Interracial dating made legal

Interracial marriage is a form of marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities.

In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 1960 interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 USA states. It became legal throughout the United States in 1967, following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States under Chief JusticeEarl Warren in the case Loving v. Virginia, which ruled that race-based restrictions on marriages, such as the anti-miscegenation law in the state of Virginia, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.^[1][2]

Legality[edit]

Many jurisdictions have had regulations banning or restricting not just interracial marriage but also interracial sexual relations, including Germany during the Nazi period, South Africa under apartheid, and many states in the United States prior to a 1967 Supreme Court decision.

Complications[edit]

According to studies by Jenifer L. Bratter and Rosalind B. King made publicly available on the Education Resources Information Center, in the United-States, unions between White males and non-White females (and between Hispanics and non-Hispanic persons) have similar or lower risks of divorce than White-White marriages, unions between white male-black female last longer than white-white pairings or white-Asian pairings.^[3] Conversely, White female-Black male and White female-Asian male marriages are more prone to divorce than White-White pairings.^[3]

Family and society[edit]

Possible racism from outside sources is a common area of potential conflict.^{[citation needed]}

Management[edit]

The concept of racial literacy was developed by sociologist France Winddance Twine to describe the ways in which these families teach their children about race and its impact.^{[citation needed]}

Benefits[edit]

Positive interracial encounters[edit]

A benefit of interracial marriages is that it increases the opportunity for positive interracial encounters. Research has found a reduction in prejudice and discrimination towards members of an out-group (someone who has a different racial identity to you) when you have positive interracial encounters. For instance, a meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp (as cited in Latson)^[4] found intergroup friendship was associated with decreased intergroup prejudice. This can be explained by the "Contact Hypothesis" which is the idea that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce in-group out-group prejudice. This contact does not have to be direct, but it could also be vicarious. For instance, Wright et al.^[5] found Caucasians who report knowing another Caucasian with a cross-race friend had less negative attitudes about non-Caucasians regardless of direct level of contact.

They created a competition between two groups who thought the groups had been formed based on similarity. After an intergroup hostility had been established, participants observed a member of an in-group member (confederate) complete a task with an out-group person (also a confederate). The participant observed the confederate acting differently depending on the condition she observed. In the positive condition, the confederates hugged and greeted each other as pre-existing friends (positive condition). In the neutral condition, the confederates were polite to each other but not necessarily friendly. In the hostile condition, the confederates acted as if they were pre-existing enemies. Participants who were in the positive condition rated the out-group more positively on both negative characteristics such as "inflexible" and positive characteristics such as "intelligent." They concluded that merely observing a positive in-group member act positively towards an out-group member increases positive feelings towards the out-group^[6] This is a benefit of interracial marriages because they tend to involve the families and friends of the interracial partners coming together and forming relationships with one another. Consequently, this diversity within a family system can enhance open communication for individuals so that they have a deeper understanding of the views of different people.^{[citation needed]}

Mixed-race children[edit]

A potential outcome of interracial marriage is multiracial children. There are both benefits and challenges that come with being multiracial. Multiracial people are perceived as more attractive than their monoracial peers. For instance, Rhodes et al. (as cited in Lewis)^[7] found that people of mixed Asian and European backgrounds were rated as more attractive than Europeans, Asians and even random faces generated as morphs between these two groups. Another recent study by Elena Stepanova (as cited in Latson^[4] ) found that a group of black, Latino, white and Asian college students rated mixed-race faces more attractive.

Micheal B. Lewis^[7] suggests the reason multiracial people are perceived as more attractive is that genetic diversity makes people more attractive by virtue of their apparent greater "genetic fitness." In other words, others take the ethnically ambiguous faces as indicators of greater genetic diversity which is a cue for apparent healthiness. This is known as heterosis. A 2005 study conducted by Craig et al. (as cited in Latson)^[4] lends support to heterosis. The study focused on people who had inherited a different gene variant from each parent in a section of DNA playing a vital role in the regulation of the immune system. Heterozygous men –with two different versions of these genes –were more attractive to women than homozygous men (men with the same version of these genes). Although this study was not conducted on multiracial people, specifically, having parents of different races makes you more likely to be heterozygous. The upshot of this study is that heterosis is the reason multiracial people are perceived as more attractive. There is debate, however, over whether Heterozygotes are healthier or whether it is all an illusion. It has been shown heterozygotes are indeed more resistant to infectious diseases such as HIV. Other researchers, however, have failed to find a correlation between attractiveness and actual health, although this may be a result of advances in medicine in helping the less heterozygous overcome genetic susceptibility to illness.

However, a study conducted by Jennifer Patrice Sims^[8] found that generally mixed-race people were perceived as more attractive, but some racial mixes were not perceived as more attractive. This calls into question heterosis as an explanation for why mixed-race people are perceived as more attractive since, according to heterosis, all racial mixes should be perceived as more attractive than their monoracial counterparts. Moreover, attributing attractiveness to genetics alone ignores the role culture and socialisation has to play. Sims (as cited in Latson^[4]) argues the heterosis theory is overreaching and based on the false presumption of biologically distinct races. She asserts that attractiveness is a social construct and changes with time. For instance, the old ideal of a beautiful woman: blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes is different from contemporary ideals of beauty. For example, Rihanna is widely regarded as attractive, despite having very different features from the old ideal.

