This study was designed to examine the attitudes of undergraduate students toward interracial dating. The study examined the influence of race, gender, and previous interracial dating experience on interracial dating attitudes. The independent variable of racial identity salience was also examined. A final sample consisted of 389 students, recruited from first year political science classes at the University of North Texas. An 11- item self administered questionnaire was used to collect the data. The results indicated that race and previous interracial dating experience was associated with college students' attitudes. A weak association was also found between greater racial identity salience and less positive interracial dating attitudes. Future research should further examine racial identity salience and its role in partner selection.

In this qualitative study, I examine the persistent trend of black women as an excluded relationship partner for white men. Integral to understanding the exclusion of black women as relationship partners is the construction of black female bodies, by influential white men historically and contemporarily, as the abject opposite of hegemonic femininity, which holds "middle-class, heterosexual, [w]hite femininity" as the norm (Collins 2005:193). This construction essentially places black women outside the bounds of hegemonic femininity, beauty, sexuality, and womanhood. Using the theoretical concept deep frame, which is the "conceptual infrastructure of the mind" (Lakoff 2006a:12) and representative of one's commonsense world view, I argue that the ways in which influential white men have constructed black female bodies is a critical component of the raced, gendered, and classed deep frame of white men. This deep frame undergirds how many white men perceive, interpret, understand, emote, and engage in actions where black women are concerned. Hence in this study, I qualitatively examine, through analyzing and interpreting the in-depth online questionnaires of 134 white male respondents, how the deep frame of white men affects how they perceive black women and ultimately the relationships they seek with black women. The results of the study show that many white male respondents, despite most having very limited or no personal interactions with black women, viewed black women through the one-dimensional lens of the raced, gendered, and classed deep frame. Many respondents perceived black women as unattractive unless capable of a white normative standard, as possessing a negative "black" culture, and as possessing negative and "unfeminine" attributes that make them complicit in their own rejection. These findings show how the deep frame disciplines white men to view black women as "out of bounds" as legitimate relationship partners, and disciplines the types of relationships they seek with black women. The results of this study also reveal that the conceptual approach of deep frame rooted in an understanding of the power of influential white men to control and construct society provides a theoretical alternative to the outmoded interracial marriage theories of caste and exchange.

Choices pertaining to education, marriage and migration generally have profound impacts on individuals' lives. This dissertation focuses on the role of incentives in decisions involving education, interracial marriage and migration. To this end, Chapter 2 initiates a new line of research that investigates the role of self-employed parents on their children's post-graduation plans and college success. Chapter 2 reveals that self-employed parents affect their offspring's college success even after accounting for possible ability bias and controlling for various individual characteristics. While Chapter 2 focuses on the role of parental occupation on students' incentives to succeed in college, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 investigate intricate relationships among education, interracial marriage, the anti-miscegenation laws, and migration in the U.S. Chapter 3 introduces a study that links previous literatures on the migration of blacks in the U.S. during the Great Migration with anti-miscegenation laws and interracial marriage. Chapter 3 concludes that anti-miscegenation laws in individuals' states of birth affected the sorting of inter- and intraracially married black males into destination states differentially. Chapter 4 contributes to the previous literature on the determinants of black-white marriages by focusing on the impact of geographical variation of the distributions of black and white education and individual education on interracial marriage. / text

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-34).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--Smith College School for Social Work, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-46).

