17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral

[Politesse]

Nor anyone who lives in (or at least grew up in) the South. Remember 'Dixiecrats' and the 'Solid South'? Used to be that the Democrats would have been the most statistically racist, no question.

Oh, I'm pretty sure the residents of Detroit and Chicago and Baltimore and DC are... aware.

And yes, reticence to intermarriage is not restricted to people of one skin color. Don't know what point y'all think you're making, of course it does. Come to point, were I a black parent living in one of our more segregated cities, I would be nervous about my child marrying into an all white family and neighborhood. I wouldn't think they were doing something immoral, but I would worry a lot about their well-being.

Here in Georgia, mixed race children are extremely common although most people identify them as black. I have a white female friend who is married to a black man, and she confided in me that she gets angry at her husband sometimes because he identifies their children as black. I told her to tell him that are "blackish", after the TV show by the same name. I am married to a third generation Arabic American. My late mother in law didn't like that her sons married non Arabic women. It was more about culture than about ethnicity. She eventually bonded with me because we both grew up in New Jersey. Jersey girls are their own breed. And speaking of racism and segregation, most of New Jersey is far more racist and segregated than any of the southern cities I've lived in. White people in NJ are just a lot more subtle about their racism. There are many towns in northern NJ that are all or almost all white. Imo, the south has progressed far more than the north when it comes to racist tendencies. I'm not saying that we don't have racists here, but there are racists everywhere in the US.

I don't remember the name of the black comedian who is married to a white women, who said that some of his friends didn't like that he married a white woman. He told them not to worry because all of his kids were considered black. I don't know if it's because of the old racist rule about "one drop of black blood" or what, but for the most part, mixed race black/white people are identified as black. I tend to think that being blackish is considered very cool these days and some folks choose this identity even when they have more European DNA as compared to their African DNA. Anyway, I don't think that black people who don't like mixed race relationships feel that way for moral reasons. I think it has more to do with culture, just as it was with my late mother in law.

Having traveled around both regions some, I tend to agree. Even though I easily "pass" the entry condition, I feel weird and uncomfortable in the seemingly all-white suburbs of the North. Coming from California, it's just not what I'm used to I suppose, but it seems kind of creepy. Like a situation that would only occur for artificial and unnerving reasons. Not that we don't have our race issues out here, but we don't segregate like that. The South feels more like home.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

The irony being blacks are more probable to be among the 12% of Democrats opposed to interracial marriage.
In fact, 18% of blacks said it was immoral, while only 17% of whites did, which includes the 28% opposed among Republican that are overwhelming white.
If we do the math, that works out to something like only 7% of Democrat whites being opposed to it, versus about 18% of Democratic blacks opposed to it.

If you do the maths without ignoring the fact that whites make up 70% of the total population while blacks constitute 12% you will discover that your previous result is way off the mark.

Using data from the 2016 National Popular Vote Tracker, the Economist/YouGov Poll the article in the OP is based on (scroll down to page 92) and How we voted — by age, education, race and sexual orientation I calculated that 9.8% of Democrat whites and 32.7% of Republican whites are opposed to interracial marriage.

Those results are very likely inaccurate as well. For one thing I assumed - as you did too - that the percentages of Blacks, Latinos and Others remained constant across the board. That is an unlikely scenario, but we do not have access to stats showing whether that is the case or not, and anyway, I enjoy messing about with spreadsheets.

Personally, I am pleasantly surprised by the overall figures. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is not quite as topical as when the movie was released 50 years ago.

The data about how people voted in 2016 isn't the right data source to make an analysis using the the data in the OP for Democrats (12%) vs. Republicans (28%). Rather, the data about how people voted in 2016 that would be a better fit for the data (in the OP article) for Clinton voters (9% of whom believe interracial marriage to be immoral) vs. Trump voters (19%). By the way, this is odd: 12% of Democrats, 15% of Independents, and 28% of Republicans (and 17% of the total population) think interracial marriage is immoral, but only 8% of Clinton voters and 19% of Trump voters do. Is moral condemnation of interracial marriage weirdly concentrated on non-voters?

Anyway, we don't know how ronburgundy did the math and what he ignored or did not ignored, but you're right that there isn't enough info to know the percentages with accuracy. I haven't studied the data enough to say more, but it seems very probable (assuming the polls numbers) that the percentage of White Democrats who find interracial marriage immoral is lower than the percentage of Black Democrats who do so. If that were not the case, given that the percentage of Republicans who find interracial marriage immoral is 28% while the percentage of Democrats and Independents who do is 12% and 15% respectively, and given the facts about race and party affiliation (source: http://news.gallup.com/poll/160373/democrats-racially-diverse-republicans-mostly-white.aspx ), one would expect that the percentage of White Americans who find interracial marriage immoral would be higher than that of Black Americans by at least a few points (under any reasonable numbers for Independents).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Anyway, I don't think that black people who don't like mixed race relationships feel that way for moral reasons.