There are some challenges associated with being multiracial. For example, several multiracial people struggle with discerning who they are. A recent survey found a fifth of respondents feel pressure to claim just one race.^[4] A quarter felt confusion about what they are. The complexity that comes with how they choose to identify marks them out for a different sort of discrimination monoracial people endure. Sarah Gaither^[9] has found that multiracial people suffer from rejection from multiple racial groups. For instance, those with a black parent and a white parent are never black enough to identify with a predominantly black group at school; and not white enough to identify with a predominantly white group at school.

However, there does seem to be an advantage to a multiracial person's complex identity. For instance, multiracial people can switch between their racial identities and navigate themselves well in different social groups. Gaither's research found that multiracial people report higher self-esteem, increased social engagement and greater well-being. Moreover, a 2015 study^[4] found when primed to think about their identities beforehand, multiracial people demonstrated greater creative problem-solving skills.

Americas[edit]

United States[edit]

U.S States, by the date of repeal of anti-miscegenation laws:

  No laws passed

  Repealed before 1887

  Repealed between 1948 and 1967

  Overturned on 12 June 1967

Interracial marriage in the United States has been fully legal in all U.S. states since the 1967 Supreme Court decision that deemed anti-miscegenation state laws unconstitutional, with many states choosing to legalize interracial marriage at much earlier dates. Anti-miscegenation laws have played a large role in defining racial identity and enforcing the racial hierarchy. The United States has many ethnic and racial groups, and interracial marriage is fairly common among most of them. Interracial marriages increased from 2% of married couples in 1970 to 7% in 2005^[10][11] and 8.4% in 2010.^[12]

According to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data conducted in 2013, 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race. (This share does not take into account the "interethnic" marriages between Hispanics and non-Hispanics).^[13] And, most Americans say they approve of racial or ethnic intermarriage – not just in the abstract, but in their own families. About six-in-ten say it would be fine with them if a family member told them they were going to marry someone from any major race/ethnic groups other than their own.^[14]

Some racial groups are more likely to intermarry than others. Of the 3.6 million adults who got married in 2013, 58% of Native Americans, 28% of Asians, 19% of black Americans and 7% of whites have a spouse whose race was different from their own. The overall numbers mask significant gender gaps within some racial groups. Among black Americans, men are much more likely than women to marry someone of a different race. Fully a quarter of black men who got married in 2013 married someone who was not black. Only 12% of black women married outside of their race. For Asians, the gender pattern goes in the opposite direction: Asian women are much more likely than Asian men to marry someone of a different race. Among newlyweds in 2013, 37% of Asian women married someone who was not Asian, while 16% of Asian men married outside of their race. However, Asian women are more likely to marry Asian men than any other men of different ethnic background. Native Americans have the highest interracial marriage rate among all single-race groups. Women are slightly more likely to "marry out" than men in this group: 61% of Native American female newlyweds married outside their race, compared with 54% of Native American male newlyweds.^[13]

Although the anti-miscegenation laws have been revoked by the Warren Court in 1967, the social stigma related to black interracial marriages still exists in today's society although to a much lesser degree. Research by Tucker and Mitchell-Kerman from 1990 has shown that black Americans intermarry far less than any other non-White group^[15] and in 2010, only 17.1% of black Americans married interracially, a rate far lower than the rates for Hispanics and Asians.^[12] Black interracial marriages in particular engender problems associated with racist attitudes and perceived relational inappropriateness.^[16] There is also a sharp gender imbalance to Black interracial marriages: In 2008, 22% of all black male newlyweds married interracially while only 9% of black female newlyweds married outside their race, making them one of the least likely of any race or gender to marry outside their race and the least likely to get married at all.^[17]

From the mid 19th to 20th centuries, many black people and ethnic Mexicans intermarried with each other in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in South Texas (mostly in Cameron County and Hidalga County). In Cameron County, 38% of black people were interracially married (7/18 families) while in Hidalgo County the number was 72% (18/25 families). These two counties had the highest rates of interracial marriages involving at least one black spouse in the United States. The vast majority of these marriages involved black men marrying ethnic Mexican women or first generation Tejanas (Texas-born women of Mexican descent). Since ethnic Mexicans were considered white by Texas officials and the U.S. government, such marriages were a violation of the state's anti-miscegenation laws. Yet, there is no evidence that anyone in South Texas was prosecuted for violating this law. The rates of this interracial marriage dynamic can be traced back to when black men moved into the Lower Rio Grande Valley after the Civil War ended. They married into ethnic Mexican families and joined other black people who found sanctuary on the U.S./Mexico border.^[18]

