Is White Always Right? Skin Color and Interdating Among Whites
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Is White Always Right? Skin Color and Interdating Among Whites Emilce Santana1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The burgeoning literature on skin color stratification highlights how skin color is associated with disparities in outcomes such as socioeconomic status, health, and intergroup relationships among ethnoracial minorities. However, there is a limited body of work that suggests that darker skin color is also associated with differing outcomes among whites in spite of their position as the socially dominant group of the U.S. This study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen to examine how skin color, among whites, relates to their likelihood of dating ethnoracial minorities. The results show that darker skin color is associated with greater odds of dating Latinos and Asians. The results also suggest that there is a non-linear relationship between whites’ skin color and their likelihood of dating blacks. The author argues that because darker skin color connotes lower status due to its affiliation with non-whiteness, darker skin color among whites can lead to greater interactions with ethnoracial minorities. However, there may be an exception when dating blacks. This study highlights a possible underlying mechanism, ethnoracial ambiguity among whites, that shapes current ethnoracial relations, which has long-term implications for the future of intergroup boundaries. Keywords Intergroup relationships · Skin color · Dating · Quantitative methodology · Social stratification
Introduction Studying determinants in whites’1 interactions with members of other ethnoracial groups gives nuanced insight into the future of ethnoracial relations. The extant literature suggests that involvement in intergroup relationships is associated with lower levels of prejudice toward other groups and shorter social distance between groups (Allport 1954; Fischer 2011). These relationships can also lead to a more multiracial society, thus potentially minimizing boundaries between ethnoracial groups. Dating, in particular, gives a unique perspective on intergroup relationships because it is non-institutionalized and more informal than marriage, but there is more gravity and selectivity to dating relative to “lower stakes” relationships such as hooking up (McClintock 2010). Whites are socially the most dominant ethnoracial group within the U.S. Whiteness is associated with power, privilege, high class, and authority, even among whites who are * Emilce Santana [email protected] 1
Sociology Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
of low socioeconomic status (McDermott 2006). According to the immigration literature, the increasing prevalence in marriages between different groups, specifically between a minority group with the dominant group, has been theorized as one of the major steps to integration into society for that minority group (Gordon 1964). Therefore, focusing on intergroup relationships among whites could shed light on determinants that reshape the
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