Intraethnic, Interethnic, and Interracial Marriages Among Asian Americans in California, 1980

Abstract

Marriage has been a longstanding concern, since the beginnings of American sociology, especially when such unions cross ethnic, religious, and racial boundaries.1 Two schools of thought regarding intermarriage have appeared.2 The first, assimilation theory, provides the major explanation for the intermarriage patterns of white ethnic and religious minorities.3 Since the Second World War, it has also been applied to the study of the interracial marriage patterns of nonwhite racial minorities. Asian Americans,4 in particular, have come to be viewed as a group whose interracial marriages demonstrate that race no longer remains a barrier to the full acceptance of minority groups by the majority.