partner. For the Filipino couples, respondents would typically identify either themselves (or their partners) as multiracial and their partner (or themselves) as Asian. For Mexican couples, they would typically identify themselves as multiracial, white, or other, with their partner from a different racial category among the three listed. To a European American (i.e., Caucasian) observer, both partners in such a couple might be Mexican and thought of as Hispanic; however, the categories respondents themselves chose mirrored those of the U.S. Census where Hispanics can be of any race. Again this is a subjective identification, but one that was obviously important enough for these 35 people to choose different racial categories. The way these mixed couples are broken down into different types of mixed relationships—according to their own designations—is instructive in showing some important differences

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

between interethnic and interracial relationships. I will further explore these two types of mixed relationships later in this chapter. The main reason why the CILS data set is well suited for examining mixed relationships is that the respondents are allowed to determine whether or not they are in an interethnic or an interracial relationship. It is the respondents who identify themselves and then their partner. No matter how subtle or arbitrary the difference may seem, if they choose something different from their own identity for their partner and label him or her differently, it must have some meaning to them. This is a much better measure than the U.S. Census data, where one member of the household fills in all of the questions relating to race for all of the household members—which may or may not be how the other household members would respond. Typically scholars examine only the interracial relationships, which represent only 62 percent of the CILS respondents, and ignore interethnic relationships, which comprise 38 percent of respondents. This is understandable, given that most nationally representative samples—or even regional samples for that matter—ask about a racial identity only. The CILS is rare among surveys because it asks separately about the race and ethnicity of the respondents and their partners and then explores the content of ethnicity with separate questions on language and religion. Another important feature of the CILS that makes it so well suited to studying mixed relationships is the fact that there are multiple subsamples of people within the study to use as comparison groups. There are people in relationships and people not in relationships; there are people in mixed relationships and people in coethnic relationships; and there are people in interethnic relationships and people in interracial relationships15. All of these subsamples give us a reference group to examine.

15

Technically we have three discrete categories: interracial, interethnic, and those that are both interracial and interethnic (which thus creates an overlapping category). Given the small sample sizes, it is not possible to examine these three categories. Thus, the two non-discrete categories of interracial and interethnic relationships are analyzed even though there is a considerable amount of overlap between these two categories.

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BIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF CILS Table 5.2 uses a bivariate analysis to highlight some of the key characteristics by the type of relationship the respondent is in. The first two columns break down the survey into whether or not the respondents are in a relationship. The last two columns identify those reported relationships as either coethnic relationships or mixed relationships. A coethnic relationship is defined as one in which the respondent identified his or her partner as having the same ethnic identity when asked, “How do you (your partner) identify, that is what do you call yourself?” Respondents who were not in a coethnic relationship are labeled as mixed and can be either racially or ethnically mixed. I further break down those mixed couples into interethnic and interracial relationships in table 5.3. An interethnic couple is one where the respondent reported a different ethnic identity for a partner on the ethnic identity question, whereas for an interracial couple, a different racial category was reported for a partner from the following racial categories: white, black, Asian, multiracial, and other. These last two categories can overlap, as it is possible for the respondents to identify their spouse with a different racial identity as well as a different ethnic identity. Conversely, they could identify their partner with the same racial identification and yet a different ethnic identity. In order to understand mixed relationships, there is a need to understand those people who are in relationships versus those who are not in relationships. In the CILS survey, respondents were first asked what type of relationship they were in (married, cohabiting, engaged, single, or divorced, separated, other) and then asked in separate questions to identify the ethnicity and race of their spouse or partner. Obviously someone who is married, cohabiting, or engaged is in a relationship, but because the relationship question and the ethnicity and race of the respondents’ partners were separated in the CILS, it allows us to identify those respondents who are single or divorced or separated yet are still in a relationship. This subjective measure of the type of relationship allows us to include those who are dating but not married or cohabiting. The first two columns show what type of respondent is more likely to be in a relationship, according to the CILS: Mexicans, Filipinos, and

Table 5.2 Type of Mixed Relationship by Key Selected Characteristics in Southern California

Characteristics

Not in a Relationship % (N)

In a a Relationship % (N)

%

(N)

%

(N)

Total:

40

(637)

60

(843)

50

(422)

50

(421)

Sex: Male Female

52 35

(360) (277)

48 65

(328) (515)

56 46

(184) (238)

