The Centralization of Racial Exogamy among Same Sex and Different Sex Couples

• In Event: 30855 - What’s race got to do with it? Race and Intimate Relationships

Abstract

Same sex couples are much more likely to be interracial than different sex couples, particularly male couples. But for non-White racial boundaries, we show that it is actually female same sex couples who are the most exogamous. We shed light here on a typically overlooked assortativity pattern, the extent that boundary crossing relationships disproportionately focus on one group. This represents a centralization in intergroup relationships, which is both reflective of the structure of group boundaries and has implications for the kinds of new couples that are created. To measure this pattern, we offer a new method of calculating odds ratios of exogamy boundaries that is suitable for comparing same sex and different sex couples, and we adapt an ego networks regression technique to model multiple exogamies and covariates together for couples of all gender combinations.

Authors

• Reuben J. Thomas, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque

• Lacey S Hites, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque