Interracial Relationships. The Statistical Abstract

Interracial relationships.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States: (1998) recorded that less than 5% of all marriages in the U.S.A. are interracial. Knox et al., (2000) wanted to investigate whether the amount had increased since then. 620 never married university students from East Carolina University completed an anonymous confidential questionnaire designed to assess their attitudes toward interracial dating and whether they themselves would engage in such. 63% were women; 37% were men. The median age was 19. Respondents were mostly white (87%) Items 17 and 18 on the 24 item questionnaire were "I am open to involvement in an interracial relationship" and "I have dated someone of another race." And respondents marked this among a 5 rated spectrum form "I strongly Agree" to "I strongly Disagree." Almost one-fourth (24.2%) reported having dated inter-racially and almost half (49.6%) expressed interest in becoming involved in an interracial relationship. Blacks (83% vs. 43%), cohabitants (60% of college students who had already lived together), and those with former interracial dating experience (92%) were significantly more likely to express interest in becoming involved in an interracial relationship .

Researchers concluded that racial issues of interrelation relationships are melting.

I found several limitations with the above research. Firstly it was conducted on one university amongst students who were all taking the same kind of course (Sociology- you may well expects students to b e taking this course to be more interested in interracial dating).

The sample was skewed; it was mainly White. Had more Blacks, for instance, been included, results may have been different.

The gender too was skewed with females being highly domination. This may well have skewed outcome too. It maybe that females are more open to interracial dating than males are.

The median age was 19. Had an older age been included and a greater diversity of ages, greater diversification may have been found.

Finally, but not exclusively, these are educated, liberal university students and therefore, not representative of the larger real-world outside of the university walls. The study therefore was not only not valid but also not reliable in that it did not measure that which it was supposed to measure, namely the state of interracial dating in the real world.

There are also issues with surveys: interviewing has its own concerns which include interviewer and interviewee bias with both interviewee and/or interviewer potentially being effected by characteristics of the other and responding in kind. Responses may also be slanted to reflect that which interviewee thinks interviewer may desire. Aside from which, responses may be misinterpreted or misunderstood. These are only some of the problems that interviewing constitutes. Others include the fact that self-report is notoriously erroneous, with people prone to constructing their responses based on time, mood, a and context. Presumably, participants were promised confidentiality but, nonetheless, participants would not want to openly state that they were against interracial relationships or had negative sentiments to the topic. They would likely be extremely cautious in the way that they word their responses since it would only be the most bigoted who would likely be open in his/her response and then under protected circumstances.

People besides are not always aware of their motivation aside from which it is arguable whether or not prejudicial sentiments are implicit rather than conscious. Given these conditions and more, I find the study interesting but highly limited.

There are many present theses on how we control our prejudices. The MODE model, one of the most prominent, states that prejudices are controlled via automatic and controlled processes. The researchers (Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2006)) wanted to investigate these models in a real-life environment. Their focus, therefore, was on interracial sharing of rooms (boarding) in a university. Their first study was on roommates initial reaction to the other racially different boarder. Their second study was whether the boarding experience changed initial automatic prejudice. The racial attitudes of the 58 White freshmen were measured unobtrusively in both studies via a priming procedure at the beginning of the fall semester. Students also reported their satisfaction with their roommates on a 3-item scale adapted from Murray and Holmes's (1997)research on close relationships.

Researchers found that the automatically activated racial attitudes of White students predicted the longevity of the relationships. In other words, whether or not they were motivated to control their prejudice, it was their initial feelings to the boarder that determined the longevity of the relationship.

My main limitation that I have with this study is the reliability of the priming procedure. I have come across arguments (though unable to track them here) regarding the unreliability of many of the instruments used to track so-called unconscious feelings. The argument generally goes that if they are unconscious to start with then you cannot prove that the findings are correct. Namely, there is nothing to base them / justify them with. Aside from which I have heard there are other failures with their operation. This needs to be researched before the conclusions of this study are accepted.