44 54

(144) (277)

Age: 23 years old 24 years old 25 years old 26 years old 27 years old

46 47 37 32 13

(176) (304) (119) (35) (3)

54 53 63 68 87

(209) (339) (199) (76) (20)

46 51 49 55 60

(97) (173) (98) (42) (12)

54 49 51 45 40

(112) (166) (101) (34) (8)

Marital status: Married Single Engaged Cohabiting Divorced, separated, other

0 62 0 0 21

(0) (629) (0) (0) (8)

100 38 100 100 79

(267) (389) (69) (88) (30)

61 49 41 34 33

(163) (191) (28) (30) (10)

39 51 59 66 67

(104) (198) (41) (58) (20)

Children: Have children No children

10 54

(34) (603)

90 46

(321) (522)

59 45

(188) (234)

41 55

(133) (288)

Race: Other Asian White Black Multiracial

38 47 50 27 43

(216) (330) (10) (4) (77)

62 53 50 73 57

(346) (372) (10) (11) (104)

59 51 50 27 18

(205) (190) (5) (3) (19)

41 49 50 73 82

(141) (182) (5) (8) (85)

Ethnic group: Mexican Cambodian-Lao-Hmong Filipino Vietnamese Chinese Latin, other Asian, other

29 48 43 57 71 43 61

(117) (88) (252) (108) (25) (20) (27)

71 52 57 43 29 57 39

(282) (97) (330) (81) (10) (26) (17)

60 59 46 41 30 23 0

(170) (57) (153) (33) (3) (6) (0)

40 41 54 59 70 77 100

(112) (40) (177) (48) (7) (20) (17)

Coethnic b Couples

Mixed c Couples

Table 5.2 (continued )

Characteristics

Not in a Relationship % (N)

In a a Relationship % (N)

%

(N)

%

(N)

Generation: 1.5 (fb-born, 6+) 1.75 (fb-born, under 6) 2 (U.S.-born, 2 fb parents) 2.5 (U.S.-born, 1 fb parent)

42 44 44 43

(146) (168) (229) (94)

58 56 56 57

(203) (217) (296) (127)

57 53 54 25

(115) (116) (159) (32)

43 47 46 75

(88) (101) (137) (95)

Nativity of parents: Same country Different country One born in U.S.

43 47 43

(495) (48) (94)

57 53 57

(662) (54) (127)

56 41 25

(368) (22) (32)

44 59 75

(294) (32) (95)

Language: Foreign-language dominant Fluent bilingual Limited bilingual English dominant

32 32 49 47

(104) (381) (36) (116)

68 68 51 53

(224) (423) (77) (119)

74 62 50 40

(138) (167) (57) (60)

26 38 50 60

(86) (256) (20) (59)

Religion: Catholic Buddhist Other religion Protestant No religion

37 53 47 50 48

(295) (115) (68) (27) (122)

63 47 53 50 52

(498) (104) (78) (27) (132)

55 53 53 37 31

(274) (55) (41) (10) (41)

45 47 47 63 69

(224) (49) (37) (17) (91)

Education: Some high school High school graduate Some college College graduate Graduate school

23 41 41 52 58

(16) (124) (300) (151) (29)

77 59 59 48 42

(54) (178) (438) (142) (21)

57 54 50 46 24

(31) (96) (219) (65) (5)

43 46 50 54 76

(23) (82) (219) (77) (16)

Parent SES index: Lowest SES quartile Second quartile Third quartile Highest SES quartile

40 38 46 49

(182) (114) (175) (166)

60 62 54 51

(276) (188) (205) (174)

60 48 45 43

(165) (90) (93) (74)

40 52 55 57

(111) (98) (112) (100)

Coethnic b Couples

Mixed c Couples

Source: Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), Wave III Survey, San Diego Sample, 2001–03. Note: Interethnic and interracial couples can overlap, so the row percentages of the last two columns will not add up to 100%. In a relationship = if the respondent identified a race or ethnicity for their "spouse or partner." b Coethnic = same ethnic identity as partner from question "How do you identify, that is what do you call yourself?" c Mixed = different ethnic identity or racial category from partner. d Interethnic = different ethnic identity from partner from question "How do you identify, that is what do you call yourself?" e Interracial = different race category from partner; racial categories - White, Black, Asian, Multiracial and Other. a

