The question then is should someone who finds “true love” from another race, sacrifice it for the sake of his or her race?

The Emmanuel Eboue divorce from his wife Auriele in which he apparently lost all his assets in the court settlement have renewed an age-longed debate about interracial marriage, with several reactions and comments blaming the former Arsenal and Galatasaray defender as the cause of his own anguish for not sticking with someone from his race.

KEY FACTS ABOUT INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES ACCORDING TO THE PEW RESEARCH CENTRE:

• One-in-six U.S. newlyweds (17%) were married to a person of a different race or ethnicity in 2015. It was 3% in 1967.

• 39% thinks interracial marriages are good for the society, it was 24% in 2010. University educated and under the 30s are more likely to agree to the positivity in interracial marriages.

• The most common racial or ethnic pairing among newlywed intermarried couples is one Hispanic and one white spouse (42%). The next most common intermarriage pairings are one white and one Asian spouse (15%). Some 12% of newlywed intermarried couples include one white and one multiracial spouse, and 11% include one white and one black spouse.

• Newlywed black men are twice as likely as newlywed black women to be intermarried. In 2015, 24% of recently married black men were intermarried, compared with 12% of newly married black women. The reverse is the case for Asian.

• The most dramatic increases in intermarriage have occurred among black newlyweds. Since 1980, the share who married someone of a different race or ethnicity has more than tripled from 5% to 18%

• Among black newlyweds, the gender gap in intermarriage increases with education: For those with a high school diploma or less, 17% of men vs. 10% of women are intermarried, while among those with a bachelor’s degree, black men are more than twice as likely as black women to intermarry (30% vs. 13%)

The PEW research highlight above focused on the American population, but relatively applicable to the UK given the proportion of blacks to white in both countries.

Since the 1967 Loving vs Virginia court case, interracial marriages has increased dramatically, more so among younger people, urban residents, and educated population, although rate of divorce is higher in interracial marriages, likely due to cultural differences on top of normal marriage complications, but is the fierce opposition to interracial marriages among some “pro-black” advocates and activists justified?

Dr. Umar Johnson was on record that “you cannot be a pro-black and marry a white” person.

 

 

The disdain for Emmanuel Eboue decision to marry a white lady and somewhat glee-like comments on his divorce and assets losses among black folks particularly women demonstrate this opposition.

While Eboue’s interracial union hit the rock, the blogger Nwanyi Ocha, a Swiss national who is married to an Igbo man from Nigeria recently celebrated their 5 years anniversary on her twitter page. Further look into her other posts showed how eager and willing in my opinion she is adapting and learning the Igbo culture.

Granted her attitude towards her husband’s culture is probably not common but it shows that the main barrier to successes in interracial marriages is cultural differences and expectations.

However, while cultural differences may be responsible for the higher divorce rate, it seems though that understanding the reason for the opposition to interracial marriages among “pro-black” is a little bit more complex.

Some of the reasons are that going out of your race to marry ultimately reduce the pool of available singles in your own race, this is particularly poignant among blacks as male are twice more likely to marry a white person compare to female, hence reducing the available and “eligible” black males by half.

Another underlying factor identified in the PEW research is that the black males that marry white females are more likely to be the educated and more successful ones, hence leaving behind a “low-quality” pool of black males for black females, which is compounded by the fact that a significant proportion of the prison population both in the USA and UK are blacks as a proportion of the two countries population.

As interracial marriages gather pace, the long-term unintended consequence is that black communities will become more and more destroyed and diluted culturally to be replaced by a “less stable” mixed-race community with no or at best conflicting cultural identities and values.

note:

There are some people with extreme “pro-black” views that have issues and will not accept a mixed-race person as being black. This is not only wrong, but dangerous too

Some anecdote gather from various online debates and comments suggest that it is not only an expectation on successful black males to stick with black females when marrying, it is also a duty to help preserve the black race, even though there are subtle differences in culture even among blacks, hence this contradict the cultural preservation argument as a reason to advocate all black marriage, for example, there is a wide cultural difference between a Jamaican and a Ghanian, even in Nigeria, there are cultural differences between Igbo and Yoruba.

This brings me to the last point- In my opinion, the fierce opposition by pro-blacks to interracial marriages is not down to the preservation of the black race, it is down to the difficulty of black folks getting over the past history, i.e. slavery and everything that came with it and the continuing racial prejudice either subtle everyday racism or open racial discrimination in the law enforcement, judicial, education, and the system as a whole.

Hence, it is taken as a distinct binary argument of race vs love. The question then is should someone who finds “true love” from another race, sacrifice it for the sake of his or her race? or is it deeper than this? a matter of survival?