The Associated Press 7/5/01
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A national survey finds that 34 years after the Supreme
Court ended laws against interracial marriage, biracial couples are
reporting widespread tolerance and even acceptance of their relationships.
The survey was a joint project of The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation and Harvard University.
The Post reported in Thursday's editions that an overwhelming majority of
540 couples interviewed said they have introduced their partners to
accepting parents and family members and felt comfortable talking openly
about their relationships.
It also said more believe their children are advantaged than disadvantaged
by having parents of different races.
"What the survey figures imply ... is that interracial marriages and
their
approval is increasing terribly fast," Frank D. Bean, a professor of
sociology at the University of California at Irvine, told the Post.
"If you
have hang-ups about interracial marriage, get over it. The train's left
the
station."
Companion surveys involved telephone interviews from March 8 to April 22
with 1,709 randomly selected adults and calls from March 29 to May 20 to
540
adults who said they were married to, or living with, a partner of a
different race. The margin of error ranged from 4 percentage points to 9
percentage points for subgroups, such as the 254 Asians included in the
1,709 overall survey.
Among the findings:
-- 53 percent of whites, 77 percent of blacks, 68 percent of Latinos and
67
percent of Asians said it makes no difference whether one marries someone
of
their own race or a different race.
-- About 4 in 10 Americans reported having dated someone of another race.
-- 46 percent of black-white couples said being married to someone of a
different race makes marriage harder, compared to 30 percent of
Latino-white
couples and 32 percent of Asian-white couples who said that.
-- 65 percent of black-white couples reported a parent initially had a
problem with the relationship, compared to 24 percent of Latino-white
couples and 24 percent of Asian-white couples.
The Post noted that little research has been done on interracial couples
over the past three decades and cited no comparative figures for the
results
of this spring's surveys.