that white-Asian marriages outnumber black-white marriages: the socialdistance between whites and Asians is now far smaller than the distancebetween blacks and whites. What's fascinating, however, is that in recentyears a startling number of nonwhites -- especially Asian men and blackwomen -- have become bitterly opposed to intermarriage.This is a painful topic to explore honestly, so nobody does. Still, it'simportant because interracial marriages are a leading indicator of what lifewill be like in the even more diverse and integrated twenty-first century.Intermarriages show that integration can churn up unexpected racialconflicts by spotlighting enduring differences between the races.For example, probably the most disastrous mistake Marcia Clark made inprosecuting O. J. Simpson was to complacently allow Johnny Cochran to packthe jury with black women. As a feminist, Mrs. Clark smugly assumed that allfemale jurors would identify with Nicole Simpson. She ignored pretrialresearch indicating that black women tended to see poor Nicole as The Enemy,one of those beautiful blondes who steal successful black men from theirblack first wives, and deserve whatever they get.The heart of the problem for Asian men and black women is that intermarriagedoes not treat every sex/race combination equally: on average, it hasoffered black men and Asian women new opportunities for finding mates amongwhites, while exposing Asian men and black women to new competition fromwhites. In the 1990 Census, 72 per cent of black-white couples consisted ofa black hus- band and a white wife. In contrast, white-Asian pairs showedthe reverse: 72 per cent consisted of a white husband and an Asian wife.Sexual relations outside of marriage are less fettered by issues of familyapproval and long-term practicality, and they appear to be even more skewed.The 1992 Sex in America study of 3,432 people, as authoritative a work asany in a field where reliable data are scarce, found t...
