What are the potential problems associated with interracial relationships?

What are the potential problems associated with interracial relationships?
by Majid83
29-05-12

Relationships between men and women of different ethnic groups have been a controversial subject for many decades, but have now become widely accepted, and anyone who would dare to question whether this increasing trend towards marriage between people of different ethnic groups is a good idea is stigmatized as a right-wing extremist.

In this essay I do not intend to cast a moral judgement on exogamous relationships. I also do not seek to decide for individuals whether they should marry outside of their own ethnicity or not. Instead, I seek to alert people to certain problems that emerge as a result of relationships between different ethnic groups, on an individual scale and for different ethnicities as a whole. I intend to focus on the problems that are not immediately apparent to people, and skipping the more obvious ones.

Exogamous relationships became an increasingly important issue as a result of changes brought about by the industrial revolution, which made migration and communication between different ethnicities increasingly easy. For the centuries before then, endogamy has been the norm. Our increasing trend towards secularisation also helped to remove certain barriers towards exogamous relationships that were created by religious prohibitions. Hence, exogamous relationships have become a controversial issue for communities that have survived as minorities for centuries without being assimilated.

Exogamous relationships lead to religious radicalism

Many feel a responsibility to their ancestors to ensure the survival of their people through the modern era, as opposed to being assimilated into one or more numerically larger ethnic groups. If the ethnic group in question is seen as being a socially dominant ethnic group in our society, those amongst them hesitant to endorse exogamous relationships are decried to be racists.

An example would be the Jewish community, whose more conservative members are seeking to take action to preserve the Jewish community now that it is faced with a 50% intermarriage rate in the United States, of whom two thirds of the children are not raised as Jewish by some estimations.1 Interestingly enough, it could be argued that exogamous marriage will not so much lead to the extinction of the Jewish people, but to a cultural shift towards extremism amongst Jews.

Those Jews who engage in intermarriage with non-Jews tend to be more liberal in their outlook on life, and their families are unlikely to be very Orthodox Jews. On the contrary, amongst Ultra-Orthodox Jews, intermarriage with non-Jews is extremely rare, and hence such Jews are likely to become proportionally more representative for Jewish people as a whole.

The same is likely to happen amongst adherents of other religions, with more liberal Muslims being more likely to marry non-Muslims and hence raising their children as secular. Hence, we can expect exogamous relationships to increase the division between conservative and progressive people, as progressive people become part of a global culture, while conservative people remain part of their own communities.

Like most other aspects of human personality, religious outlooks on life are partly environmentally and partly genetically determined. Part of this environmental factor is the family situation, as growing up in a religious household increases the chance of an individual growing up to be very religious as well.

Hence, it is interesting to note that more fundamentalist members of a religion are now more likely to have a high number of children than more liberal believers, with a prime example being Orthodox Jews. It should be noted that the trend towards exogamous marriage of liberal members of a religion increases this genetic and cultural trend towards religious fundamentalism, as before, liberal and conservative partners in a same-faith relationship were forced to come to a consensus on the number of children they would have.

As an example, we could expect that a liberal woman would be willing to have children, but would insist to her conservative husband that they should wait until she has finished her education, reducing the total number of children in the relationship. Instead, we now see that as a result of exogamous marriages, people of the same religion now tend to marry other orthodox members of the religion. Hence, with no more need to come to a consensus with a liberal partner, fertility of such orthodox religious people can now rapidly increase to whatever level their situation allows.


Black single women, Asian single men

Currently, 70% of black women are unmarried.2 A great reason many black children grow up in single parent households is because black women simply can't find dedicated husbands. Part of the reason for this is because many black men who make good husbands do not marry black women but instead marry outside of their race. Interracial marriage rates are higher for black men than for black women. In black-white marriages, black men and white women are overrepresented. In Black-Asian marriages, the numbers are even further skewed towards Black men and Asian women.


Studies have shown that black men and Asian women are rated as most attractive by the opposite gender, while black women and Asian men are rated as least attractive by the opposite gender. White men and women are seen as intermediate in attractiveness.3 This makes sense when considering that black people tend to have more robust facial features when compared to Asian people, with white facial features being intermediate.

