Let People Speak for Themselves: Interracial Unions and the General Social Survey

Social scientists from Gunnar Myrdal (1944), Gordon Allport (1958), Milton Gordon (1964), and more recently, Joseph Washington (1993), have discussed some serious obstructions to intermarriage. Yet, these scholars and others have also emphasized the ideal nature of as a symbol of social equality. Professor G. A. Borghese of the University of Chicago asserts that when [the] two bloods mix freely in marriage will [the] color problem be solved (as cited in Spickard, 1989, p. 288); and in The Nature of Prejudice, Allport (1958) argued that intermarriage would symbolize the abolition of prejudice that is so strenuously fought (p. 353). On the basis of these assumptions and others, it is possible to hypothesize that conceptions of color and views of social equality will be reflected in attitudes toward intermarriage. If intergroup marriage can neutralize color and offset perceived human differences in which color has only superficial value or esthetic meaning, the unions will generate nothing more than indifference. On the other hand, when color is intrinsically connected to biology and culture, is a marker of difference, and is the standard by which