General Discussion

Your links have some information but no slam dunk.

First, you say that this research “is quite easy to find...” I’m glad it was easy for you and that you took the trouble to post, but I couldn’t have found that stuff so readily. Don’t assume we can all do what you did!

This illustrates one reason to post on DU: Different people know different things. As a lawyer, I sometimes see questions where the answer is easy for me to find because I’m used to doing legal research. I generally contribute what I know without berating the questioner. My skill at locating academic research is much lower, however.

As for these links, some of them seem to be about interracial dating and marriage in general. They answer other questions but not the OP’s question. For example, your first link gives data consistent with the OP’s question:

In just skimming the paper, though (I didn’t read all 35 pages), I didn’t notice anything that attempted to explain this gender difference.

The PsycNET abstract does have a useful hint (I didn’t pay to read the whole paper):



If black men are more open than white men and black women are more open than white women, but the former difference is greater than the latter, then the result would be that black male - white female unions would be more common than white male - black female unions. This might be part of the answer to the OP’s question. Of course, that passing reference in the abstract doesn’t explain the cause of this gender difference among blacks.

I disagree with your concluding suggestion. Talking to some mixed-race couples is unlikely to answer the question. Several members of mixed-race couples have taken the trouble to respond here, and their posts have been interesting and informative. Nevertheless, I don’t think their individual experiences enable us to draw a conclusion about the overall tendency -- specifically, about why there's a gender difference.