History of interracial dating

Fully a quarter of black men who got married in 2013 married someone who was not black.

Only 12% of black women married outside of their race.

In 2013, a record-high 12% of newlyweds married someone of a different race, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of census data.

(This share does not take into account the “interethnic” marriages between Hispanics and non-Hispanics, which we covered in an earlier report on intermarriage.) Looking beyond newlyweds, 6.3% of all marriages were between spouses of different races in 2013, up from less than 1% in 1970.

In 2014, 37% of Americans said having more people of different races marrying each other was a good thing for society, up from 24% four years earlier.

Only 9% in 2014 said this trend was a bad thing for society, and 51% said it doesn’t make much difference.

Our previous surveys have documented growing acceptance among the public.

Approval has generally increased in a linear fashion from Gallup's first measure in 1958, reaching the majority threshold in 1997, and crossing the three-quarters line in 2004.

Eleven percent of Americans today say they disapprove of black-white marriage, compared with 94% who disapproved in 1958.

For results based on sample of 1,010 non-Hispanic blacks, the margin of sampling error is ±5 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking.