A Study Of Chinese American Interracial Marriage

In the United States, intermarriage as one of the expressions for social relation notonly evidences diversification of American society but also exposes its dark side—racialdiscrimination. After the US government repealed anti-miscegenation laws and openedimmigration policies, the ongoing immigrants highlight plurality of American society. As aresult, intermarriage has gradually become a common phenomenon.As with Chinese American interracial marriage study, this thesis explores its causesand impact factors as well as further glimpses the development of history and racialrelation in American society. The thesis begins with the impacts of social factors such asdemographic, gender and education on Chinese American interracial marriageaccompanied with social structural theory and qualitative data. Then it dilates on culturalinfluences mainly based on the interviews with10Chinese-white spouses in the U.S.Meanwhile, assimilation theory is jointly used to evidence the nucleus of cultural factors inChinese out-racial marriage from the perspective of cultural assimilation, culturaldiscrepancy and cultural similarity. In the next chapter, the thesis analyzes historical factorsby reviewing the evaluation of relative laws and social movements. The final part discussesthe status quo and trend of Chinese out-marriage based on the previous three chapters, aswell as illustrates its social significance and figures out the limitation of this study.In this thesis, the personalities of minority will not completely disappear in culturalassimilation but partly regarded as a catalyst of Chinese out-marriage, which isinconsistent with the theory of “melting pot”. Moreover, similarities between Chinese andAmerican culture also exert positive effects on Chinese who are marrying out. The ongoingpopulation of Chinese group in American society as well as the improvement of itsassimilation and education on the one hand contribute to Chinese American interracialmarriage, on the other hand act as a negative role due to the oversized group. In sum,Chinese American interracial marriage rate will not dramatically increase in the future.