Interracial Marriages Forming at Unprecedented Rates: Census
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Four decades after Hollywood’s first interracial kiss in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” shocked mainstream America, Canada’s multicultural society is increasingly showing signs that love is colour blind.
The latest census figures released Wednesday by Statistics Canada show that, on this side of the border, mixed unions are forming at unprecedented rates.
There were 289,420 mixed-race couples, married and common law, in 2006—one third more than in 2001, the last time the data was collected.
Yet there was a time in North America’s not-so distant past that marrying someone of a different race wasn’t just taboo, it could land someone behind bars.
Before a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled it unconstitutional, 16 states still had laws banning interracial marriage.
Since Sidney Poitier’s landmark smooch, Hollywood continued the tradition of big-screen portrayals of interracial romances. Kevin Costner hooked up with Whitney Houston in “The Bodyguard” and Spike Lee brought together a black man and white woman in the more gritty “Jungle Fever.”
Images of real-life interracial couples such as Halle Berry and Montreal model Gabriel Aubry, as well as Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean and Jean-Daniel Lafond rarely provoke a mention of their mixed-race makeup.
Statistics Canada began looking at mixed unions in 2001 as yet another indication of Canada’s diversity and the way in which different ethnicities are integrating, analyst Tina Chui said.
Wendy Roth, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia, said the reason intermarriage and mixed unions prove so interesting is that they serve as a litmus test of social relations between different groups.
“If this is a sign of anything bigger, it’s a sign of the fact that those barriers, those social barriers between racial groups are being chipped away at a little bit,” Roth said from Vancouver.
“The rate of increase of mixed unions is not huge, but it’s steady, and the fact that it continues to be steady in different censuses suggests that those barriers are diminishing.”
The vast majority—85 per cent—of interracial couples counted in the 2006 census involve a white person and a visible minority. But in a country where visible minorities are on a steep incline, so too are marriages among couples from two different visible minority groups (15 per cent).
The Japanese are most likely to enter a mixed union, the census showed, at 74.7 per cent. The second and third groups most likely to be involved in an interracial relationship are Latin Americans (47 per cent) and blacks (40.6 per cent).
In contrast, South Asians and Chinese are among the least likely to form a union outside their group.
While they are certainly more prevalent, modern day interracial unions aren’t entirely immune from the scrutiny and stigma that has coloured them in the past.
Wilson Fong, a 32-year-old Toronto police officer, was born in Hong Kong and is now married to a woman of Korean descent. Their families are accepting of the interracial marriage, but Fong said a previous engagement to a white woman raised eyebrows in Oshawa, Ont.—a largely white community east of Toronto where he was raised.
“I found that people looked at me and I always felt they didn’t approve of it, just from the way they looked,” Fong said.
Fong’s mother, who remarried three years ago, and his older sister are both married to white men.
His wife Gina’s parents, who immigrated to Canada in the 1960s, still hold onto their traditions, but have become more Westernized. Over time, they’ve become increasingly accepting in their attitudes to things like her sister’s engagement to a white man.
“My sister has never dated a Korean guy and it was more acceptable as the years went on,” she said.
“It was difficult at the beginning but it got easier. Now, they’re totally fine with it.”
But it wasn’t always that easy.
Tina Dawes, now 31, learned as a teenager of the disapproving looks cast upon her parents—an interracial, interfaith couple who married in the late sixties. Her mother is a Filipino Catholic, her father a white Protestant.
They would later relocate to the U.S. for about three years for work, where Dawes said the marriage “really wasn’t viewed kindly.”
“As well as people saying, ‘She’s from a different culture from you,’ when they got married, they also said, ‘Oh, you guys are a different religion, this marriage is never going to work,”’ said Dawes, an electrical engineer.
Her paternal grandparents didn’t attend her parents’ wedding despite living close by, but the births of Dawes and her older brother seemed to help bring the family together in the years that followed.
“At the time, they definitely didn’t have the blessing of everyone close around them, which was too bad,” she said.
Dawes herself is now involved in a mixed union. Her partner Alistair Forster’s white parents hail from England.
Forster said his wife’s cultural background was simply not a factor in determining he’d met his match.
