The Significance of Race in the Private Sphere: Asian Americans and Spousal Preferences.

The article examines how spousal preferences and views on interracial couples are affected by racial status inequalities. It has been argued 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 versus ethnic-racial relationship capital. Because the issues of racial inequality and dominant group determination are often sidestepped, researchers in this tradition have attributed the varying rates of outmarriage to the degree of acculturation or to cultural constraints within minority communities. The article concludes by questioning the popular notion that high rates of interracial marriage indicate successful assimilation for groups such as Asian Americans. As such, this paper represents one of the first attempts to examine the subjective perceptions of racial minorities themselves in order to shed light on the complex dynamics of the effect of racial inequality on the private sphere.