Rasideologier och tankar om rashygien är något som präglat svensk historia sedan andra världskriget. Begreppet ras har varit, och är fortfarande idag ett kontroversiellt ämne i Sverige, och har såväl i den akademiska världen som i dagligt tal kommit att bytas ut mot begreppet etnicitet. Tankar om ras och/ eller etnicitet kopplat till sexualitet är i dagsläget föga beforskat i den svenska kontexten. Denna uppsats har som fokus att studera hur ras och/eller etniskt blandade par definierar sig själva, samt hur de upplever att de blir bemötta av sin sociala omgivning i en svensk kontext. Resultaten visar att paren definierar sig på olika sätt, med hänvisning till etnisk tillhörighet eller beskrivningar av synliga skillnader vad gäller hud- och hårfärg. Det är mindre vanligt att par talar om sig själva i termer av skillnader i rastillhörighet. Resultaten visar även att paren bemöts av stereotypa föreställningar kopplat till rasblandade relationer, mer specifikt kopplat till den icke-vita partnern, i både nära så väl som mer avlägsna sociala sammanhang. Dessa föreställningar har inte sällan både en exotifierande och sexualiserande karaktär, där antagandet om den icke-vita partnern som sexuellt exotisk görs. / Race ideologies and thoughts about racial hygiene are things that have characterized Swedish history since World War II. The term race has been, and still is today, a controversial topic in Sweden, and has been replaced by the concept of ethnicity both in the academic and public world. Thoughts of race and/ or ethnicity linked to sexuality have been explored to little extent within the Swedish context. The focus of this thesis is on how interracial and/ or interethnic couples define themselves, and how they experience being perceived and treated by their social surroundings in a Swedish context. The results reveal that the couples define themselves in different ways, referring to ethnic origin or descriptions of visible differences in regard to skin and hair color. It is less common for couples to talk about themselves in terms of racial differences. The results also show that the couples experience that they are met by stereotypical notions of interracial relationships, more specifically linked to the non-white partner, in both close as well as more distant social settings. These notions often have an exotifying and sexualized character, where the assumptions of the non-white partner being sexually exotic is made.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between relationship quality and religious discrepancy of interracial couples who are either married or cohabiting. Two variables of religious discrepancy (religious affiliation discrepancy and religiosity discrepancy) were studied. The sample included three groups of interracial couples: Hispanic-white, Asian-white, and Black-white. The data were analyzed using a structural equation model and regression estimates of the three groups were compared. Results showed a significant relationship in only three of the 12 relationships between the two variables of religious discrepancy and relationship quality. Significant negative relationships were found between religious denomination discrepancy and relationship quality for the Hispanic-white and Black-white group. In addition, a significant negative relationship was found between religiosity discrepancy and relationship quality in the Asian-white group. Clinical implications are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / The current study proposes a theoretical model of Interracial Couple Relationship Success and empirically tests a portion of the model in which ethnic identity is linked to relationship satisfaction for Black-White interracial couples. Data were collected from 185 heterosexual Black-White marital couples in the United States. An actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was used to test the direct and indirect effects of ethnic identity to relationship satisfaction via self-esteem and problem-solving skills. The results indicated ethnic identity of both Black and White partners was related to Black but not White partners’ self-esteem. Findings also revealed significant indirect pathways from Black partners’ self-esteem to their own relationship satisfaction via effective problem-solving skills. The indirect pathway from Black partners’ self-esteem to partner relationship satisfaction was also mediated by partner perceptions of problem-solving in the relationship. The results of this study informs the continued development of the of Interracial Couple Relationship Success model and offers data regarding the role of identity and individual well-being in the context of interracial relationships.

M.A. / This study was prompted by the thousands of frustrated interracial couples who were either compelled to hide their relationships or leave South Africa in order to get married or live where interracial relationships and marriages were permitted. This pattern occurred during the apartheid era, before the repeal of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act and Section 16 of the Immorality Act. After the repeal of these Acts, the number of interracial couples in South Africa increased as indicated by Central Statistical Service figures for 1990, when 3 212 interracial marriages were reported. In April 1994 South Africa gained its first Democratic Government leading to the investigator being encouraged to undertake this study. In the study, the investigator explored patterns of family interaction in South African interracial marriages. Eight married couples were interviewed for between 45 minutes to one hour each, and the interviews were taperecorded. Three raters were used by the investigator to score the taped interviews. Couples seemed to feel that more than any other factor, they had become involved because they loved each other. They seemed to have developed their own style of communication since both verbal and non-verbal acts were seldom misinterpreted by them. Given the past political situation in South Africa, these couples seemed to have developed a closer bond. On the other hand, these couples exhibited the fact that interracial marriages are in most respects like other marriages in terms of their dynamics Three male adolescent children of the interracial couples were also asked to comp) .-,e the Family Functioning in Adolescence Questionnaire. Two adolescents identified with tl -,.. value systems of their parents, while one adolescent disagreed with his parents' value system.

Thesis advisor: Zine Magubane / Interviews with 20 members of Black female-White male intimate couples were conducted and, utilizing a grounded theory approach, revealed multiple situations where members of these couples had to self-disclose to others that they were romantically involved with a person of a different race. Using one of the largest study samples to date of Black female-White male couples, I demonstrate how race and gender affect these unplanned and strategic self-disclosure events that members of these couples engage in, and how members of these couples make sense of these public inquires that are the remnants of our country's racially-charged history. I argue that the ways in which privilege is uniquely distributed within these relationships -- where White men simultaneously possess racial and gender privilege and Black women possess neither -- makes these couples structurally and fundamentally different than other interracial couples, and, ultimately, exemplifies that race and gender matter in the experiences of these couples and how society-at-large views them. Therefore, it is pivotal that experiences of interracial couples are not generalized and that each race and gender pairing receives its own individualized study. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.