“I couldn’t see not being with Tina because of any reason other than who she is or her character, and that comes from values that were given to me by my parents,” the 32-year-old Ottawa lawyer said.
Open-minded attitudes regarding interracial relationships have also extended into the domain of professional matchmaking services.
Susan Kates, president of Dinnerworks which organizes informal dinner parties for singles, said orienting events around themes or interests such as fitness or travel is as far as it goes when it comes to categorizing clients.
“On the rare occasion, you do get ones who are looking for people who are of their own cultural background but that’s very rare,” Kates said.
“We say we can’t promise that because that’s not what we do. We don’t work on that element. It’s very much (along) cross-cultural lines.”
Susan Semeniw of Divine Intervention, a Vancouver matchmaking service, said she will always ask clients if they’re open to a partner of a different race.
The extent to which an individual has been exposed to different cultures can play a role in their willingness to consider an interracial relationship, she said.
“If you’ve travelled a fair bit to other markets, like to Asia or whatever else, you might be more open, or if your demographic makeup of the population tends to skew more ethnic, you might be broader in your perspectives,” Semeniw said.
Roth said low levels of interracial marriage often has to do with tradition and culture, but can also relate to where the visible minority groups settle.
“If they tend to live in neighbourhoods where there are a lot of other people from their own group around them, that can contribute to more marriage within their own group,” she said.
Tina Fong, 27, a teacher originally from Abbotsford, B.C., said more of her friends are tying the knot with people outside her Korean culture.
“A lot more of my friends’ parents are much more open to mixed marriages and it’s being more accepted now, whereas before it was taboo,” she said.
“At the same time, many still do marry other Koreans depending on where their duties lie in the family, like if they’re the oldest or the only daughter.”
Language can also play a role, she said.
“Some of my friends’ parents don’t speak English very well … so if you can’t communicate with your in-laws, it becomes that much more difficult to understand the traditions that Koreans have,” she said.
Wilson and Gina Fong said it’s important to celebrate their respective cultural traditions in their new life together, starting with their wedding which involved both Chinese and Korean tea ceremonies.
They also plan to teach their children Korean, which Gina speaks fairly fluently.
Dawes is eight months pregnant with her and Forster’s second child. Forster believes it’s extremely important to ensure their children are educated about both sides of their heritage.
“We’re definitely going to be going to the Philippines and England in the next few years,” he said.
The likelihood that intermarriage will reach the same levels as same-race unions probably won’t happen in her lifetime, Roth lamented, but she thinks there’s a very good chance that Canada will get there one day.
“We still have a way to go and a lot of work has to be done to break down those barriers,” she said.
(Posted on April 3, 2008)
Comments
“Since Sidney Poitier’s landmark smooch…”
…the number of landmark rapes of white women by guys with names like LaShawn, LaQuan, Vashon, Reggie, Daymion, Philander have skyrocketed.
By the way, Philander really does exist. I saw that name in crime story in the Minneapolis paper last week. The illiterate always come up with things that are unintentionally comical.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 6:17 PM on April 3
Wiping out 50,000 years of genetic evolution. All for the satisfaction of indulging in modern political fads. What a great basis for a meaningful relationship?
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 6:22 PM on April 3
“…the likelyhood intermarrige will reach the same levels as same race unions probably won’t happen in her lifetime Roth LAMENTED…”
The European descended people of Canada, particularly in Anglophone Canada, have been brainwashed well over the past 40 years or so. It is so extensive that intermaggige with other races is preffered by many to same race marriges. It the ultimate expression of non racism. It is also the willing genetic genocide for European descended peoples too of course. This is not seen by many in Canada to be a bad thing. In fact, as this article shows, it is to be “lamented” that Whites in Canada are not breeding themselves out of existance fast enough. It sickens me that White sheeple in Canada have no sense of themselves as a people. They have let themselves be stripped of an identity- a people that are the inheritors of 3000 years of civilization. A civilization that was the summit of human achievement. Quebecers have more sense of themselves as a people. And as Anglophone Canada dissapears into a muticultural quagmire governed perpetualy by a Big Brother Liberal Party, they may decide that their only means of not following the same path is to leave the sinking ship. This will signal the end of Canada as a unified political entity. And also its existance as anything similar to what it’s historical identity was.