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

older Cambodian-Lao-Hmong16 females with children; Catholics; and those who speak a language other than English, are less educated, and have parents with low socioeconomic status. A closer look shows that females are 17 percent more likely to be in a relationship than males. Age obviously makes a large difference, with older respondents (ages 23 to 27 years old) more likely to be in a relationship; by age 27, 87 percent of all respondents are in a relationship. Marital status reveals that close to 40 percent of all singles identify a partner, and a large majority (close to 80 percent) of divorced and separated individuals also identify a partner. While half of all respondents who do not have children are in a relationship, 90 percent of those with children are in a relationship, although perhaps the 10 percent who have children and are not in a relationship is more important, especially given the disadvantages that come from single parenting as a young adult. There are not many differences between races, except for the fact that blacks are more likely to be in a relationship—although this could entirely be due to their smaller sample size of 10. The other racial category is composed mostly of Mexicans (40 percent), Filipinos (30 percent), and Hispanics (20 percent)—this category will become especially important for our multivariate analysis. We see a lot more variation when we look at ethnic groups. This variable is an objective measure of their ethnicity17 based on where the respondents and their parents were born, the language spoken at home, and the last name for those respondents where the other indicators were not immediately clear (e.g., Hmong or Cambodian children born in refugee camps in Thailand in the late 1970s). Moreover, this variable was created to allow us to narrow respondents’ ethnicity into a smaller set of ethnic groups, which was not possible with the varied responses they gave for their own ethnic identity (again, this variable will be important when we look at the multivariate analysis). Mexicans are by far the most likely to be in a relationship (over 70 percent), with the next closest ethnic groups being Filipinos and others from Latin America (57 percent). Chinese respondents were the least likely to be

16

All three of these groups represent their own ethnic category, but they are combined here for the sake of simplicity. 17 The results from this objective measure of ethnicity is similar to their subjective measure of ethnicity. The data is not presented here for the sake of simplicity.

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in a relationship (only 29 percent). One possible explanation is class intervention; in other words, Chinese respondents in the CILS, who were more likely to have pursued or be pursuing higher education, may have postponed relationships in order to do so, whereas Mexican respondents were less likely to have gone on to college and therefore more likely to formed relationships earlier than other ethnic groups. Generational status and the nativity of parents does not appear to have any bearing on whether the respondents are in a relationship or not, although language does. Those who speak a foreign language (i.e., are either foreign-language dominant or fluent bilinguals) are much more likely to be in a relationship than those who speak predominantly English (i.e., either limited bilinguals or those where English is the dominant language), although we do not have any clues from previous literature as to why this might be the case. Religious affiliation does not have a bearing except for with Catholics, who are more likely than all other religions—including those who do not identify a religion—to be in a relationship. Finally, those with less education (77 percent of those who have not graduated from high school) and those whose parents are in the two lowest socioeconomic quartiles are more likely to be in a relationship. This finding is probably due to the fact that many of the respondents who come from well-off families are more likely to get an education, and those who are going to college are less likely to be in a relationship—especially given the pressure they feel from their immigrant parents to make the most of education as a way to become upwardly mobile. The last two columns are the key indicators of mixed and coethnic relationships and the key variables that I will be examining in the CILS survey. I begin with the examination of mixed couples—as opposed to breaking them down into interracial and interethnic couples—because it is more inclusive and includes interethnic couples, which, as we will see in table 5.3, exhibit important differences from interracial couples. The first four characteristics show that older married males with children typify respondents in a coethnic relationship; conversely, younger cohabiting females without children typify respondents in a mixed relationship. Age shows a linear relationship with respondents more likely to be in a coethnic relationship the older they get. This is a key finding that is supported by a number of other studies (Fujino 1997; Joyner and Kao 2005). What we are not sure of, however, is why this is the case. I will specifically explore this finding using the indepth interviews.

