Zaineb and Faizal Zekeria don’t look like the living evidence of a potentially nation-altering trend. They look like two newlyweds in love.
But their year-old union is hand-holding proof of how a massive influx of immigrants is changing who marries whom, and why, and challenging the idealized notion of America as a multicultural melting pot.
Increasingly, a new study shows, U. S. -born Asians and Hispanics are choosing to wed foreign-born members of their own ethnicity. At the same time, greater numbers of new immigrants are marrying among themselves.
Some sociologists believe the shift could have significant implications: It could signal a widening gap between the races. Or, in another view, it could reflect growing pride among minority peoples.
There’s no question what has fueled the trend. The 11 million immigrants who arrived in the 1990s dramatically increased the same- ethnicity pool of potential mates. Hispanics are the country’s fastest- growing minority group, Asians the second-fastest.
The rationales for choosing a husband or wife of the same background, say couples interviewed for this story, are practical and emotional. Having a foreign-born mate offers an American a deeper connection to his or her ancestry. The opposite also occurs, with American partners helping to ease their spouses’ transition to a new world.
The former Zaineb Ainuddin, 29, and Faizal Zekeria, 30, found both to be true. She was born in Chicago, he in Bombay, India. The Philadelphia couple met in 1997 as undergraduates at Temple University.
"I’d consider myself brought up in an American household," said Zaineb, whose father arrived in the States in 1965, when he was 37. "I was the unusual one who broke away and married an Indian."
The number of interracial marriages in the United States has been growing since the 1970s. Now two researchers, Zhenchao Qian, a sociologist at Ohio State University, and Daniel Lichter, a policy analyst at Cornell University, have documented an important change.
Using census data from 1990 and 2000, Qian and Lichter identified "unprecedented declines in intermarriage with whites, and big increases in marriages between native-and foreign-born members of Asian and Hispanic ethnicities." Their study findings were recently published in the American Sociological Review.
In 10 years, the percentage of Hispanics who married outside their ethnicity fell to 19.9 from 26.9. The decline among Asians was even greater, 33.2 percent compared with 41.7 percent.
Meanwhile, among marriages between people of the same ethnicity, pairings between native-and foreign-born rose 50 percent for Asians and 9 percent for Hispanics.
Scholars wonder how the trend could affect race relations. For decades, Lichter and Qian note, people have tended to view rising rates of intermarriage as a sign of growing acceptance between peoples of different color and culture.
Others say the decline in intermarriage is a non-issue.
"Most people prefer to marry someone with whom they have a lot in common--heritage, culture, values, customs, habits, language and appearance," said B. J. Gallagher, an L. A. sociologist who specializes in diversity issues. "It’s... a natural thing. "
Marc Lamont Hill, who teaches urban education at Temple University, sees the increase in same-culture marriages as "absolutely a good thing."
"We’ve been taught that white people, and particularly white women, are the standard for beauty and attractiveness," Hill said. Marrying within ethnicity is a way of moving beyond that, he said.
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