According to a recent report, 1 in 12 marriages are interracial in America. That’s about 4.8 millions Americans who have married outside of their race.

And while that accounts for only 8.2 percent of all marriages, it’s a fairly large increase since 1980, when only 3.2 percent of marriages were interracial.

While Asians and Hispanics are more likely to marry outside of their race, African Americans have seen the largest increase in interracial marriage. Experts attribute that to a rising Black middle class that exposes African Americans to other races.

Additionally, studies showed that Black men are more than twice as likely to date outside of their race than Black women.

From Clutch Magazine:

“Other findings included:

  • Black men were more than twice as likely as black women to marry someone outside their race: 24 percent vs. 9 percent. For Asians, the reverse was true: 17 percent of Asian men married someone of a different race compared to 36 percent of Asian women.
  • White-Asian couples who married had the highest median income, nearly $71,000, followed by Asian-Asian ($62,000), white-white ($60,000), white-Hispanic ($57,900), white-black ($53,187), black-black ($47,700) and Hispanic-Hispanic (nearly $36,000).
  • The top three states for white-black married couples are Virginia, North Carolina and Kansas, all with rates of about 3 percent.”

The study also found that while Americans are far more accepting of interracial marriage than they were back in the 1960s, public sentiment isn’t as tolerant as one might assume.

“Public acceptance of interracial marriage is improving as well, although perhaps not as much as it should be. About 83 percent of Americans say it is “all right for blacks and whites to date each other,” which is a big jump from the 48 percent who said so in 1987. About 63 percent of those surveyed also say it “would be fine” if a family member were to marry outside their own race.”

Read the rest of this article at ClutchMag.com!

Is it a good thing that interracial marriages are on the rise?

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