Dimensions of Ethnic Intermarriage in Hawaii

Abstract

Hawaii's uniquely high intermarriage permits assessing the relative distances separating the eight major ethnic groups. From these distances (based upon about fifty thousand marriages), multidimensional scaling produces a spatial representation of intermarriage among groups. This multidimensional pair analysis tests a similarity model for mate selection. For both 1928-34 and 1948-53, intermarriage between any two groups is highly predicted by the similarity of their positions on two major independent dimensions: (1) East-West (variation in race, religion, and nationality), indexing the cultural traditions that the group inherits, and (2) Urbanicity (percentage of the group living in Honolulu), indexing the extent to which the group has acquired the dominant contemporary way of life.