The Chinese that migrated were almost entirely of Cantonese origin. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese men in the U.S, mostly of Cantonese origin from Taishan migrated to the United States. Anti-miscegenation laws in many states prohibited Chinese men from marrying white women.^[19] After the Emancipation Proclamation, many intermarriages in some states were not recorded and historically, Chinese American men married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese Americans immigrated to the Southern states, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. For example, in 1880, the tenth US Census of Louisiana alone counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese to be with black and 43% to be with white women.^[20] Between 20 and 30 percent of the Chinese who lived in Mississippi married black women before 1940.^[21] In a genetic study of 199 samples from African American males found one belong to haplogroup O2a ( or 0.5% )^[22] It was discovered by historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr in the African American Lives documentary miniseries that NASA astronaut Mae Jemison has a significant (above 10%) genetic East Asian admixture. Gates speculated that the intermarriage/relations between migrant Chinese workers during the 19th century and black, or African-American slaves or ex-slaves may have contributed to her ethnic genetic make-up. In the mid 1850s, 70 to 150 Chinese were living in New York City and 11 of them married Irish women. In 1906 the New York Times (6 August) reported that 300 white women (Irish American) were married to Chinese men in New York, with many more cohabited. In 1900, based on Liang research, of the 120,000 men in more than 20 Chinese communities in the United States, he estimated that one out of every twenty Chinese men (Cantonese) was married to white women.^[23] In the 1960s census showed 3500 Chinese men married to white women and 2900 Chinese women married to white men. It also showed 300 Chinese men married to Black women and vice versa 100.^[24]

Hawaii[edit]

The majority of the Hawaiian Chinese were Cantonese migrants from Guangdong with minority of Hakka descent also from Guangdong. If all people with Chinese ancestry in Hawaii (including the Chinese-Hawaiians) are included, they form about 1/3 of Hawaii's entire population. Many thousands of them married women of Hawaiian, Hawaiian/European and European origin. A large percentage of the Chinese men married Hawaiian and Hawaiian/European women, while a minority married white women in Hawaii who were of Portuguese descent. The 12,592 Asiatic-Hawaiians enumerated in 1930 were the result of Chinese men intermarrying with Hawaiian and part Hawaiian/Europeans. Most Asiatic-Hawaiian men also married Hawaiians and European women (and vice versa). On the census, some Chinese with little "native blood" would be classified as Chinese – not as Asiatic-Hawaiians – due to "dilution of native blood". Intermarriage started to decline in the 1920s.^[25]

Portuguese and other Caucasian women married Chinese men.^[26][27] The unions between Chinese men and Portuguese women resulted in children of mixed Chinese Portuguese parentage, called Chinese-Portuguese. For two years to 30 June 1933, 38 of these children who were born were classified as pure Chinese because their fathers were Chinese.^[28] A large amount of mingling took place between Chinese and Portuguese, Chinese men married Portuguese, Spanish, Hawaiian, Caucasian-Hawaiian, etc.^{[29][30][31][32]} Only one Chinese man was recorded marrying an American woman.^[33][34] Chinese men in Hawaii also married Puerto Rican, Italian, Japanese, Greek, and half-white women.^[35][36]

Canada[edit]

In Canada, 2011, 4.6% of all civil unions are interracial ones, an 18% increase from 2006 (3.9%), and a 77% increase from 1991 (2.6%).^[37]Vancouver reported the highest rate of interracial unions, at 9.6%, and Toronto in second place at 8.2%. Major census metropolitan areas had higher frequencies of mixed unions (6.0%) compared to areas that were not classified as such (1.0%). Younger people were more likely to be in a mixed union; the highest proportion of couples in mixed unions was among persons aged 25 to 34 (7.7%), 35 to 44 (6.8%), 15 to 24 (6.1%), 45 to 54 (4.1%), and 55 and over (2.7%).^[37]

The 2006 study had an interesting find, that people born in Canada were more likely to marry someone of another race as opposed to those who immigrated there;^[38] only 12% of first generation immigrant visible minorities were in a mixed union, this figure is higher for second generation immigrants (51%) and three or more generation immigrants (69%). There are a few examples of this:

1. 63% of Canadian-born Blacks (who were in couples) were in mixed unions, while the numbers for Blacks born in the Caribbean and Bermuda (17%), and Africa (13%) were much lower percentages.
2. For Chinese people born in Canada, 54% (who were in couples) were with someone non-Chinese (it's not noted if this figure refers to anyone who is not East Asian (race), or just not Chinese (nationality)), compared to only 3% of those born in China who immigrated to Canada.
3. 33% of South Asian Canadians who were born in Canada, were in a mixed union, compared to only 3% of those who were born in South Asia.

One theory for this may include that those who immigrate as adults, may have already found a partner before immigrating to Canada.^[38]

Certain visible minority groups had higher rates of being in mixed unions;

There are no statistics that show data for Whites or Aboriginals.

