There’s plenty of meat on the bones to pick at in the recently released report from the Pew Research Center titled “The Rise of Intermarriage.” One piece of the puzzle that caught my eye was how similar to black women are to Asian men–and the dissimilarity too.

On one hand, blacks and Asians represent the two groups with the largest gender difference in out-marriage rates. Black women out-marry at 9 percent while black men out-marry at 24 percent; Asian women out-marry at 37 percent while Asian men out-marry at 16 percent.

High Marriage Rates

The Healthy Marriage Resource Center, “all Asian ethnic groups living in the U.S. have a greater than 60 percent marriage rate. Compared to other racial groups, their marriage rate is most similar to that of non-Hispanic Whites.” If Asian American women are out-marrying at twice the rate of Asian men, shouldn’t Asian American men have lower than average marital rates?! Um, apparently not, so what is going on here? Why don’t Asian men have similar marital rates to black women?

First off, “Asian” is a name for diverse group of people. People from India, Vietnam, China, Laos among other nations are all considered Asian. But all of these groups still have higher marital rates than black women. Again, I had to ask, what gives?

Well, many Asian Americans come to the US and they are already married before they emigrate, thus no need to start looking for new partner when they get here. Second of all, if an Asian American man comes form a tight-knit family with ties to his families’ home country, he might have family members who can arrange for him to marry a girl from ‘back home’ to bring her here to US. If you saw Monsoon Wedding–rent it, it’s good–you’ll notice that the union which gave the movie it’s title was an arranged marriage between an Indian man from America who was marrying an Indian woman. After their ceremony, she was to come back to America with him. Asian men are quietly selecting wives from their home country and bringing them to the US.

How Black Women Should Get in on a Piece of the Action

Now, I’m not suggesting that some black woman start up a mail-order husband business to bring over men from underdeveloped countries, but I am suggesting that black women who feel that their marital picks are slim in the US should look into emigration or online dating internationally. Many of the Nigerian women I know are only interested in dating Nigerian men, these women feel that it is of the utmost importance to marry a man who is culturally similar to them. So they plan on returning to Nigeria to find a suitable mate if they cannot find one here. There is no shame in the game in doing what needs to be done in order to find a suitable spouse.

Asian American men are clearly concerned about making sure that they find a mate, regardless of who their female counterparts are choosing to marry.

Maybe black women will get the same memo that Asian American men are passing around that says “he who grows old and gray alone, without availing himself of every tool in the arsenal to find a spouse/partner is a fool.” OK, that may not be an actual memo, but if you ask me, it sure does sound a lot like something Confucius would say.

Editor’s Note: Why the cuss aren’t there more black women seeking Asian men for potential mates? Sounds like there needs to be more Asian men black women dating sites. These aren’t online dating sites per se, but you might want to check out the Asian Men Black Women Unite facebook page, and the Ning site, Black Women Asian Men United.