Beyond Black and White?

In a critique of Identity and Interethnic Marriage in the United States (Gaines, 2017), Jennifer Pedersen (2017) questioned the book’s heavy reliance upon quantitative and qualitative data from couples among whom one partner was of African descent and the other partner was of European descent. Pedersen argued that the book presents an overgeneralized account of the dynamics among partners’ identities, patterns of interdependence, and social structure, on the basis of results from Black-White couples. Pedersen’s critique begs the question: If one were to directly compare Black-White versus other interracial couples regarding relational dynamics, would one conclude that the patterns were similar or dissimilar?

During the mid-to-late 1990s, my colleagues and I (Gaines, Rios, Granrose, Bledsoe, Farris, Page Youn, & Garcia, 1999) conducted research on patterns of romanticism and interpersonal resource exchange among 112 heterosexual interethnic couples, approximately 75% of whom were married. Despite our best efforts to recruit a diverse sample of interracial, interreligious, and international couples, it turned out that 91 of the 112 couples were interracial. Further, among the 91 remaining couples, we obtained complete data on male and female partners’ levels of romanticism and exchanges of affection and respect from 42 Black-White couples and 46 interracial couples that did not involve persons of African descent paired with persons of European descent. (Three additional couples did not provide complete data and were excluded from further analyses.)

Across our sample of interracial couples, we (Gaines et al., 1999) found that (1) romanticism was a significant positive predictor of partners’ own displays of affection and respect; (2) partners exchanged affection at significant levels; (3) partners exchanged respect at significant levels; and – a finding that we had not anticipated, but which makes sense conceptually – (4) partners’ scores on romanticism were significantly and positively correlated. Moreover, when we directly compared our model of romanticism and interpersonal resource exchange between Black-White and other interracial couples, we did not find any significant or near-significant differences in the goodness of fit. Therefore, we concluded that the model was not confined in scope to relational dynamics among Black-White couples.

Our study (Gaines et al., 1999) was designed to test a particular theory of behavioral dynamics in close relationships – namely, resource exchange theory (U. G. Foa & E. B. Foa, 1974). However, given that marriage vows in the United States frequently call upon partners to love (i.e., give affection to) each other and to honor (i.e., give respect to) each other, I believe that my colleagues and I succeeded in examining a fundamental relationship process among interracial couples – including, but not limited to, Black-White couples. My only regret is that we were not able to persuade larger numbers of interreligious or international couples to take part in the study.

Pedersen’s (2017) question concerning the generalizability of results from studies of Black-White couples to other interethnic couples is worth keeping in mind. Nevertheless, as my colleagues and I learned (Gaines et al., 1999), the task of recruiting large numbers of interracial, interreligious, and international couples who may or may not involve African-descent and European-descent pairings is not nearly as easy as one might expect. Further, results from our moderate-to-large sample (by the standards of quantitative psychology) did not yield any evidence that we had overgeneralized beyond Black-White couples.

In closing, perhaps the issue is not whether a particular book (e.g., Gaines, 2017) has leaned too heavily upon data from Black-White couples – an implication that one could readily infer from Pedersen’s (2017) critique. Rather, I believe that the question is whether researchers who examine interethnic marriages (e.g., Gaines et al., 1997) can gain access to samples that are sufficiently diverse to permit the comparisons that Pedersen has advocated. Based on my own experience, I suspect that the answer is no – or, perhaps more optimistically, not yet.