Big Rise in Interracial Marriage Since “I Have a Dream” Speech
In 2017, the Pew Research Center reported that Americans are five times more likely to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity than in 1967.
David M. Simon —
Sharp increases in interracial marriage and, concomitantly, support for that institution in recent decades show that race relations in the United States have made almost unfathomable progress since Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech.
In that speech, Dr. King eloquently stated America’s goals concerning race. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
America has not fully achieved these goals, but denying America’s amazing progress is equally wrong. That’s especially true of interracial marriage, which is the most intimate and sensitive aspect of race relations. There are, in fact, no better measures of how whites and blacks feel about each other than the rate of interracial marriage and attitudes toward these unions.
In 2017, the Pew Research Center reported that Americans are five times more likely to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity than in 1967. In 2015, 17 percent, or roughly one in six American newlyweds, married someone of a different race or ethnicity. In 1967, the rate was only 3 percent. At least as significantly, the rate of opposition by non-blacks to the possibility of a close relative marrying someone black has decreased from 63 percent in 1990 to only 14 percent in 2016. That amounts to a decline of 78 percent.
Pew’s findings are consistent with earlier reports and trends. In 2013, Pew reported that 12 percent of American newlyweds married someone of a different race. That was a record high back then. In the more specific category of marriages between blacks and whites, a 2007 study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer Jr. reported that black men married white women at a rate almost six times higher in 2000 than in 1970.
In 2013, Gallup reported that among whites, the rate of approval of black-white marriage was 84 percent, almost five times higher than the 17 percent rate in 1969. The Gallup data show consistently increasing rates of approval of black-white marriage over the decades: 17 percent in 1969; 25 percent in 1973; 33 percent in 1979; 38 percent in 1983; 44 percent in 1991; 45 percent in 1995; 61 percent in 1997; 60 percent in 2003; 72 percent in 2004; 75 percent in 2007; 83 percent in 2011; and 84 percent in 2013.
These developments would not have been possible without dramatic improvement in race relations and acceptance of blacks as full citizens in American society. As full citizens, blacks now participate in all aspects and at all levels of American society: the Presidency; the Supreme Court; the Federal Reserve Board; and all positions in federal, state, and local government, the courts, the military, law enforcement, business, sports, the arts and sciences, and entertainment.
As such, the education and wage gaps between blacks and whites have narrowed. Another Pew report shows that in 1964, blacks were about 53 percent as likely as whites to have high school diplomas. By 2015, they were about 95 percent as likely. In 1964, blacks were about 40 percent as likely as whites to have college degrees. By 2015, they were about 64 percent as likely. A 2016 study by University of Louisiana at Monroe scholars Carl Kogut, Donna Luse, and Larry Short similarly reports that the gap between white and black employees’ wages “has narrowed substantially from about 50 percent in the late 1960s to between 17 and 23 percent.”
America has made stunning progress, but we are not yet done. Much progress still needs to be made. Doing that requires that we learn from America’s successes and celebrate its progress. It is critical that we recognize America’s massive steps forward regarding race since Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. To do otherwise will prevent America from giving full meaning to its founding creed that all people are created equal.
Summary: Trade tends to reduce prejudice by fostering cooperation, competition, and repeated interaction across groups. Economic theory and empirical research show that economic freedom and globalization are consistently associated with lower levels of nationalism, ethnocentrism, and discrimination. By enabling mutually beneficial exchange and expanding social contact, markets help cultivate tolerance and weaken “us versus them” thinking.
In earlier essays, I argued that trade makes us richer, more trusting, more honest, and more fair. Yet over the past decade or so, we have witnessed a growing populist backlash against globalization and international trade. Many critics portray international trade as an example of “foreign intrusions on national sovereignty.” At first glance, the backlash might seem to suggest that trade with outsiders breeds resentment, cultural tension, and ultimately prejudice. In this essay, however, I argue that trade mitigates discrimination and prejudice, paving the way for greater tolerance.
In Capitalism and Freedom, the late Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman dedicated a chapter to the market’s relation to discrimination. Drawing on Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary Becker’s groundbreaking work, Friedman wrote, “The preserves of discrimination in any society are the areas that are most monopolistic in character, whereas discrimination against groups of particular color or religion is least in those areas where there is the greatest freedom of competition.” He continued:
The man who objects to buying from or working alongside a Negro, for example, thereby limits his range of choice. He will generally have to pay a higher price for what he buys or receive a lower return for his work. Or, put the other way, those of us who regard color of skin or religion as irrelevant can buy some things more cheaply as a result.
