ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly reviews the history of intermarriage among Asian-ethnics in the United States and discuss key issues in existing scholarship on Asian American intermarriage. It examines Asian American intermarriage particularly in terms of how it has been theorized in relation to sociological theories of race and assimilation. Anti-miscegenation statutes, laws that prohibited sexual relationships and marriages between “Whites” and those considered “non-Whites,” were not struck down by the US federal courts until 1967, in the landmark Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court decision. Asian immigrants were also placed in the category of “aliens ineligible for citizenship,” a status that prohibited them from many privileges granted to citizens, such as owning land and entering professional occupations. As the term “intermarriage” is typically used to denote both interracial and interethnic marriages, it is important to unpack the differences between the two marital type trends because there are divergences in rates and patterns.