Hence, interracial marriage is leading to black women being forced to raise children on their own, while Asian men find themselves involuntarily remaining bachelors. Before our modern migrations towards other continents, people of every race were forced to marry people of their own race, as they would likely never meet anyone of a different race. Now we are faced with a large problem, that white people are willing to conveniently ignore, as they are intermediate between Asians and sub-Saharan Africans on the scale from femininity to masculinity.


Interracial brain drain

Studies have found that people of Asian and Ashkenazi Jewish background have higher IQ scores on average than people of European background, whom have higher IQ scores on average than every other ethnic group not yet mentioned. This creates the potential for a brain drain, as immigrants from African to Europe are likely to be on average more intelligent than their average countrymen.

A similar effect can be found in the US, where successful Native Americans and African Americans are likely to seek to marry outside of their own race, to escape communities plagued by alcoholism, crime and poverty, despite them being the best hope for these ethnic groups to solve those problems. When most successful Native Americans marry outside of their own race, other Native Americans are left with little choice but to follow suit. The same of course goes for us ex-Muslims. By marrying people who did not grow up in Muslim households, we are ensuring that our ethnic groups will remain Islamic for all of eternity.


Low IQ children

I will readily admit that this is the most sensitive issue discussed in this article, but it has to be discussed, as it may be the most important issue. As mentioned earlier, psychologists agree that ethnic groups differ in their average IQ. Amongst psychologists, opinions differ in regards to the source of the difference, but a significant number of experts in the field believe that at least part of the difference is genetic in origin.

One piece of evidence commonly given by these psychologists is that people of different races have children that regress towards different means. Regression towards the mean means that when measuring an extreme variable, a second measurement will tend to be closer to the mean. In the case of IQ, it means that highly intelligent black parents, are likely to have children with an IQ closer to the average black IQ, while amongst white parents with the same IQ as the black parents mentioned earlier, the IQ would be closer to the white IQ.

What this means in practice is that children born to high IQ black parents, tend to have lower IQ's than children born to low IQ white parents.6  The reason for this is because when someone has an IQ that is far higher than the average for his ethnic group, the chance is far higher for his blessing to have been caused by the environment than by his genetics.

Hence, the implications for people from high IQ ethnicities are that marrying a high IQ individual of a low IQ ethnicity is no guarantee that the child will be as blessed as the parent. Let us take as an example, a Caucasian man with a 100 IQ who marries a black woman with a 105 IQ. The average IQ of their children can be expected to be on average below 100, as the high IQ of the black woman was likely largely caused by her environment, which may be difficult to recreate.

Hence why people used to look not just at the person they wanted to marry, but their family as well to determine whether they would lead to gifted children. If the family of your partner does not have a high IQ as well, be ready to face the issue of raising children that are unable to live up to the expectations you and your partner had for them.

Paternal investment is tied to genetic similarity of the offspring

In nature, men can not be sure of the paternity of their children. Hence, men are genetically programmed to go by people's looks to judge whether they are genetically related to them, and hence should be helped in the form of resources and protection. In the case of children, this means that children who look more like their father receive more resources and more investment from the father. A study in Africa found that the survival chances of a child increase if the child resembles its father more.4


This may be one reason why humans maintain many aesthetic abnormalities that might seem like a net negative. A man with a unique nose or chin that might not flatter his appearance may notice the same abnormality in his children, and hence feel assured of the fact that he is raising a child that is his direct offspring, and if not, at least the offspring of one of his peers. Hence such aesthetic defects are not filtered out of the gene pool, because they help men to determine the paternity of children. It is not uncommon for some families with certain genetic abnormalities (an extra finger for example) to question the paternity of a child born without the abnormality.

Hence, a problem arises with interracial children. Nobody will deny that interracial children tend to look pretty. Their facial features are average, which makes their faces pretty. However, to ensure paternal investment, a child should ideally share the quirks of its father. It tends to be more difficult to identify the similarity between an interracial child and its father.