The 2006 study also stated that same-sex couples are about 2.5 times more likely to be in an interracial marriage as opposed to opposite-sex couples, 9.8% of same-sex marriages are interracial.^[38] There were some theories as to why; same-sex marriage in Canada become legal in 2005, whereas opposite sex marriage was always legal, and it also mentions that same-sex couples are more likely to be in common-law marriages, and common-law marriages had a higher frequency of mixed unions.

One study done by Reg Bibby found that 92% of Canadians are accepting of interracial marriages.^[39]

Latin America[edit]

In Latin America, most of the population are descended from Amerindians, Europeans and Africans. They formed the Mestizo and Mulatto populations that populate the countries in Latin America. Intermarriage and inter-relations occurred on a larger scale than most places in the world. In some countries, Asian immigrants have also intermarried among the groups. About 300,000 Cantonese coolies and migrants(almost all males) from the 19th-20th century and migrants were shipped to Latin America, many had either intermarried or formed sexual relationships with females of different racial origin such as African, Mullato, European, Meztiza etc. An estimated 100,000 Chinese people that came to Peru, only 15 were women, and in Cuba, the census for 1872 aloned recorded only 32 Chinese women as compared to 58,368 Chinese men.^[40] Between a total roughly 140,000 Chinese males went to Cuba between 1847 and 1874, with around another 100,000 went to Peru between 1849 and 1874.^[41]

Around 20,000 mostly Cantonese and some Hakka coolies migrated to Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad. Many of them intermarried with Black women and East Indian women. Unlike in Trinidad Tobago and Guyana who were predominantly Cantonese men who intermarried with Black women and Indian women. In Guyana, the Chinese were mostly Cantonese men and who intermarried with the local women. Because almost all of the Chinese indentured immigrants were men, they tended to intermarry with both East Indians and Africans, and thus the Chinese of Guyana did not remain as physically distinct as other groups. Marriage among different Chinese language groups is rare; it is so rare that the any cases of it can be individually named. While intermarriage between Hakka Chinese and Indians hardly occur.^[42]

Guyana[edit]

Many Portuguese men intermarried Creole women, their children easily merged with the other Creole population. Many Chinese men also intermarried or established sexual relationships with Creole women.^[43] At the beginning, Interracial marriage with Chinese men are and not common at first. In 1870's and was viewed more negatively than Portuguese men marrying Creole women, so that the Chinese population remained mostly racially pure. Chinese men interracial marriages became increasily more common. The significant changes on how Creole women began to view Chinese men as desirable partners led to a higher increase of intermarriage. Due to the scarcity of Chinese women, Kirke in 1897 had obersed that Chinese males in Guyana like to either mate or mixing with Creole women, and has the prettiest colourered women as concubines. As a resulf of continue intermixing 80% of the Chinese-Guyana look scarely Chinese with only few characteristics facial features of Chinese.^[44]

In Guyana, the prospect of sexual relations with Indian women was at first unappealing to the mostly male Chinese migrants like in Mauritius although there was a lack of Chinese women, but eventually their attitude changed and Indian women and Chinese men established sexual relationships with each other.^[45] Chinese men had to marry women of other ethnicities due to the lack of Chinese women migrating to British Guiana.^[46]Creole sexual relationships and marriages with Chinese and Indians was rare,^[47] however, more common was Indian women and Chinese men establishing sexual relations with each other and some Chinese men took their Indian wives back with them to China.^[48] In Guyana, while marriages between Indian women and black African men is socially shameful to Indians, Chinese-Indian marriages are considered acceptable as reported by Joseph Nevadomsky in 1983.^[49] "Chiney-dougla" is the Indian Guyanese term for mixed Chinese-Indian children.^[50] Some Indian women in Guiana had multiple partners due to the greater number of men than woman, an account of the era told by women in British Guiana is of a single Chinese man who was allowed to temporarily borrow a Hindu Indian woman by her Indian husband who was his friend, so the Chinese man could sire a child with her, after a son was born to her the Chinese man kept the boy while she was returned to her Indian husband, the boy was named William Adrian Lee.^[51][52] An Indian woman named Mary See married a Chinese man surnamed Wu in Goedverwagting and founded their own family after he learned how to process sugar cane.^[53]

In British Guiana, the Chinese did not maintain their distinctive physical features due to the high rate of Chinese men marrying people other ethnicities like Indian women.^[54][55][56] The severe imbalance with Indian men outnumbering Indian women led some women to take advantage of the situation to squeeze favors from men and leave their partners for other men,^[57] one infamous example was a pretty, light skinned, Christian Indian woman named Mary Ilandun with ancestral origins from Madras, born in 1846, who had sex with Indian, black, and Chinese men as she married them in succession and ran off with their money to her next paramour, doing this from 1868 to 1884.^[58] Indian men used force to bring Indian women back in line from this kind of behavior.^[59] The most severe lack of women in all the peoples of British Guiana was with the Chinese and this led Europeans to believe that Chinese did not engage in wife murders while wife murders was something innate to Indian men, and unlike Indian coolie women, Chinese women were viewed as chaste.^[60] Chinese women were not indentured and since they did not need to work, they avoided prospective men seeking relationships, while the character of Indian women was disparaged as immoral and their alleged sexual looseness was blamed for their deaths in the "wife murders" by Indian men.^[61] The sex ratio of Indian men to Indian women was 100:63 while the sex ratio of Chinese men to Chinese women was 100:43 in British Guiana in 1891.^[62]