Survey data can shed light on the relationship between trade and attitudes toward others. A study of international survey data published by the Brookings Institution found that feelings of national superiority and chauvinism were positively associated with opposition to global trade across multiple countries. On the flip side, pro-trade attitudes and greater exposure to global markets are negatively associated with nationalism, ethnocentrism, and prejudice.
For example, negative attitudes among Americans toward outsourcing appear to be associated with an “us versus them” mentality. According to a study by political scientists Edward Mansfield and Diana Mutz, switching from the most isolationist to the least isolationist outlooks predicted a fivefold increase in support for outsourcing. Shifting from the least ethnocentric to the most ethnocentric attitudes predicted a 50 percent decrease in support for outsourcing. And changing from the least nationalistic to the most nationalistic views predicted a 25 percent decrease in support for outsourcing (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Support for Outsourcing by Level of Nationalism
Source: Edward D. Mansfield and Diana C. Mutz, “US Versus Them: Mass Attitudes Toward Offshore Outsourcing,” World Politics 65, no. 4 (2013): 601. Perceived national superiority reduces support for outsourcing when the economic practice is explicitly labeled as “outsourcing.” This is the “Mentioned outsourcing” line. When the same economic practice is described without using that specific term, the same pattern does not occur. This is the “No mention of outsourcing” line.
The evidence compounds. Employing data from the General Social Surveys conducted from 1977 to 2010, Northwestern University’s James Lindgren found that racism, intolerance toward out-groups (e.g., homosexuals, atheists, and others), anti-capitalism, and pro-redistribution go hand-in-hand. Even after controlling for gender, logged income, education, age, and year of the survey, Lindgren showed that racism and intolerance are still strong predictors of socialist pro-redistribution and anti-capitalist attitudes. Lindgren’s analysis led him to conclude, “Those who support capitalism and freer markets and oppose greater income redistribution tend to be . . . less traditionally racist” and “less intolerant of unpopular groups.”
That tracks with the work of the Mercatus Center’s Virgil Henry Storr and Ginny Choi, who compared respondents from market societies to those in nonmarket societies using the World Values Survey. When asked who they would not like to have as neighbors, those in market societies were less prejudiced against those of a different race, language, or religion, as well as foreign workers, homosexuals, and cohabitating couples (see Figure 2). Trade, it seems, is next to good neighborliness.
Several studies by economists Niclas Berggren and Therese Nilsson investigated the relationship between tolerance, economic freedom, and globalization. The evidence they gathered suggests a causal relationship between the level of economic globalization and the willingness of parents to teach their children tolerance. Another analysis found that economic freedom plays a seemingly causal role in parents teaching their children tolerance and fostering tolerance toward homosexuals and people of different races (see Figure 3). Focusing solely on the United States, Berggren and Nilsson found a similar causality: Economic freedom increases tolerance toward homosexuals, atheists, and communists. Another study found that economic freedom increases tolerance toward homosexuals, particularly in societies that are high in trust.
Source: Niclas Berggren and Therese Nilsson, “Economic Freedom as a Driver of Trust and Tolerance,” in Economic Freedom of the World: 2020 Annual Report, eds. James Gwartney et al. (Fraser Institute, 2020), p. 196.
And it’s not just parents teaching children tolerance. The media also plays a role in shaping our outlook. An interesting study by researchers at St. Olaf College, Stanford University, and George Mason University combed through a corpus of New York Times articles written over a 20-year period in search of moral language that Americans used in discussing other countries. They then measured the US market interaction with these countries by looking at bilateral trade flows and immigration statistics. Their results indicated that the more market interaction the United States had with a country through trade and immigration, the more news articles contained humanizing language toward that country. We tend to be cordial toward those we do business with.
Of course, it’s easy to say you’re tolerant in a survey or write nice things in an op-ed. It may even be socially desirable. We all want to look good. But does this translate into action? Several studies suggest that it does.
