Asian-American Men By the Numbers - Do They Measure Up?

(Photo attributed to aznlover.com.)

Frequently heard and read in the U.S. are racial slurs about Asian men being small men, in stature.  Also, they are referred to as having small packages.  So the reasoning would go, "why would a Caucasian, Hispanic or African-American woman be interested in an Asian guy?"  This idea is constantly repeated.  Just do a Twitter search for "asian guy" and, in addition to some tweets not suitable for children, you will see a steady stream of references to the size of Asian men.  But here is a number worth remembering:  41.

With such negativity, one would think that no one would be interested in marrying an Asian man at all.  The numbers simply do not bear that out, though.  Women vote with their feet, or rather their garter belt.  At least since the 1970's, American-born Asian men have married outside of their race over forty percent of the time.

The Pew Research Center's recent report "Marrying Out" confirms that American-born Asian men married outside the Asian race 41.7% of the time in 2008.  Forty-one is a nice number -- one worth remembering when one hears Asian men being metaphorically reduced to the (alleged) size of their anatomical parts.  The Pew report is based on actual microdata of marriages occurring in the U.S. in 2008.

Now, the percentage of such marriages is actually down since 1975 when it was 44.3%.  However, since the total number of American-born Asian males has increased exponentially since 1975, the actual number of American-born Asian males marrying outside their race has also grown exponentially.

(Graph extracted from Pew Report, "Marrying Out", Appendix III, page 6)

It is obvious that Asian-American men are finding love with women outside their race.  It is a matter of personal preference for those couples.  It is clearly not a choice that the majority of Americans make, but a sizable minority do make that choice.  At East West Attraction, it is our goal to facilitate those matches for our clients and members.

So, the question is, do non-Asian women buy into the racial slur?  In answer, we say "41".