Over time, although there were more Creole marriages with Chinese, there was also small growth of Indian marriages with Chinese and it was reported that "It is not an uncommon thing to find a cooly woman living with a Chinaman as his wife, and in one or two instances the woman has accompanied her reputed husband to China." by Dr. Comins in 1891, with six Indian women marrying Chinese men in just the year of 1892 alone, as reported by The Immigration Report for 1892.^[63][64]

Trinidad[edit]

In Trinidad some Chinese men had sexual relations Indian coolie women, siring children with them, and it was reported that "A few children are to be met with born of Madras and Creole parents and some also of Madras and Chinese parents – the Madrasee being the mother", by the missionary John Morton in 1876, Morton noted that it seemed strange since there were more Indian coolie men than Indian coolie women that Indian coolie women would marry Chinese men, but claimed it was most likely because the Chinese could provide amenities to the women since the Chinese owned shops and they were enticed by these.^{[65][66][67][68][69]} Indian women were married by indentured Chinese men in Trinidad.^[70] Few Chinese women migrated to Trinidad while the majority of Chinese migrants were men.^[71] The migration of Chinese to Trinidad resulted in intermarriage between them and others.^[72] Chinese in Trinidad became relatively open to having marital relations with other races and Indian women began having families with Chinese in the 1890s.^[73]

The situation in Trinidad and British Guiana with Indian women being fewer than Indian men led to Indian women using the situation to their advantage by leaving their partners for other men, leading to a high incidence of "wife murders" by Indian men on their wives, and Indian women and culture were branded as "immoral" by European observers, an Indian man named Mohammad Orfy petitioned as a representative of "destitute Indian men of Trinidad", to the colonial authorities, complaining of Indian women's behavior and claiming that it was "a perforating plague...the high percentage of immoral lives led by the female section of our community...to satisfy the greed and lust of the male section of quite a different race to theirs...[Indian women] are enticed, seduced and frightened into becoming concubines, and paramours...[Indian women] have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the value of being in virginhood...most shameless and a perfect menace to the Indian gentry." with him naming specific peoples, claiming that Indian women were having sex with Chinese men, Americans, Africans, and Europeans,^{[74][75][76][77][78]} saying "Africans, Americans and Chinese in goodly numbers are enticing the females of India, who are more or less subtle to lustful traps augured through some fear of punishment being meted out if not readily submissive as requested."^[79][80][81]

The situation on Trinidad enabled unprecedented autonomy in the sexual activities of Indian women and freedom.^[82] The 1916 "Peition of Indentured Labourers in Trinidad" complained that: "Is it permissible for a male member of the Christian faith to keep a Hindoo or Muslim female as his paramour or concubine? Is this not an act of sacrilege and a disgraceful scandal according to the Christian faith to entice and encourage Indian females to lead immoral lives?"^[82] Indian men used violence against Indian women in response to Indian women engaging in sexual relations with multiple men due to the shortage of them in Trinidad.^[83] On plantations white European managers took advantage of and use indentured Indian woman for sex,^[84] in addition, English, Portuguese, and Chinese men were also in sexual relationships with Indian women as noted by Attorney General W.F. Haynes Smith, while Creole women were abhorred or ignored by Indian men.^[85][86] Approval of interracial marriage has slowly increased in Trinidad and Tobago and one Chinese man reported that his Indian wife did not encounter any rejection from his parents when asked in a survey.^[87] In Trinidad Europeans and Chinese are seen as acceptable marriage partners by Indians while marrying black men would lead to rejection of their daughters by Indian families.^[88]

In British Guiana and Trinidad, white overseers and managers would take advantage of Indian coolie women and use them in sexual relationships, the Indian women were then blamed for these incidents and viewed as allegedly "loose" and promiscuous by colonial officials, and Indian women were subjected to a high rate of "wife murders" by Indian men, the Indian women were also blamed for this due to their "inconstancy" due to alleged low "sexual morality".^[89] In one incident in Trinidad, seven Indian women were impregnated at the same time by an estate manager in 1854.^[90][91] The managers sexual relations with Indian women caused riots, at the most significant one, at the hands of the police, 59 Indians were wounded and 5 Indians were killed, in Non Pareil in 1896, due to an Indian woman cohabiting with Gerad Van Nooten, the acting manager.^{[92][93]:29[94]:37[95]:52} The low ratio of Indian women compared to Indian men, along with the factor of Portuguese, white overseers and managers, and Chinese men having sexual relations with Indian women, aggravated the problem of rivalry for Indian women between Indian men, and drove up the value of Indian women.^[96] The incidents of overseers and managers taking sexual advantage of the women laborers led to Indian laborers causing stoppages and protests.^[97] In British Guiana the overseers and managers sexual abuse of Indian women caused Indian workers to embark on a "struggle" from 1869–1872.^[98] Conflicts due to women led to attacks against drivers and overseers.^[99] The resentment of the workers was aggravated by the use of women on estates for sexual relations.^[100]