But 18% of Black respondents said they find interracial marriage immoral.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Anyway, I don't think that black people who don't like mixed race relationships feel that way for moral reasons.

But 18% of Black respondents said they find interracial marriage immoral.

Was that the only choice on the survey to express 'not acceptable?'

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Anyway, I don't think that black people who don't like mixed race relationships feel that way for moral reasons.

But 18% of Black respondents said they find interracial marriage immoral.

Was that the only choice on the survey to express 'not acceptable?'

As I understand it "not acceptable" means the same as "immoral", "morally wrong", etc.; the "acceptable" in "not acceptable" is morally acceptable. So, I'm not sure what other option you have in mind. But maybe you're using "acceptable" to mean something other than "morally acceptable". In that is the case, the poll did not ask whether it was acceptable, but whether it was morally acceptable.

More specifically, the poll's question was: "Regardless of whether they should be legal or not, which of the following things do you personally consider to be morally acceptable or morally wrong?"
The vast majority of Black respondents (82%) said it's morally acceptable, whereas 18% said it was morally wrong. Similar patterns can be seen in White respondents (83% vs. 17%), Hispanics (85% vs. 15%), and "others" (81% vs. 19%), with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points (I'm not sure what happens to Hispanics who are White, Hispanics who are Black, etc., but that's the poll's classification).

 

[Hermit]

The data about how people voted in 2016 isn't the right data source

The data source was page 92 of the actual Yougov study linked in the OP via the the link to the Newsweek article that reported on the issue. I mapped those data, best I could, to the 2016 election data in order to get an estimation of what percentage of white Democrat (and Republican) voters considered interracial marriage to be immoral. Where did you get the "Clinton voters (9% of whom believe interracial marriage to be immoral) vs. Trump voters (19%)" bits from?

 

[Angra Mainyu]

The data about how people voted in 2016 isn't the right data source

The data source was page 92 of the actual Yougov study linked in the OP via the the link to the Newsweek article that reported on the issue. I mapped those data, best I could, to the 2016 election data in order to get an estimation of what percentage of white Democrat (and Republican) voters considered interracial marriage to be immoral. Where did you get the "Clinton voters (9% of whom believe interracial marriage to be immoral) vs. Trump voters (19%)" bits from?

Sorry, my bad, it's 8%. I wrote 9% first by mistake, and corrected that a minute later, but I forgot to correct the part of the post you are quoting. So, sorry about the misunderstanding.

That aside, my source is the OP study as well. In the study, 12% of Democrats said they found interracial marriage immoral, while 28% of Republicans did. However, only 8% of Clinton voters and 19% of Trump voters said they judge it immoral. The 2016 election data is about Clinton voters and Trump voters, rather than about Democrats and Republicans, so if you use the data from the 2016 election, you should also use the Yougov's study data about Clinton's voters and Trump's voters, rather than the data about Democrats and Republicans.

While the categories "Democrat" ("Republican") and "Clinton voter" ("Democrat") clearly overlap a lot, the numbers are pretty different in the study (to the point that they're just weird, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous reply to you).

 

[Jon Osterman]

Since morality is subjective, why does it matter that 17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral? We should be free to approve or disapprove of others' actions however we want. The only thing that should be prohibited is unfair discrimination on the grounds of that opinion.

 

[Trausti]

Since morality is subjective, why does it matter that 17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral? We should be free to approve or disapprove of others' actions however we want. The only thing that should be prohibited is unfair discrimination on the grounds of that opinion.

Because people like to get offended and share the outrage with others. Welcome to TFT!

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Since morality is subjective, why does it matter that 17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral? We should be free to approve or disapprove of others' actions however we want. The only thing that should be prohibited is unfair discrimination on the grounds of that opinion.

So it wouldn't matter to you if 90% of the population felt this way? Why does something have to be framed as a prohibition to matter?

 

[Jayjay]

Since morality is subjective, why does it matter that 17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral? We should be free to approve or disapprove of others' actions however we want. The only thing that should be prohibited is unfair discrimination on the grounds of that opinion.

Laws are kind of based on popular opinion of morality. If enough people thought something was immoral, it would inevitably become illegal.

(EDITED TO ADD: ... if practically enforceable, I should add.)

 

[Hermit]

While the categories "Democrat" ("Republican") and "Clinton voter" ("Democrat") clearly overlap a lot, the numbers are pretty different in the study (to the point that they're just weird, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous reply to you).

