The Significance of Race in the Private Sphere: Asian Americans and Spousal Preferences |
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| Authors: | Sue Chow |
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| Institution: | Was CSRE (Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity) post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in Sociology at Stanford. Her current research interests are race, gender, and assimilation. She has been engaged in a large-scale interview project on assimilation and race among later generation Asian Americans and is currently writing a book on the subject. She is also working on a study of the socio-psychological dynamics of racial glass ceilings in Silicon Valley. |
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| Abstract: | Using qualitative analysis of narratives of United States-born Asians, this article examines how spousal preferences and views on interracial couples are affected by racial status inequalities. It argues that racial inequality affects those who prefer Whites, those who prefer Asians, those indicating no racial preferences, and those whose preferences changed through the life course. The dynamics of racialized preferences are explained by introducing the concept of racialized relationship capital, specifically the appeal of Euro-American vs. ethnic-racial relationship capital. The paper concludes by questioning the popular notion that high rates of interracial marriage indicate successful assimilation for groups such as Asian Americans. |
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