A clever set of experiments published in the European Economic Review showed that both local (monopsonist) and wholesale (competitive) buyers in the Bangladeshi rice market held prejudicial views of ethnic minorities. Prejudicial attitudes were the same across the board. Yet the wholesale buyers quoted the same price for both ethnic majority and minority farmers, whereas the local buyers did not. Why? The authors concluded, “This suggests that the taste-based discrimination that these buyers have against the ethnic minority group . . . can be eliminated if competition is strong enough.”
Those findings were supported by another set of experiments that demonstrated that market exchange decreases discrimination by increasing participants’ focus on their personal gains and reducing identification with their social in-group. Banking deregulation yielded similar results: As the financial sector was deregulated, competition intensified, leading to reduced discrimination against women and minorities.
Protectionist restrictions can exacerbate prejudicial attitudes. As the late economist Walter Williams explained, anti-competitive regulation “lowers the private cost of discriminating against the racially less-preferred person.” But when there is money to be made, trading only with groups who look or think like you doesn’t seem so important. And the more you trade with different groups, the more you realize that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t as bad as you thought.
But let’s go a step further. Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Bates College have also shown how trade can break down prejudice in practice. The researchers examined areas along the Silk Roads, a network of trade routes throughout Eurasia that has been used for over millennia. It turns out that areas within 50 kilometers of the Silk Roads today have higher economic activity compared to those that are 50–100 kilometers away. No real surprise there. But more importantly for our purposes, the former areas also have higher rates of intergroup marriage. It’s hard to find a better example of tolerance than asking someone of another ethnic group to become family and spend the rest of their lives with you.
You see this in 19th-century America as well. Railroad-driven market integration between 1850 and 1920 helped reshape American social horizons. A new study found that as counties gained better access to this intrastate trade, the likelihood of marrying someone outside the local community increased. That’s what’s called extra-community marriage. Other signs of tolerance and trust became apparent: Newspapers began to adopt language that reflected generalized trust. Parents began to give children nationally popular names rather than locally distinctive ones, implying a social circle that had extended beyond the local community. But one of the strongest findings was the increase in religious diversity: A 1 percent increase in market access raised religious diversity by 0.27 standard deviation, indicating a greater tolerance for religious identity and practice. Perhaps most striking, families who moved to these more market-integrated areas adapted quickly, especially those working in commerce-intensive industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and transportation.
The available evidence suggests that repeated exchange softens suspicion toward outsiders. Sustained commercial contact makes unfamiliar people feel less distant and, consequently, less threatening. Trade provides a mechanism through which tolerance is learned and reinforced. As the 18th-century English theologian and scientist Joseph Priestly noted over 200 years ago,
By commerce we enlarge our acquaintance with the terraqueous globe and its inhabitants, which tends to greatly expand the mind, and to cure us of many hurtful prejudices. . . . No person can taste the sweets of commerce, which absolutely depends upon a free and undisturbed intercourse of different and remote nations, but must grow fond of peace, in which alone the advantages he enjoys can be had.
“After a yearslong trend of elite colleges dropping standardized test requirements from their applications, the tide seems to be turning for the SAT. Long derided as unfair, unnecessary, or even sexist and racist, college entrance exams are gaining new defenders who point out that, contrary to common conception, standardized tests help—not hinder—talented yet disadvantaged students.”
1,000 Bits of Good News You May Have Missed in 2023
A necessary balance to the torrent of negativity.
Malcolm Cochran —
Reading the news can leave you depressed and misinformed. It’s partisan, shallow, and, above all, hopelessly negative. As Steven Pinker from Harvard University quipped, “The news is a nonrandom sample of the worst events happening on the planet on a given day.”
So, why does Human Progress feature so many news items? And why did I compile them in this giant list? Here are a few reasons:
Statistics are vital to a proper understanding of the world, but many find anecdotes more compelling.
Many people acknowledge humanity’s progress compared to the past but remain unreasonably pessimistic about the present—not to mention the future. Positive news can help improve their state of mind.
We have agency to make the world better. It is appropriate to recognize and be grateful for those who do.
Below is a nonrandom sample (n = ~1000) of positive news we collected this year, separated by topic area. Please scroll, skim, and click. Or—to be even more enlightened—read this blog post and then look through our collection of long-term trends and datasets.
Which Students Get Into Advanced Math? Texas Is Using Test Scores to Limit Bias
“A new Texas law calls for every student who performs in the top 40% on a fifth-grade math assessment to be enrolled automatically in advanced math for sixth grade.”