Besides the difficulty of identifying whether the child is related to its father, the child simply isn't very closely genetically related to its father. In a community with low genetic diversity (the Amish or Ashkenazi Jews for example) a man having a child with a woman of another ethnic group is likely to be genetically closer related to his cousin or his neighbour, than to his own child! Hence, from an evolutionary point of view, should we be surprised that men who have a child with a woman outside their own ethnic group are unlikely to invest a lot of time and resources in the child?

Similar to the problem of the child not resembling its father, in exogamous relationships, the child's personality is unlikely to resemble its father's personality. Personality is at least partly genetically determined, and evidence has shown that, even after accounting for similarity due to gender, race, economic status and common ancestry, patterns of genetic similarity can still be found between close friends.5

Exogamous marriage leads to genetically heterogeneous communities

Through exogamous marriage, the community as a whole becomes genetically heterogeneous. This is obvious, and doesn't have to be explained any further. What does need to be clarified is why this is a problem in a community.

The issue is very similar to the issue in my previous point, but it applies on a communal level, as opposed to an individual level. People are willing to sacrifice their own well being for that of people in their community, if their community shares a lot of genes with themselves. Communities that are genetically homogeneous watch out for their own members, as group-cooperation becomes a very successful survival strategy. In a genetically heterogeneous community (the United States for example) there is little reason from a Darwinian perspective to sacrifice your own well being for your peers.

We notice this in countries where people have recently been force-fed the multicultural experiment. Middle class people increasingly ask themselves why they should pay high taxes to maintain the welfare state. Similarly, people have little incentive to use resources sparingly, because they are taking resources from people who are genetically dissimilar to them, as opposed to people who are similar to them.


From a Darwinian perspective, would you rather rob your brother or your cousin, if forced to choose? This is what goes on in our society today. As communities become less homogeneous, the people in those communities become less supportive towards each other. And hence, as a result, communities do not take care of themselves any more. Solidarity is replaced by insurance companies. Health care has to be formalized, as neighbours become unwilling to ensure the elderly woman living next door doesn't walk around in confusion outside. Society breaks down, and people begin to care about just themselves and their nuclear family.

Conclusion

There are also arguments in favour of exogamous marriage, which I do not seek to deny. As an example, Europe may see exogamous marriage as a solution to their multicultural crisis, by abolishing multiculturalism through assimilation. Furthermore, beneficial genes such as resistance against malaria and HIV and tolerance of high altitudes can spread through the human gene pool through exogamous marriage.

However, we rarely hear the arguments against exogamous marriage, as we as a society have moved towards endorsing exogamous marriage, while the arguments against exogamous marriage in practice tend to exceed those in favour of it.

However, this poses a problem for people who have fallen in love with spouses of different ethnicities. A good solution to this problem is for society as a whole to create the type of conditions in which this dilemma does not emerge to begin with, through nationalism. People of different backgrounds and shared culture and history should seek to live together, as it has many benefits beyond just preventing the problems outlined above.

However, it should be noted that we should move further beyond just nationalism based on race or ethnicity. The problem lies deeper. Humans evolved to marry kin, and live with kin. Society should be tribal in nature, with people holding allegiance to their extended family, and marrying within their extended family.

This is how traditional societies around the world have lived for centuries in peace and stability. Castes have historically not been seen as a source of oppression as they are seen today due to individualist propaganda, but as a source of support. No man is an island, and every man is dependent upon his family to take care of him and defend him. Such a situation is more desirable, and better aligned with our human instincts than a situation in which government and corporations take over tasks that were once reserved to families.

Lastly, I understand that this essay is inevitably offensive, and I have tried to treat this issue in a sensitive manner. I do not wish misery upon any ethnicity or race, nor do I carry ill wishes towards people for any characteristics that they did not choose themselves. Instead I simply seek to live in the type of society in which every family can live in alignment with the type of lifestyle in which the human species evolved and in which I believe it will feel most comfortable.

References

1 - http://articles.latimes.com/2003/sep/11/nation/na-jews11

2 - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486492588283556.html

3 - http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031703

4 - http://www.anth.uconn.edu/degree_programs/ecolevo/offspring_resemb.pdf

5 - http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110117/full/news.2011.23.html

6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpmlqtnrec8