Inductivist

Someone claimed on Twitter that the mean IQ of American Jews has been falling due to intermarriage. What do General Social Survey data have to say? Here are mean IQs by decade since the 1970s:

No evidence of a decrease here. 

The view of many human biodiversity (HBD) people is that genes are a critical determinant of human behavior and culture, and the power of genes gets expressed at the individual, family and ethnic/racial levels. The contention that race as a genetic reality is a tremendous social force is, of course, the most controversial.

In a recent piece published at Unz.com, E. Michael Jones challenges this view by arguing that the key distinction among Americans is religion, not race.  While some HBD-ers contend that the fundamental conflict is racial, and old-time Marxists would argue that it's class, Jones sees the central struggle between the alliance of Protestants and Catholic versus Jews. He would update his view to include the growing presence of Muslims, but he sees people with no religion as lacking an identity, as being social nobodies, and since nature abhors a vacuum, the irreligious are drawn to identity politics. So it sounds like Jones is acknowledging the growing power of non-religious identities like feminist, gay, racialist, etc.

One way to measure identity is to look at marriage: If religion is really important to you, you will probably marry someone of the same faith.  Using General Social Survey data, I looked at the percentage of people who marry inside their group. I include ethnicity (i.e., where your family originally came from) as well as current religious affiliation. Religious denomination is shown in bold.

Percent who married within their own group 

Blacks  90.4
American Indian  87.5
Asian Indian  86.4
Protestant  86.3
Southern Baptist  83.6
Lutheran Missouri Synod  82.8
American Lutheran  81.9
Chinese  80.8
Orthodox Christian  80.0
Mexican  79.7
Jewish  79.5
United Methodist 79.1
American Baptist  77.8
Catholic  76.8
United Presbyterian  73.4
Episcopalian  73.2
Japanese  68.8
Puerto Rican  67.6
Filipino  66.7
No religion  42.9
Greek  38.9
German  37.6
Dutch  34.4
English/Welsh  34.0
Russian  32.1
French Canadian  31.5
Spanish  29.8
Irish  27.6
Polish  27.3
Norwegian  21.6
Czech  18.5
Austrian  14.8
Danish  12.5
Scottish  12.5
Swedish  11.7
French  9.4
Swiss  8.3

Keep in mind that many of these people got married a long time ago, so with the recent decline in religiosity, the numbers for religion shown here are probably high.

Having said that, the most endogamous groups tend to be non-whites followed by religious denominations. White ethnicities, even those of a putatively ethnocentric bent (e.g., Greeks, Irish), are the least likely to marry within the group. As sociologists predicted some time ago, white ethnics are simply becoming whites. But the intermarriage rates of whites with Asians and Hispanics (about 60% of inter-racial marriages are between whites and Hispanics or whites and Asians) and the lack of voting as a bloc suggest that white consciousness is pretty weak.

Even though the Protestant endogamous rate is high, I'm skeptical that this is as meaningful as Jones thinks. As a Catholic, he may think they're all the same, but who really identifies as a Protestant? As a Southern Baptist, yes. As a Mormon, yes. There is very little common identity and unity among Protestants. For one thing, there is a major divide between conservative Evangelicals and liberal Christians.

Jones makes a good point that religion is an important source of identity for many Americans, but he overstates the case. Non-whites are growing in number in the US, and for them race is important.  As religion declines, people are developing political identities--progressive, feminist, sexual minority, or racialist. Jones says that "Logos is Rising"--that Catholicism is growing.  According to the data, "Raza is Rising."

From the July issue of Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse:

The percentage of multiracial youth appears to be increasing in the United States. However, little has been disseminated about problem behaviors among multiracial Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, and Asians on a national level. Using the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the authors compared multiple-race Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, and Asians, while disaggregating by ethnic subgroups, with single-race individuals within respective Asian ethnic subgroups and Caucasians for prevalence of alcohol/drug use and dependence. For multiple-race Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, and Asians, high rates of alcohol dependence were observed compared with both single-race Native Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander, and Asian subgroups and single-race Caucasians; for some multiracial Native Hawaiians, Other Pacific Islanders, and Asians, high rates of drug dependence were also observed.

I don't have access to the journal so I don't know how the authors interpret their results. The findings might suggest that people should marry within their own group to lower the risk of problems for their future children, but my guess is that people who marry inter-ethnically and inter-racially are more unconventional than other people, and their unconventionality is passed to their children, which in turn raises the risk of alcohol and drug dependence.

In the last post, reader Jim Bowery correctly pointed out that greater disapproval by older whites compared to younger whites of a relative marrying someone from another race might reflect the tendency for people to become more conservative as they age.

Fortunately, the General Social Survey has longitudinal data. Participants were asked: "What about having a close relative marry a black person? Would you be in very favor of it happening (1), somewhat in favor (2), neither in favor nor opposed to it happening (3), somewhat opposed (4), or very opposed to it happening (5)?

The table displays the mean attitude for different age groups measured at three different times: 1990, 2000, and 2008.

You can see two major patterns. First, as we saw in the last post, measured at any specific time, disapproval is stronger among older whites (just look down the columns). Second, if you look along the rows, you can that that approval grew among most age groups over time. The only expections to this are the two youngest groups over the 2000-2008 period: their level of approval remained stable. 

So approval has generally grown over time, and younger cohorts start out with more approving averages than older cohorts. 

But notice that, compared to Pew's numbers, these estimates do not make whites look so gung-ho about a close relative outmarrying. The average (2.73) of the most liberal group in the table--people who are now in their 30s--is much closer to neutral than "somewhat in favor." Most of the groups are currently between neutral and "somewhat opposed."

It seems to me that asking about favoring or not favoring the marriage is more revealing than asking "if you would be fine with it." (By the way, each cell is at least 100 cases).      

Religion and intermarriage: Reader Desmond Jones asks an interesting question: "Are the religious more or less likely to marry outside their ethnic/racial group?" Church is a common way for marriage-minded people to meet, and it is certainly true that people of different races often belong to the same religion. On the other hand, churches are quite segregated. In my town for instance, Catholic Hispanics gravitate toward the same parishes while whites do the same.

The Houston Area Study asked 809 people about the race of themselves and their spouses, and asked how important religion was to the respondent.


Percent who are married to someone outside their ethnic/racial group

Whites
Religion is not very important 10.0
Somewhat important 6.7
Very important 11.3

Hispanics
Religion is not very important 44.4
Somewhat important 14.6
Very important 13.7

(The black sample is not large enough). Church doesn't matter for whites, but look at Hispanics--huge differences. It looks like religious involvement keeps Latinos from assimilating.

Interracial fertility: Over at 2blowhards, Gregory Cochran said in Monday's interview that:

Well, one usual claim is that individuals from every human population are fully interfertile, completely able to interbreed... Of course, like so many sweeping statements, no one has carefully tested this for all possible combinations.

It is true that research has not answered this question, but a recent study tell us that some combinations seem as fertile as same-race couplings. I can't access the full text, but here's some of the abstract:

This study uses 2000 - 2005 American Community Survey data on married (n =272,336) and cohabiting (n = 48,769) couples to compare the fertility of endogamous and exogamous couples. Interracial and interethnic partnering do not affect fertility for cohabiting, Black-White, Mexican-White, and Puerto Rican-White intermarried couples, but it does reduce fertility in Chinese-White and Asian Indian-White intermarriages (Fu, Vincent Kang. Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 70, Number 3, August 2008 , pp. 783-795(13)).

The last bastion of white racialism: Wandering around in General Social Survey data, I found a number that was surprisingly large. It seems that an impressive 61.5% of white high school dropouts in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky are in favor of a law banning interracial marriages.

Now, I wouldn't have been surprised at such a high number 40 years ago--the actual number averaging responses given in the 70s is 81.6%--but the revolution in racial attitudes evidently passed these folks by.

UPDATE: I'm going to have to amend this post some. I looked at the same group and was surprised again to find that 77.8% would vote for a black for president. The corresponding number for the 1970s is 57.6%.

So, these people are more comfortable, and have been more comfortable, with a black man running the country than one marrying their daughter. Perhaps many of them think a black man would help all lower-class folks.

Men

Has the South converged with the rest of the country on racial attitudes? Fifty years ago, there was a clear divide between the North and the South on the question of race relations. Since then, has the North converted white southerners to its way of thinking?

The General Social Survey first ask Americans in 1972 if they were in favor of a law against black-white marriages. I averaged the answers for almost 10,000 people for the 1970s and then this decade, and did it by region of the country. Listed below are the nine regions, the estimates for the 70s, and the estimates for this decade.


Percent in favor of a law against black-white marriages--1970s and 2000s

New England 19.0--> 7.4
Mid-Atlantic 27.7--> 8.5
East North Central 31.6--> 9.9
West North Central 37.1--> 13.4
South Atlantic 54.3--> 14.5
East South Central 57.3--> 32.2
West South Central 42.2--> 11.3
Mountain 30.4--> 4.8
Pacific 22.0--> 5.3

Support for this type of law dropped significantly all over the country during this period, especially in the South Atlantic and West South Central divisions. This reflects both the dramatic change in racial attitudes among whites along with the growing feeling that other people should have the right to do whatever they would like, even if I don't personally like it.

The East South Central region (ESC) is the outlier here. While the two other southern divisions are very similar to the rest of the country, the ESC's level of support is still more than double any other area. (By the way, this region includes MS, AL, TN, KY.) The ESC has remained distinctive, indeed.

And notice how the numbers are not perfectly predicted by the politics of the region. Outside of the South, the Mountain States are the most conservative, yet they are the least in favor of anti-miscegenation laws. This ties in with my earlier post that argued that naivete, rather than experience, can encourage non-traditional racial attitudes.

The GSS says whites wanting to prohibit marriage between blacks and whites are dumb, but not crazy: The stereotype of a white nationalist (WN) is a inbred hillbilly who's missing some teeth and who missed school after about the 6th grade. But the folks of this persuasion on the Internet I've talked to are generally a smart bunch. My students stare at me in disbelief when I tell them that William Pierce had a PhD in physics. I imagine people who debate on the Internet are the cream of the crop, but I don't know--the dumb stereotype may be the product of hostility. And the image is not just one of low intelligence, but also mental illness. Just yesterday, I talked to a guy who lived in Hayden Lake, Idaho for many years and was on friendly terms with a number of WNs, but he told me that when he moved from there, the WN types were getting pretty psycho.

I couldn't find a perfect question to identify WNs, but the General Social Survey did ask if you are in favor of a law forbidding marriage between blacks and whites. Respondents were also asked if they have ever had a mental illness. Here are the results:


Mean IQ--whites

Against laws prohibiting intermarriage 102.1
For laws prohibiting intermarriage 92.2


Percent having had a mental illness--whites

Against laws prohibiting intermarriage 8.3
For laws prohibiting intermarriage 1.7

Keep in mind that that sample of those in favor of this type of law is small--only 59 people. But going on what we have here, these folks have a low average IQ but are less likely to have experienced some kind of mental health problem.