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Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

Another interesting finding is that divorced and separated respondents are more likely to be in mixed relationships. We do not have data on the ethnic and racial identities of the respondents’ spouses, so we do not know if their previous marriage was a mixed or coethnic marriage. It is possible that once respondents divorced or separated, thereby breaking the expectation of their parents to marry a certain type of person, especially at a relatively young age, it is easier for them to date people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds—or at least, their parents are less likely to have as much say in who they should partner with. Extreme variation marks mixed relationships among the various racial and ethnic classifications. There is a 30 percentage-point spread between Asians and multiracials, with multiracials much more likely to be in mixed relationships (82 percent to 49 percent for Asians). The other category has the lowest percentage of mixed relationships, followed by Asians and whites (although whites and blacks are smaller samples and therefore unreliable). This other category for the most part consists of Hispanic groups who do not feel that any other category fits them, and it is not surprising given that most of the people who checked this box in the CILS were Mexican—notice how closely the other category matches the Mexican ethnic group. The white and black categories are interesting because all the respondents are children of immigrants and therefore less likely to check the white or black box. A further examination of the responses showed that the majority of respondents who checked the white category were Mexican or Mexican American. Among those who checked the black category, the majority were either from the Caribbean (e.g., Jamaican or Belizian) or had one parent who was African American and thus identified as African American. Another possibly problematic group are those multiracials who were classified as coethnic couples. Are they really coethnic couples, meaning they were with a partner who has the same multiethnic or multiracial heritage? A further look at this group revealed that most of these multiracials (i.e., they checked the multiracial box) identified their ethnicity as Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, or Mexican and identified the same ethnic category for their partner. These multiracials were not multiracials in the sense that we typically think of—as with two parents of different racial backgrounds, but they still saw themselves as multiracial, which is not surprising given the history of mixing in Mexico and Latin America between Europeans and the indigenous

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population. This same variation of respondents in mixed relationships that we see in the racial categories is seen in the ethnic groups, with Mexicans and Cambodian-Lao-Hmong hovering at 40 percent and Filipinos and Vietnamese at over 50 percent. The next three variables—generation, nativity of parents, and language—all center on the immigrant experience, namely the degree of acculturation. The generations are all close except for the 2.5 (U.S.born, with one foreign-born parent and one U.S.-born), with 75 percent of the 2.5 generation in mixed relationships. A similar pattern is found in the nativity of the parents, with the respondents being more likely to be in a mixed relationship if their parents are both from different countries. Intuitively this makes sense when we consider that the respondents’ parents’ relationship is “mixed,” and therefore not only are the respondents themselves more likely to feel comfortable dating someone from a different racial or ethnic background, but their parents are less likely to oppose the respondent’s choice of partner. Language acquisition, also directly related to the immigrant experience, appears to play a large role in whether or not the respondents will be in a mixed relationship. The greater dominance that foreign language plays in the respondents’ lives, the less likely they are to be in a mixed relationship; on the other hand, the greater dominance that English plays in the respondents’ lives, the more likely they are to be in a mixed relationship. This is possibly a measure of how close a tie respondents feel to their parents’ country of origin and how closely they relate to their parents’ traditions, which often translates into dating and marrying someone from the same ethnic group. Religious preference seems to play a role only for those who are Protestant and those who have no religious preference: over 60 percent of both these groups are in mixed relationships while 45–47 percent of all the other groups are in mixed relationships. With only survey data, it is impossible to know why Protestants and those with no stated religion are more likely to cross racial and ethnic lines, but the in-depth interviews give us some insight into these important religious differences. Religious preference is similar to interethnic relationships in that neither is measured by the U.S. Census and are thus not talked about much in contemporary research 18 on intermarriage—precisely

18

There is, of course, a large number of scholars who studied this in the middle of the twentieth century (Herberg 1960; Kennedy 1944; Kennedy 1952).