The deficit in Indian women compared to men was caused by the recruitment quota ratio of 100 men to 40 women, most of the women were young and single,^[94]:16 and the shortage of Indian women for Indian men was aggravated when Indian women were taken by Africans and European overseers, leading to high amounts of wife murders against Indian women by Indian men and a decrease in morals.^[93]:15 The appropriation of Indian women by Europeans and Africans added up to the resentment which contributed to violence against Indian women by Indian men.^[94]:22–23 Indian women on plantations took part in the struggle against Africans and European authorities who were sexually using them.^{[94]:26[95]:18} Indian nationalists ashamed of the sexual reputation of Indian coolie women often attacked the coolie trade for that reason instead of other reasons such as bad working conditions.^[101] Overseers and planters on the plantations and sailors and doctors on board the ships transporting Indian coolie women would try to obtain sex from Indian women.^[102] The Indian women had a sexual bargaining chip since they could frequently change lovers due to the fact that there were less Indian women than men, The Daily Chronicle described Indian coolie women as "pretty and youthful", laborers had to be moved around plantations by managers to prevent men from killing their adulterous wives, and the aura surrounding the sexuality and perils of Indian coolie women was enhanced by the widespread worship of the goddess Kali by them.^[103][104] Riots and murders were blamed on the sexual liaisons between white overseers, managers and Indian coolie women in addition to their constant changing of sexual partners and the sexuality of coolie women were viewed shamefully as a deviation of the expected behavior of Indian women.^[105] The Guyanese-Indian journalist Gaiutra Bahadur wrote about the experiences of Indian coolie women.^[106][107] Sex was utilized as a potent instrument by Indian coolie women such as when they obtained favors from overseers by having sex with them,^[108] and the women could either have been "imperiled" or "empowered" when forming sexual relations with overseers.^[109] The Indian coolie women both had sexual advantages due to being less in number and suffered from sexual exploitation, in total, around 250,000 Indian women migrated as coolies.^[110]

Gaiutra Bahadur said in an interview that some Guyanese from her community were angered by her book and writing on the sexual experiences of the Indian coolie woman, with one saying "Who is that woman who’s been writing that all of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were prostitutes?", and another saying "One must be careful." to her, viewing her book as an attack on the honor and morals of Indian women, Bahadur maintained that she was trying to bring back the "dignity" of the women and that Indian women's honor was attacked in the same way by colonial officials who blamed the women themselves for their sexual liaisons rather than flaws in the plantation and indenture systems.^[111]

A stereotype of an uncontrollable sexual libido was attributed to Indian women in the Caribbean and they were described as having "white liver" because of this.^{[101][112][113]} Sexual abuse, horrible living standards, and tough work were all things Indian coolie women had to contend with.^[114][115] In seeking potential mates the Indian coolie women has some amount of free choice due to their scarce numbers, some of them were able to end their indenture when married by white overseers.^[116] There were cases of sexual abuse of Indian women on the ships and one man prostituted his 8-year-old daughter,^[117] and in another case a British surgeon married a young widow,^[118] the women obtained an advantage in sexual relations from being less numerous than men but this led to a large amount of killings called "wife murders" of the women by men they rejected.^[119] Postcards were made of Indian coolie women and girls bedecked in jewelry made of gold and silver such as bangles and nose rings which seemed to be aiming to show them as wealthy and pretty.^{[120][121][122]} Indian coolie women wore their wealth in the form of jewellery,^{[123][124][125][126]} like bangles and nose rings.^{[127][128][129][130][131][132]} In Port of Spain in Trinidad, Chinese coolies were described as going about almost naked while Indian coolie women wore "scanty drapery" and had "arms and ankles covered with bangles".^[133] One Indian woman on the way to Guiana had to be given jewelry like bangles made of silver and nose rings made of gold to by her husband in order to make her not leave him.^[134]

Peru[edit]

Interracial marriages between Cantonese-Chinese males and Peruvian females was quite large resulting in large number of mixed children's and people with some Chinese ancestry in Peru. There is no prevailing racist attitude against intermarriage between the Chinese and non-Chinese in Peru, so the number of interracial marriages is quite large. According to one source, the number of mix raced children born was 180,000. Half of that number was in Lima alone, with the ratio between Chinese mestizo and the full-blooded Chinese at 90,000 to 15,000 (6:1).^[135] There is estimated up to 2.5 million (up to 8% of Peru) citizens are of mixed Chinese-Peruvian ancestry known as 'Tusans'.^[136] One estimates puts 4.2 million (15%) of the Peruvians having some Chinese ancestry.^[137]

