Turn down the heat under the melting pot

An intuitive speculation on globalizing trends: there should be more inter-ethnic and inter-racial marriages today than ever in America, right? The more global we get, the less our racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds should matter, right? Wrong.

A new study finds that intermarriages (as a percentage of total marriages) declined between 1990 and 2000, reversing a thirty year trend. How did this happen?

The study, published in the latest issue of the American Sociological Review, found "large increases in marriage between native- and foreign-born co-ethnics among Hispanics and Asian Americans" -- that is, immigrants integrating into previously-established immigrant populations rather than seeking to assimilate through access to the white-majority world.

Something both new and old is going on. "Traditional assimilation theory" holds (to oversimplify) that minorities become absorbed by majorities, but sociologists are beginning to revise this view. The intermarriage data confirms previous experiences of immigration "waves": the first generation is ushered in to ethnic enclaves, and the second generation begins to intermarry and move out of immigrant sphere.

But as long as more than half of adult Hispanics and three-quarters of adult Asians are immigrants, the pool remains large enough for any newcomer to seek cultural equivalents for marriage. Just think: 11 million immigrants in the 1990s! As the wave subsides (this is yet to happen), late-arriving immigrants and second-generation populations are forced to look beyond their cultural confines.