Posted by White Canadian at 7:08 PM on April 3
When a White mixes with a non-White, it is genocide, since any offspring will be pro-brown and anti-White. It represents a loss for us and a gain for our enemies.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 7:39 PM on April 3
Most THINKING White people still want to marry someone that looks like them and have kids that look like them! And guess what folks- - there’s nothing wrong with that! This article implies that if you prefer someone of the same race,that “barriers” need to be broken down! Why! The human race has,until recently,always stayed with their own for THOUSANDS of yrs. and I don’t recall hearing of any problems because of it. Acouple yrs. ago a White co-worker was showing pictures of her half black kids to us and of coarse all the Whites were trying to out do each other with complements of them [a sickening spectacle]. One White woman said “oh they look just like you!” I couldn’t take it anymore and said “they don’t look anything like her- - she’s White and they’re black!” The looks I got were priceless!!
Posted by Tom S at 8:18 PM on April 3
I don’t know about Canada, but I know I have seen a lot of interracial couples here in America.
Personally, I could never date outside my race.
Posted by Janet at 8:57 PM on April 3
Color Blind? This is not a natural trend, but very plainly a planned adgenda.
“We still have a way to go and a lot of work has to be done to break down those barriers,” she said.
Maybe the barriers are there for a good reason, like to preserve races that took thousands of years to evolve. Smashing everyone together in a few generations will not produce the utopia so many seem to imagine. Rather, it will produce a humanity more and more likely to be below average in intelligence and also less and less atractive as individuals.
Posted by at 9:06 PM on April 3
Someone needs to make an issue for public discussion as to why it is such an important thing to encourage inter-racial marriages. Make the proponents state their goals and then expose them as the racists they are. This is not happening due to any natural trend - it is being almost forced on whites through guilt, manipulation, etc., - the usual. But the time is coming that this open discussion has to take place as the pressure on whites to intermarriage becomes so obviously encouraged.
The question I would like to ask is if it is these peoples belief that the white race ought to be eliminated. If they say yes, then point out that this is genocide, racial cleansing as a policy. If they say no, then ask them why they are working so hard at ensuring that the white race - already only 10% of the world’s population is targeted so often as the ones who need to accept marriage with non-whites. These people need to be shown the mirror image of what they are saying and proferring as a future because it seems as if they don’t realize it.
Posted by Whiteplight at 9:24 PM on April 3
Wilson Fong, a 32-year-old Toronto police officer, was born in Hong Kong and is now married to a woman of Korean descent. Their families are accepting of the interracial marriage
Excuse me? A Chinese marrying a Korean is an interracial marriage? If this is how the statistics are being tabulated, the percentage of mixed-race couples involving one white partner is probably more like 99%. How many Asians marry blacks? If Chinese cannot accept a family member marrying a Korean, how would they feel about them marrying a Zambian?
Posted by Dave at 9:35 PM on April 3
Most interracial couple have the woman as White. We are presented with relentless images of White women with Black men and it is increasing all the time. The latest one is Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. True they are not a couple, but just the continuous presentation of them on CNN, MSNBC, AOL, in the newspapers, in magazines make it more and more appropriate for White girls to consider dating Black males. It used to be that it took a very rebellious, troublesome young girl to consider that, but it’s becoming more and more ‘fashionable’ for young White girls to do so. It is not sociey changing either — it is the media changing society. Of course it is almost impossible for the average White John Doe to figure this out, it takes an awakened White person to know. It’s most important for Whites to communicate their knowledge to other Whites - the unawakened ones.
Posted by awakened at 11:01 PM on April 3
I think the only reason the Canadian Football League exists is to provide marginal black American football players with naive white Canadian wives.
Posted by Jack Aubrey at 9:12 AM on April 4
“Statistics Canada began looking at mixed unions in 2001 as yet another indication of Canada’s diversity and the way in which different ethnicities are integrating, analyst Tina Chui said.”