Many Peruvian women of different origins married to these Chinese male migrants. Most of the women that married Chinese are Native Indians (including Meztiza) and Black. Some lowers class white women also married Chinese men but in a lower ratio.^{[138][139][140][141][142][143]} Chinese had contact with Peruvian women in cities, there they formed relationships and sired mixed babies, these women originated from Andean and coastal areas and did not originally come from the cities, in the haciendas on the coast in rural areas, native young women of indígenas (native) and serranas (mountain) origin from the Andes mountains would come down to work, these Andean native women were favored as marital partners by Chinese men over Africans, with matchmakers arranging for communal marriages of Chinese men to indígenas and serranas young women.^[144] There was a racist reaction by Peruvians to the marriages of Peruvian women and Chinese men.^[145] When native Peruvian women (cholas et natives, Indias, indígenas) and Chinese men had mixed children, the children were called injerto and once these injertos emerged, Chinese men then sought out girls of injertas origins as marriage partners, children born to black mothers were not called injertos.^[146] Low class Peurvians established sexual unions or marriages with the Chinese men and some black and Indian women "bred" with the Chinese according to Alfredo Sachettí, who claimed the mixing was causing the Chinese to suffer from "progressive degeneration", in Casa Grande highland Indian women and Chinese men participated in communal "mass marriages" with each other, arranged when highland women were brought by a Chinese matchmaker after receiving a down payment.^[147][148]

It was reported by the New York Times that Peruvian black and Indian (Native) women married Chinese men to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of the men since they dominated and "subjugated" the Chinese men despite the fact that the labor contract was annulled by the marriage, reversing the roles in marriage with the Peruvian woman holding marital power, ruling the family and making the Chinese men slavish, docile, "servile", "submissive" and "feminine" and commanding them around, reporting that "Now and then...he [the Chinese man] becomes enamored of the charms of some sombre-hued chola (Native Indian and mestiza woman) or samba (mixed black woman), and is converted and joins the Church, so that may enter the bonds of wedlock with the dusky señorita."^[149] Chinese men were sought out as husbands and considered a "catch" by the "dusky damsels" (Peruvian women) because they were viewed as a "model husband, hard-working, affectionate, faithful and obedient" and "handy to have in the house", the Peruvian women became the "better half" instead of the "weaker vessel" and would command their Chinese husbands "around in fine style" instead of treating them equally, while the labor contract of the Chinese coolie would be nullified by the marriage, the Peruvian wife viewed the nullification merely as the previous "master" handing over authority over the Chinese man to her as she became his "mistress", keeping him in "servitude" to her, speedily ending any complaints and suppositions by the Chinese men that they would have any power in the marriage.^[150]

Cuba[edit]

120,000 Cantonese coolies (all males) entered Cuba under contract for 80 years, most did not marry, but Hung Hui (1975) cites there was frequent sexual activity between black women and Cantonese coolies. According to Osberg (1965) the free Chinese conducted the practice of buying slave women and freeing them expressly for marriage. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese men (Cantonese) engaged in sexual activity with white Cuban women and black Cuban women, and from such relations many children were born.^[151] In the 1920s, an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male, and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black, and mulato populations.^{[152][153][154]}

In the study of Genetic origin, admixture, and asymmetry in maternal and paternal human lineages in Cuba. Thirty-five Y-chromosome SNPs were typed in the 132 male individuals of the Cuban sample. The study does not include any people with some Chinese ancestry. All the samples were White Cubans and Black Cubans. 2 out of 132 male sample belong to East Asian Haplogroup O2 which is found in significant frequencies among Cantonese people is found in 1.5% of Cuban population.^[155]

Mexico[edit]

The Chinese who migrated to Mexico in the 19th to 20th centuries were almost entirely Chinese men. Males made up the majority of the original Chinese community in Mexico and they married Mexican women.^[156] They married Mexican women, which led to anti-Chinese prejudice; many were expelled, while those who were allowed to stay intermarried with the Mexican population. The Mexicali officials estimate was that slightly more than 2,000 are full-blooded Chinese and about 8,000 are mixed-blood Chinese-Mexicans. Other estimates claimed 50,000 residents more than thought who are of Chinese descent. 10,000 full-blooded Chinese, down from 35,000 in the 1920s.^[157] Marriage of these people to full-blooded Mexicans is diluting the community further.^[157] Chinese Mexicans in Mexicali consider themselves equally "cachanilla", a term used for locals, as any other resident of the city, even if they speak Cantonese in addition to Spanish. The sentiment against Chinese men was due to (and almost all Chinese immigrants in Mexico were men) stealing employment and Mexican women from Mexican men who had gone off to fight in the Revolution or in World War I.^[158]

Costa Rica[edit]

The Chinese originated from the Cantonese male migrants. Pure Chinese make up only 1% of the Costa Rican population, but according to Jacqueline M. Newman, as close to 10% of the people in Costa Rica are Chinese, if we count the people who are Chinese, married to a Chinese person, or of mixed Chinese descent.^[159] Most Chinese immigrants since then have been Cantonese, but in the last decades of the 20th century, a number of immigrants have also come from Taiwan. Many men came alone to work and married Costa Rican women and speak Cantonese. However the majority of the descendants of the first Chinese immigrants no longer speak Cantonese and feel themselves to be Costa Ricans.^[160] They married Tican women (a blend of Europeans, Caztizos, Mestizos, Indian, and Black).^[161] A Tican is also a White person with a small portion of non-white blood like Caztizos. The census of 1989 shows about 98% of Costa Ricans were either white, Castizos or Mestizos, with 80% being white or Caztizos.