100

Intermarriage Across Race and Ethnicity Among Immigrants

because it is not officially measured—but it appears to still play a role in the racial and ethnic lines that these young adult children of immigrants are crossing, especially when it comes to religious rituals and practices that are deeply embedded in their culture and family life. Previous research has clearly shown that the more educated people are, the more likely they are to be in mixed relationships (Kalmijn 1991; Qian 1999; Qian and Lichter 2007). This is true as well for the CILS respondents, with a linear pattern showing that every increase in educational level leads to an increase in the percentage of respondents in mixed relationships. Much of this is likely due to the local marriage market, since many of these people are meeting at college where there are more diverse groups of people with whom they can interact on a daily basis. Educational levels are in turn closely related to parental levels of socioeconomic status (SES). Thus, it is not surprising that the higher the respondents’ parental SES, the more likely they are to cross racial and ethnic lines in relationships. In addition to the local marriage market, it has been found that well-educated and upper-class people are more likely to be tolerant of different racial and ethnic groups (Kalmijn 1991; Qian, Blair, and Ruf 2001). Table 5.3 is an attempt to see if it really matters whether or not we make a distinction between race and ethnicity when talking about intermarriage. The baseline of the percentages presented in table 5.3 is of those in mixed relationships. If the percentages of interethnic and interracial relationships are the same across the characteristics listed, then there is no point in making a distinction, and we are therefore justified in labeling these mixed relationships as “interracial couples” as in the last column. If we do see important differences, then we should either distinguish between interethnic and interracial couples, or at least include interethnic relationships into a category, as we have done with “mixed couples.” These differences could manifest themselves in a number of ways: the size of the difference, whether the differences are significant (both substantively and statistically), and based on the pattern that exists in the data. In other words, we could see important differences, either by the fact that one category—interethnic or interracial relationships—is consistently larger than the other or by the different patterns that emerge between the two categories. The last two columns of table 5.3 highlight the key findings from this table: the percentage of people in interethnic relationships in each category is higher than interracial relationships in all cases except for one—as shown by the percentage of difference. This alone is

Table 5.3 Comparing Interethnic and Interracial Couples in Southern California

Characteristics

Interethnic Couples % (N)

a

Interracial Couples % (N)

b

% difference

significant difference

Total:

92

(386)

62

(261)

30

***

Sex: Male Female

39 50

(128) (258)

25 36

(79) (182)

14 14

* **

Age: 23 years old 24 years old 25 years old 26 years old 27 years old

49 46 48 38 21

(103) (155) (98) (29) (4)

31 34 32 29 26

(61) (110) (63) (22) (5)

19 12 16 9 -5

* * * NS NS

Marital status: Married Single Engaged Cohabiting Divorced, separated, other

34 48 54 64 57

(91) (185) (37) (56) (17)

23 33 39 40 57

(61) (122) (27) (34) (17)

11 14 14 24 0

NS ** NS * NS

Children: Have children No children

36 52

(114) (272)

27 35

(84) (177)

9 17

NS ***

Race: Other Asian White Black Multiracial

37 48 30 55 66

(129) (180) (3) (6) (68)

29 27 30 27 61

(95) (97) (3) (3) (63)

8 22 0 27 5

NS *** NS NS NS

Ethnicity: Mexican Cambodian-Lao-Hmong Filipino Vietnamese Chinese Latin, other Asian, other

35 38 49 58 60 73 94

(99) (37) (162) (47) (6) (19) (16)

26 18 40 26 50 35 71

(70) (17) (127) (21) (5) (9) (12)

9 20 10 32 10 38 24

NS NS NS ** NS * NS

Table 5.3 (continued )

Characteristics

Interethnic Couples % (N)

a

Interracial Couples % (N)

b

% difference

significant difference

Generation: 1.5 (fb-born, 6+) 1.75 (fb-born, under 6) 2 (U.S.-born, 2 fb parents) 2.5 (U.S.-born, 1 fb parent)

38 45 43 68

(77) (97) (126) (86)

29 23 33 51

(57) (48) (93) (63)

9 22 10 16

NS ** NS *

Nativity of parents: Same country Different country One born in U.S.

41 53 68

(272) (28) (86)

28 37 51

(178) (20) (63)

13 16 16

** NS *

Language: Foreign-language dominant Fluent bilingual Limited bilingual English dominant

23 35 47 55

(78) (234) (18) (56)

15 26 24 40

(56) (166) (11) (28)

8 9 23 15

NS NS NS NS

Religion: Catholic Buddhist Other religion Protestant No religion

41 43 44 63 64

(202) (45) (34) (17) (85)

32 18 34 46 39

(154) (18) (25) (12) (51)

8 26 10 17 25

NS * NS NS **

Education: Some high school High school graduate Some college College graduate Graduate school

38 43 45 52 71

(20) (77) (198) (74) (15)

25 27 33 36 52

(13) (46) (140) (49) (11)

13 16 12 17 19

NS NS * NS NS

Parent SES index: Lowest SES quartile Second quartile Third quartile Highest SES quartile

37 47 50 55

(102) (87) (102) (95)

20 36 37 41

(54) (64) (73) (70)

17 11 13 13

* NS NS NS

Source: Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), Wave III Survey, San Diego Sample, 2001–03. Note: Interethnic and interracial couples can overlap, so the row percentages will not add up to 100%. Significance is based on the Z statistic: ***p