Shouldn’t ‘Statistics Canada’ be mostly concerned about gathering statistics? Who knew?
Posted by at 9:43 AM on April 4
“Quebecers have more sense of themselves as a people. And as Anglophone Canada dissapears into a muticultural quagmire governed perpetualy by a Big Brother Liberal Party, they may decide that their only means of not following the same path is to leave the sinking ship. This will signal the end of Canada as a unified political entity. And also its existance as anything similar to what it’s historical identity was.” White Canadian
Might it not be better for Canada as well as the United States to breakup into smaller countires? Large multi-cultural empires don’t last in the long run. I think the great liberal dream of the elimination of racism through miscegenation seems pretty far advanced in Canada with the self-hating, guilt-ridden liberal whites. It’s a shame. Canada used to be a safe relatively homogeneous, prosperous and happy country.
Posted by Sardonicus at 11:30 AM on April 4
Since when are Chinese and Korean different races? I’m under the impression that they are the same race, but different nationalities. The descriptor “race” is so often misused that it has gotten ridiculous.
Posted by Bill Black at 12:59 PM on April 4
As the white partner in an interracial - rather than interspecies - marriage, I feel it time to speak up.
A Chinese-Korean marriage is “interracial” in a way that a German-French marriage is not, because different nationalities of Asians hate each other. This was explained to me by a Chinese friend in Australia while we were reading the singles ads in the Sydney Morning Herald. It was always “(Asian) female of nationality X seeks Asian male of nationality X or white male for long-term relationship.
I got my BS in chemistry in California, but I had to ask him what was up with that. “We hate each other,” was my friend’s reply.
He was serious. Of four children in his family, my friend and his eldest brother were not married, but both the second brother and his sister had married whites. That’s half a Chinese family that married whites. My friend’s sister married an Irish Celt “who would get sunburned sitting in a dark room” and his second brother married his Portugese housemaid.
Of east Asians living in the US, 1/3 of the women and 1/6 of the men marry whites. Among Japanese, this doubles, to 2/3 of the woman and 1/3 of the men; I suppose they’re the most like us.
I doubt a very high proportion of white women become involved with black men. The real angst must be among Asian men who see someone like me with a gal with black hair.
Second after them must be college-educated black women.
I expect our daughter to grow up to marry a white or Japanese man. Guess who’s not coming to dinner.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 1:59 PM on April 4
One of my young kids has “pull ups diapers”. And I just noticed on the cover of the wrapper a picture of a mulatto kid with her white mom on it. So yeah, the propaganda is everywhere. It’s especially evident in Macy’s catalogs and commercials. It’s also evident in a Lunesta commercial where there’s this beautiful white teacher and it shows her teaching a class and they constantly have shots of her with a black girl and the class is roughly 85% white. But that’s just the beginning, I could make pages worth of lists of these carefully organized images. There was recently an Easter commercial for clothes and you saw white girl and black boy. Lots, and lots of stuff like this.
Posted by RealityCheck at 2:05 PM on April 4
“The real angst must be among Asian men who see someone like me with a gal with black hair.” Michael Scott
I believe there is a lot of angst among East Asian men because a significant portion of their women in the United States and Canada marry white men. I’m not exactly sure why this happens. Most of the East Asian men I’ve known have been well mannered, intelligent and fine family men. I personally see nothing wrong with them as men.
I’m not so sure that some of Seung-Hui Cho’s (Virginia Tech shooter) insanity wasn’t due to sexual frustration, and the yearning to appear overly macho and aggressive to subconsciously appeal to college women.
I generally prefer to see whites marrying whites, but have no strong feelings against whites marrying Koreans, Chinese, or Japanese. I have to give some credit to these East Asian women because I almost never see one with a black man, and when I do, she was usually raised/brainwashed here in America. I think Asian women also value education very highly as part of the Confucian tradition of respecting learning; which is, alas, almost completely missing in today’s average college co-ed.
Moreover, I don’t recall having ever seen an East Asian man with a black women. It must be almost non existant.