Frankly, I can't make sense of the Clinton/Dem and Trump/Rep discrepancies, but both the Newsweek report and the discussion in this thread focus on Party ID, so I think my approach is more appropriate, especially since I integrated some necessary data from another source into the mapping. It's still more than a little slapdash due to the incompleteness of data, but unless there is more information forthcoming, this is about as good as it gets.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Since morality is subjective, why does it matter that 17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral? We should be free to approve or disapprove of others' actions however we want. The only thing that should be prohibited is unfair discrimination on the grounds of that opinion.

It seems that if morality is subjective and for that reason, it does not matter that 17% of Americans think interracial marriage is immoral, then similarly, it does not matter that you think that we should be free to approve or disapprove of others' actions however we want, or that you think that the only thing that should be prohibited is unfair discrimination on the grounds of that opinion (aside from the issue of "matter to whom?", and other related points, but let's simplify).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

While the categories "Democrat" ("Republican") and "Clinton voter" ("Democrat") clearly overlap a lot, the numbers are pretty different in the study (to the point that they're just weird, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous reply to you).

Frankly, I can't make sense of the Clinton/Dem and Trump/Rep discrepancies, but both the Newsweek report and the discussion in this thread focus on Party ID, so I think my approach is more appropriate, especially since I integrated some necessary data from another source into the mapping. It's still more than a little slapdash due to the incompleteness of data, but unless there is more information forthcoming, this is about as good as it gets.

I don't think that's more appropriate, because regardless of what the discussion about the poll has focused so far on, the fact remains that the poll's data for voters of Clinton and Trump say they find interracial marriages immoral at rates of 8% and 19% respectively, so (assuming we don't disregard the whole study due to the discrepancy) data from other sources that also provides information about Clinton and Trump voters should be used in the context of those numbers, not in the context of the 12% for Democrats and 28% for Republicans. If you want to focus on the 12% and 28%, you should use data from other sources that is also about Democrats and Republicans (as I did in in my first reply to you, though I didn't analyze them in any detail), not about Clinton voters and Trump voters. If the information in question is not available for the sort of analysis you want to do, then I think the 8% and 19% figures should be used instead of the 12% and 28%.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Unless the persons summarizing the poll reported incorrect numbers, both things are true. More Trump voters were against interracial marriage than Clinton voters and more Republicans were against interracial marriage than Democrats. People consider themselves to be Republicans or Democrats even if not registered to vote and/or even if they did not vote. Even so, some such people may consider themselves to be sort-of disenfranchised. More disenfranchised persons could be more extremist in their views. So, if you look at the unregistered voters in the data, you can see that 24% thought it was morally wrong but of registered voters only 14% thought it was wrong.

Some additional comments:
1. The categories of minorities who thought interracial marriage was morally wrong were very underrepresented. For example, there were about 30 blacks who found this to be morally wrong. I'd rather see about 10x as many respondents in this poll to get some better representation among different groups.
2. There are different reasons a person could be against interracial marriage. Offhand, I could think of two: (a) the person is a fanatical racist; (b) they think it might be bad for health and safety of potential children of such marriages. While I don't ascribe to either of these beliefs, we don't know why any individual thinks what they do. There could be group trends that differ on the reasons why and those would be interesting to look at but we don't have them here.
3. Even though we cannot comment on some things because we don't measure the "why" from this study, there are a number of external data that are aligned to findings about Republicans and/or the South that points at least in part to racism. I mean, we're talking xenophobic policies, voting strategies amongst the south etc. We can't really say how much is racism but clearly there continues to be somewhat of a difference.

ETA: I will add that if you want to do a comparison of any "race" statistic to others, it's the larger%, the one of party ID, you want to do, not registered voters who voted Trump or Clinton. Otherwise, you are comparing apples and oranges since many of the "race" did not vote and apparently there is some kind of bias among unregistered voters as seen in the numbers.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Unless the persons summarizing the poll reported incorrect numbers, both things are true. More Trump voters were against interracial marriage than Clinton voters and more Republicans were against interracial marriage than Democrats. People consider themselves to be Republicans or Democrats even if not registered to vote and/or even if they did not vote. Even so, some such people may consider themselves to be sort-of disenfranchised. More disenfranchised persons could be more extremist in their views. So, if you look at the unregistered voters in the data, you can see that 24% thought it was morally wrong but of registered voters only 14% thought it was wrong.

True. I just think it's weird, and also I think it's weird that they consider themselves disenfranchised while also considering themselves Democrats or Republicans (ETA: if and when they do, considering there is a powerful party representing their views, they are allowed to vote and participate in the political process, etc.). At any rate, my point remains that we need to consider the corresponding (or closest at least) categories when integrating data from different sources.

1. The categories of minorities who thought interracial marriage was morally wrong were very underrepresented. For example, there were about 30 blacks who found this to be morally wrong. I'd rather see about 10x as many respondents in this poll to get some better representation among different groups.