Venezuela[edit]

Marriages between European, Mestizo, Amerindians, and Africans was not uncommon in the past. Several thousand Chinese from Enping resided in the country. The Chinese were still largely viewed as a foreign population who married foreign brides but seldom integrated into Venezuelan society.^[162]

Jamaica[edit]

When black and Indian women had children with Chinese men the children were called chaina raial in Jamaican English.^[163] The Chinese community in Jamaica was able to consolidate because an openness to marrying Indian women was present in the Chinese since Chinese women were in short supply.^[164] Women sharing was less common among Indians in Jamaica according to Verene A. Shepherd.^[165] The small number of Indian women were fought over between Indian men and led to a rise in the amount of wife murders by Indian men.^[166] Indian women made up 11 percent of the annual amount of Indian indentured migrants from 1845–1847 in Jamaica.^[167] Thousands of Chinese men (mostly Hakka) and Indian men married local Jamaican women. The study "Y-chromosomal diversity in Haiti and Jamaica: Contrasting levels of sex-biased gene flow" shows the paternal Chinese haplogroup O-M175 at a frequency of 3.8% in local Jamaicans ( non-Chinese Jamaicans) including the Indian H-M69 (0.6%) and L-M20 (0.6%) in local Jamaicans.^[168] Among the country's most notable Afro-Asians are reggae singers Sean Paul, Tami Chynn and Diana King.

Africa and Middle East[edit]

Middle East and North Africa[edit]

Interracial marriage^{[failed verification]} was common in the Arab world during the Arab slave trade, which lasted throughout the Middle Ages and early modern period.^[169] Most of these enslaved peoples came from places such as Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Zanj) the North Caucasus,^[170]Central Asia (mainly Tatars), and Western, Southern and Southeastern Europe (mainly Slavs from Serbia – Saqaliba, Spain, France, Italy).^{[171][172][173]} The Barbary pirates from North Africa captured and enslaved 1.25 million slaves from Western Europe and North America between the 16th and 19th centuries.^[174][175] Outside the Arab world, it was also common for Arab conquerors, traders and explorers to intermarry with local females in the lands they conquered or traded with, in various different parts of Africa, Asia (see Asia section) and Europe (see Europe section).

From AD 839, VikingVarangian mercenaries who were in the service of the Byzantine Empire, notably Harald Sigurdsson, campaigned in North Africa, Jerusalem and other places in the Middle East during the Byzantine-Arab Wars. They interbred with the local population as spoils of warfare or through eventual settling with many Scandinavian Viking men taking Arab or Anatolian women as wives. There is archaeological evidence the Vikings had established contact with the city of Baghdad, at the time the center of the Islamic Empire, and connected with the populace there.^[176] Regularly plying the Volga with their trade goods (furs, tusks, seal fat, seal boats and notably female slaves; the one period in the history of the slave-trade when females were priced higher than males), the Vikings were active in the Arab slave trade at the time.^[177] These slaves, most often Europeans that were captured from the coasts of Europe or during war periods,^[178] and sold to Arabic traders in Al-Andalus and the Emirate of Sicily.

Intermarriage was accepted in Arab society, though only if the husband was Muslim. It was a fairly common theme in medieval Arabic literature and Persian literature. For example, the Persian poet Nizami, who married his Central Asian Kipchak slave girl, wrote The Seven Beauties (1196). Its frame story involves a Persian prince marrying seven foreign princesses, who are Byzantine, Chinese, Indian, Khwarezmian, Maghrebian, Slavic and Tartar. Hadith Bayad wa Riyad, a 12th-century Arabic tale from Al-Andalus, was a love story involving an Iberian girl and a Damascene man. The Arabian Nights tale of "The Ebony Horse" involves the Prince of Persia, Qamar al-Aqmar, rescuing his lover, the Princess of Sana'a, from the Byzantine Emperor who also wishes to marry her.^[179]

At times, some marriages would have a major impact on the politics of the region. The most notable example was the marriage of As-Salih Ayyub, the Sultan of the KurdishAyyubid dynasty, to Shajar al-Durr, a slave of Turkic origin from Central Asia. Following her husband's death, she became the Sultana of Egypt and the first Mamluk ruler. Her reign marked the end of the Ayyubid dynasty and the beginning of the Mameluk era, when a series of former Mamluk slaves would rule over Egypt and occasionally other neighbouring regions.^[180][181]