Posted by Sardonicus at 3:22 PM on April 4
This rise in interracial relationships is likely far from being a “sign of the fact that those barriers, those social barriers between racial groups are being chipped away at a little bit.” Rather, it is probably the result of the unprecedented amount of racial/ethnic “diversity” within Canada itself. The amount of miscegenation has merely risen in proportion to the amount of people of different races there.
Extreme example to illustrate the point: In a society of 90 million white, 5 million Asian and 5 million black, 2 million interracial couples would be substantial. However, if the same society moved on to be 50 million white, 30 million Asian, 30 million Hispanic and 30 million black, then 2 million interracial couples would still mean that it’s a comparatively rare phenomenon.
Posted by at 3:43 PM on April 4
Awakened:
It has also become more fashionable for a number of young White men to do so as well.
Posted by Dating White Only at 4:03 PM on April 4
A Chinese-Korean marriage is “interracial” in a way that a German-French marriage is not, because different nationalities of Asians hate each other. -Michael Scott
I think I see what you are getting at, but expanding the definition that way renders statistics on interracial marriages almost meaningless.
Hatred alone might not even make such pairings into mixed marriages, arguably, since the hate is not toward any religious or racial or class characteristic of the individual person, but toward their nationality, which may have no other expression than language, a neutral element for most people. Under your standard, even Romeo and Juliet could have been in an interracial marriage. Just because an irrational hate has spread across whole nations, rather than just the Montagues and the Capulets, does not automatically make such marriages mixed, much less interracial.
Posted by Dave at 4:14 PM on April 4
“I expect our daughter to grow up to marry a white or Japanese man. Guess who’s not coming to dinner.”
I doubt your daughter would be interested in Asian men just based on the low statistics of Asian men partnered with White women. Why would you want her to?
Posted by at 6:23 PM on April 4
Sardonicus-
Since Canada, like most of the West, was hijacked by Marxists in the 1960’s Canada has been among the first and the worst Wester countries that have been openly hostile to their founding White populations.
If Quebec wants to preserve it’s historical European descended culture by seperating from Canada and forming it’s own nation, I would support and encourage their right to do so.
The Frankenstien creation that the internationalist/globalist elites have made of Canada make it hard for this White Western man to want to see it succeed in it’s present form.
Posted by White Canadian at 7:13 PM on April 4
Civilized Neighbor said:
“Since Sidney Poitier’s landmark smooch…”
…the number of landmark rapes of white women by guys with names like LaShawn, LaQuan, Vashon, Reggie, Daymion, Philander have skyrocketed.
By the way, Philander really does exist. I saw that name in crime story in the Minneapolis paper last week. The illiterate always come up with things that are unintentionally comical.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 6:17 PM on April 3
Pardon me, but isn’t “Philander” a real name? I believe that there is a Philander Smith college in Arkansas. Now who is “illiterate”?
Posted by Curious_Knee_Grow at 8:23 PM on April 4
Civilized Neighbor said:
“Since Sidney Poitier’s landmark smooch…”
…the number of landmark rapes of white women by guys with names like LaShawn, LaQuan, Vashon, Reggie, Daymion, Philander have skyrocketed.
By the way, Philander really does exist. I saw that name in crime story in the Minneapolis paper last week. The illiterate always come up with things that are unintentionally comical.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 6:17 PM on April 3
Pardon me, but isn’t “Philander” a real name? I believe that there is a Philander Smith college in Arkansas. Now who is “illiterate”?
Posted by Curious_Knee_Grow at 8:23 PM on April 4
Ah yes, an ‘historically black’ college. If it is a real name it is very archaic and nobody who knew the current meaning of the verb would name their child that. Gotta run. My kids, Fornicate and Coitus, are waiting for their bedtime stories.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 10:23 PM on April 4
Dating White Only:
I know. That’s increasing too, but the ones the White men are dating are very pretty mulatto’s who have a good deal of White Ancestry. There’s more and more of them in NYC. Also in NYC you will see many - and it’s increasing all the time - White men with Oriental women, and it’s the Oriental women who go after the White men.
-Awakened
Posted by Awakened at 11:32 PM on April 4
Goodness; I seem to have started several arguments.
“I doubt your daughter would be interested in Asian men…”
Does this mean she is white?