"Underrepresented" in what sense?
Do you think the margin of error is too high to get any significant information?
If so, it works both ways (i.e., for those who said it was morally acceptable too). But why do you think the numbers are too low (if that's what you think), i.e., how high you think the margin of error is in the actual case vs. 10x as many respondents?

2. There are different reasons a person could be against interracial marriage. Offhand, I could think of two: (a) the person is a fanatical racist; (b) they think it might be bad for health and safety of potential children of such marriages. While I don't ascribe to either of these beliefs, we don't know why any individual thinks what they do. There could be group trends that differ on the reasons why and those would be interesting to look at but we don't have them here.

True, and those two can also overlap. Another reason (which can overlap with (b), and I guess probably does pretty often) would be that the person is a racist, but not a fanatical one. So, for example, they consider interracial marriage immoral, but wouldn't bother wasting their time expressing publicly their condemnation of those who engage in interracial marriage - they just say it's immoral if asked about it, or maybe if a close family member is planning to do it.

3. Even though we cannot comment on some things because we don't measure the "why" from this study, there are a number of external data that are aligned to findings about Republicans and/or the South that points at least in part to racism. I mean, we're talking xenophobic policies, voting strategies amongst the south etc. We can't really say how much is racism but clearly there continues to be somewhat of a difference.

That's very probable. But it seems to me racism is also probable among other groups too, by looking at common politically-motivated behavior. But we don't have enough information to tell how much of it is going on, anyway.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

True. I just think it's weird, and also I think it's weird that they consider themselves disenfranchised while also considering themselves Democrats or Republicans. At any rate, my point remains that we need to consider the corresponding (or closest at least) categories when integrating data from different sources.


"Underrepresented" in what sense?
Do you think the margin of error is too high to get any significant information?
If so, it works both ways (i.e., for those who said it was morally acceptable too). But why do you think the numbers are too low (if that's what you think), i.e., how high you think the margin of error is in the actual case vs. 10x as many respondents?

2. There are different reasons a person could be against interracial marriage. Offhand, I could think of two: (a) the person is a fanatical racist; (b) they think it might be bad for health and safety of potential children of such marriages. While I don't ascribe to either of these beliefs, we don't know why any individual thinks what they do. There could be group trends that differ on the reasons why and those would be interesting to look at but we don't have them here.

True, and those two can also overlap. Another reason (which can overlap with (b), and I guess probably does pretty often) would be that the person is a racist, but not a fanatical one. So, for example, they consider interracial marriage immoral, but wouldn't bother wasting their time expressing publicly their condemnation of those who engage in interracial marriage - they just say it's immoral if asked about it, or maybe if a close family member is planning to do it.

3. Even though we cannot comment on some things because we don't measure the "why" from this study, there are a number of external data that are aligned to findings about Republicans and/or the South that points at least in part to racism. I mean, we're talking xenophobic policies, voting strategies amongst the south etc. We can't really say how much is racism but clearly there continues to be somewhat of a difference.

That's very probable. But it seems to me racism is also probable among other groups too, by looking at common politically-motivated behavior. But we don't have enough information to tell how much of it is going on, anyway.

I mostly agree with everything you wrote. I don't want to get into semantics of any minor differences.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I am married to a third generation Arabic American. My late mother in law didn't like that her sons married non Arabic women. It was more about culture than about ethnicity. She eventually bonded with me because we both grew up in New Jersey.

Yeah, the racism often comes from the non-white side.

From whites, I have not encountered any objection to the fact that I'm married to a Chinese other than from some KKK types. However, there are parts of her family that I have never met and most likely never will. While they know she's married to an American they think I'm ethnic Chinese--and would not be happy that I'm not. We have encountered other racism over there, also. The craziest thing I have encountered, though, was a couple of Chinese waitresses. They had no problem with her being married to me--until they found out it was for love, not just to get a green card.

 

[repoman]

I am married to a third generation Arabic American. My late mother in law didn't like that her sons married non Arabic women. It was more about culture than about ethnicity. She eventually bonded with me because we both grew up in New Jersey.

Yeah, the racism often comes from the non-white side.

From whites, I have not encountered any objection to the fact that I'm married to a Chinese other than from some KKK types. However, there are parts of her family that I have never met and most likely never will. While they know she's married to an American they think I'm ethnic Chinese--and would not be happy that I'm not. We have encountered other racism over there, also. The craziest thing I have encountered, though, was a couple of Chinese waitresses. They had no problem with her being married to me--until they found out it was for love, not just to get a green card.

Damn, that is mercenary.

 

[repoman]

This is an interesting clip at 1:10 MLK mentions that negros want to be brothers and not brothers in law to whites.



can't find the full interview