(Hmm, well, he is an odd, odd dude. But not because he’s married to me. Or, I mean, not ’cause he’s married to a white woman – I’ll admit you might have to be odd to voluntarily marry me. We brought matching crazy to the marriage table as dowry.)

Well,  the statistics on interracial marriages in America are now here, courtesy the US Census, so we can put this baby to rest. Actually, the statistics have always been “here” since the 2000 Census information was released, but I’m not such a numbers nerd that I felt like crunching the raw data myself with SAS or STATA. Luckily for me, a pair of sociologists have already done the dirty work, and their results have been made available at Dr. C.N. Le’s Asian Nation website. I’m going to only present the South Asian related statistics here, but Dr. Le has the same sort of information available on all Asian ethnicities, and you can tease out information about other ethnicities as well.

The data on interracial marriages is broken down first into the sexes – so we can see how intermarriage varies by gender , and then into the three following groups, each of which gives us a snapshot of the whole picture:

1. Marriages of ALL South Asian individuals, whether the person is an immigrant to the US or not. This data is great in one way, as it let’s you know what types of marriages the entire South Asian population have, but it’s also troublesome. The problem  is that a lot of married people immigrate to the US, and they’ll be counted in this group too. That means the data captures not only the type of marriages taking place in the US, but also how prevalent interracial marriages are in  India & neighboring countries (hint: it’s quite, quite low).  Why does that matter? Well, it’s the difference between marriages happening in America and married people living in America – if you want to know more about former, you won’t learn it here. The information about this group of all desis, however, will let you know how likely it is that the random brown person you grab off the street in the US is married to someone of a different ethnicity.
2. Marriages of South Asians where the South Asian individual in the marriage was raised in the US. To be considered “raised in the US” for this study, you must have been born & raised here, or have immigrated to the US no later than age 13. If you immigrated to the the US after 13, then your childhood was primarily spent elsewhere, and you’re considered foreign-raised.  This second group serves as a sort-of proxy for marriages that take place in the US, since only the spouse may be foreign-raised, not the individual in question (remember, we’re taking the sexes separately, so for the guys, belonging to this category would mean the guy was US-raised and the woman was either US-raised or foreign-raised. This set up allows us to avoid counting couples composed of two foreign-raised individuals – which are the couples who likely immigrated here already married.
3. Marriages of South Asians where both the South Asian individual and the spouse are US-raised. This third group is pretty straightforward, and is quite interesting in terms of seeing how Indian immigrants’ children are intermixing with the rest of America.

So, the data for guys, in pretty graphical form:

Clear trends can be seen here, with couples composed of a male South Asian raised in the US achieving greater percentages of interracial marriage than the group of desis as a whole. About 8.1% of all South Asian guys (group 1) marry someone of a different race (is that higher than you suspected? It is for me!), but among American-raised desi guys marrying American-raised women (group 3) 43.4% of them are marrying interracially – quite a lot! Note, however, that of all US-raised South Asian dude (group 2), only 26.7% of them married interracially. It’s only those that chose to marry other US-raised individuals that married outside of their ethnicity to such a large degree.

Now for the girls:

The intermarriage rates here are a little lower compared to the guys for the whole population (6.4%), but, surprisingly higher for the group 3 girls, with 45.7% marrying someone of a different ethnicity. The majority of the difference for group 3 between genders seems to come from marriages between South Asians and whites, as “only” 31% of South Asian men in group 3 marry white women, but 36.3% of South Asian women in group 3 marry white guys. It’s a bit curious though, that as we look at US-raised desis as a whole (i.e. group 2), we don’t see the same difference in the marrying of white folk – 18.5% of US-raised Indian guys married white woman & 18.9% of US-raised Indian gals married white men. Overall, 24.3% of US-raised desi women married out of their ethnicity, which is lower than it is for group 2 guys.

Now, you might be saying, “Wait a second – there’s no way these numbers are correct – I know a lot of South Asians, and very few of them are married interracially”. And, of course, you’d be correct. The higher percentages of interracial marriage only occur among US-raised South Asians. And only about 1 in 10 of all the married desi individuals living in the US is US-raised. There’s about 630 thousand married Indian guys, of which only 54 thousand are US-raised. It’s similar with the females, with 580 thousand married Indian gals in the US, of whom only 60 thousand are US-raised.

A few disclaimers:

1. This data is drawn from the US Census, and, like all censuses, it isn’t perfect. That being said, it’s a hella a lot better than the vast majority of sociological data out there, especially when compared to similar-sized data sets.
2. The data does not discriminate between citizens and non-citizens – just all people living in the US at the time of the 2000 census. So, for example, if Aditya and I had been married at that time, he would have shown up in this data, even though he’s just a green card holder.
3. These percentages are based off of different sized groups, so don’t go adding and subtracting percentages willy-nilly. If you want a number calculated, just ask.

I think the number most surprising to me was the percentage of foreign-raised South Asians who marry interracially. It’s 6.3% for men and 6.0% for women. Really, I wouldn’t have expected it to be that high – and this data is from 2000, so it’s a bit outdated. I think Aditya was also surprised by what he saw as relatively high percentages. Did anything strike you guys as unexpected?

South Asian women in intercultural relationships

More than one reader has written in asking whether I knew of anyone in an intercultural relationship where the paring was Indian woman and [blank] guy, since some of the difficulties these couples face can be different from those seen by a South Asian dude and [blank] gal. I personally don’t know any of these couples in real life – not seriously committed, anyways – but I do know that there are a few readers here who of these pairings (obviously – since more than one person wrote in!). So, if you’re interested in starting a discussion on the particular problems faced by these couples, speak up – this thread’s for you! Alternatively, if you’re a bit too shy to discuss the topic here, you can email me (gorigirl.admin.com) or use the contact form on the Got a Question? page, and I’ll pass along your contact information to those who were enquiring.

The following websites and article might also be of interest to couples where one person is an Indian woman. I’m only showing the pick of the litter – you can find more on the Intercultural Resources page:

• MasalaCouples – a livejournal community featuring South Asian mixed marriages and relationships where I know there are a few couples of this paring.
• Bucking tradition and following the path of my heart – an article written by a young Indian woman about dating outside of her race.
• Marriage of True Minds – an article from beliefnet discussing the intercultural relationships and weddings of three South Asian women
• The United Colors of Desi -  an article discussing intercultural marriage with a few couples of the above type profiled.

Nepalis in intercultural relationships

Another reader is looking for couples where one person is Nepalese. She writes:

I was wondering if you have any readers or friends who are in an intercultural relationship that is American-Nepali. A lot of reading material out there talks about South Asian relationships that are American-Indian, which I enjoy and extrapolate all that I can from, but it would be nice to have others to talk to that are in the same situation. There are SO many Nepalis in the US these days, I am sure there are a lot out there!

So, same deal here – I don’t know of any Nepali-other couples (all my Nepalese friends are currently loving the single life), but perhaps one of the readers here does?

There also aren’t a lot of resources – that I could find – out there for interracial/intercultural couples where one partner is Nepali. This site, aimed at explaining Nepali culture to Canadians, has a few interesting bits, including some recommend fiction, but nothing focused on intercultural relationships. On that topic, I could only find this article, called Cultural Crisscross, which is nice, but not very long. If anyone else knows of articles that might be of use, be sure to comment below.