Posted by Michael C Scott at 1:30 AM on April 5
Awakened :
I would say, to some degree, you are correct. However, I have seen some White men dating women who are brown skinned as well. Although these women tend to have long hair, thin lips, pointed noses etc… They are Black women with White looking features. I guess you could say like the model Naomi Campbell.
I still say thumbs down to it! Light skin, dark skin, mulatto - they are still not White!!!
Posted by Dating White Only at 1:51 AM on April 5
I would say, to some degree, you are correct. However, I have seen some White men dating women who are brown skinned as well. Although these women tend to have long hair, thin lips, pointed noses etc… They are Black women with White looking features. I guess you could say like the model Naomi Campbell.
Naomi Campbell is attractive, but it is a fact she had a nose job and wears false hair. Her biggest issue is she is a lunatic, who has let her model status go completely to her head, and now acts like she is Queen of Sheba.
Posted by at 5:34 PM on April 5
“I believe there is a lot of angst among East Asian men because a significant portion of their women in the United States and Canada marry white men. I’m not exactly sure why this happens.”
I wonder a lot about this too. There are two popular theories: 1. E. Asian women are attracted to white men. 2. White men are attracted to E. Asian women.
I think the most satisfying answer is that a portion of white men are most attracted to E. Asian women and a portion of E. Asian women are most attracted to white men.
Both white women and E. Asian men don’t seem to romanticize each other much.
Posted by Taffy in California at 11:57 PM on April 5
If you live in the Southern U.S. the majority of interracial couples that you see are black man - white woman. There have been countless theories behind this, and I think most of those theories hold water to a certain extent. I myself think it is attention seeking on the white female’s part as most women in this country have been raised by the Liberal elite to believe that they are indeed the center of their own universe. This is not chauvinistic, it is true.
I always find it laughable though, that 99.9% of black men (probably even the gay ones) will willingly date a white girl…and actively pursue them on a regular basis. I see this all of the time in Atlanta. The main precursor for a black takeover of a white social scene (Buckhead, Lenox Mall, Little Five Points, etc…) is black men trolling for white women. It’s something that is in their blood. For them it is a genetic gain, both biologically and socially, as their children will be seen as “black” socially and will have an even greater chance of mating with another black in the future.
The advertising attempts are pathetic, as subconsciously humans equate inter-racial couples with negative feelings. These advertisers are losing money in their overriding pursuit of political correctness. Perhaps it serves them right…
Posted by WestSider at 3:21 PM on April 6
One afternoon last week, I was shopping at a local grocery store in the small town I reside in. As I was making my way down one of the aisles, I noticed an interracial couple and a white male child approaching.
The child was obviously the product of two White people, with no hint of mixed-race attributes.
The woman was White, dressed poorly, very thin, and appeared to be in her early 30s. She was somewhat attractive, but she looked like she had led a very rough life, perhaps much of it on drugs, and she didn’t appear to have taken very good care of herself.
The man was Black, dressed decently, and appeared to be well into his 50s. The boy was probably around 9 or 10 and looked lost and afraid. The man was speaking to the boy, in a fatherly way, and asking him if he’d like to take a nap when they got home — sort of in the tone of voice you’d speak to a 3-year old, not a 10-year old.
The kid looked embarrassed and defeated. I truly felt sorry for him. I cannot begin to imagine the hell his mother has riddled his young life with because of her poor decisions.
Posted by at 9:47 PM on April 6
“Since when are Chinese and Korean different races? I’m under the impression that they are the same race, but different nationalities.”
They certainly look different. While both groups are dark haired, the Koreans are fair-skinned, like their genetic cousins the Japanese.
There are plenty of Japanese & Koreans who would truly despise being categorized as related, but casual observation suggests it & scientific research seems to support it. Someone said that it is hatred which divides the groups. True, Hatfields & McCoys were divided by hate, but they were certainly genetically close whether they liked it or not.
Posted by W.D. at 11:55 AM on April 7
Any white female who breeds with a black or Hispanic needs to be removed from the gene pool as early as possible since she is working to the detriment of the white race…
Posted by at 1:29 PM on April 8