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“SOME ASIAN MEN ARE ATTRACTIVE TO ME, BUT FOR A HUSBAND …”

Korean Adoptees and the Salience of Race in Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2008

Jiannbin Lee Shiao  and
Mia H. Tuan
Jiannbin Lee Shiao*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Dartmouth College, and Department of Sociology, University of Oregon
Mia H. Tuan
Affiliation:
Education Studies and Center on Diversity and Community, University of Oregon
*
Professor Jiannbin Lee Shiao, Department of Sociology, Dartmouth College, 6104 Silsby Hall, Hanover, NH 03755. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Two indicators of race relations in the United States are interracial marriage and transracial adoption. We examine the salience of race in the romantic involvements of Korean adoptees, and we argue that mainstream racial discourses influence romantic preferences across variations in personal experience, local demographics, and social distance. Applying a dating-history approach to a probability sample of semistructured interviews with fifty-eight adult Korean adoptees, we demonstrate how racial discourses influence romantic preferences by shaping adoptees' interpretations of their romantic involvements across a range of structural conditions, and we also identify specific conditions that limit their salience. In brief, we introduce a conception of romantic preference that bridges the existing constructs in the qualitative and the quantitative literatures on interracial marriage.

Keywords

Transracial AdoptionAdopteeAsian AmericanInterracial MarriageInterracial DatingRacial FormationMixed MethodsOrdinal Logistic RegressionSemistructured Interviews
Type
STATE OF THE ART
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Fall 2008 , pp. 259 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2008

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