The nonmetro/metro context of racial-ethnic outmarriage: some differences between African Americans and Mexican Americans

Data from the 1990 U S. Census are used to examine nonmetro-metro distinctions in the outmarriage patterns of the nation's two largest minority groups--African Americans and Mexican Americans. The analysis is guided by a multilevel model combining individual- and community-level determinants of outmarriage. Consistent with notions suggesting that persons in metro areas are less traditional and, perhaps, more tolerant of those different from them, we find that African Americans living in metro areas are more likely to be married to someone from another racial/ethnic group than their peers in nonmetro areas, even after residential differences in individual and community characteristics are taken into account. On the other hand, controlling for other factors, Mexican Americans living in metro areas are not any more likely than those living in nonmetro settings to be exogamous. One possible explanation for this divergent pattern is the relatively recent urbanization of the Mexican American population