Dating While Black: Marital Selection Among Nigerian Americans in the U.S. Marriage Market

There are few decisions in life that are as important as selecting a marital partner. Compatibility, chemistry, and connection are all critical criteria when deciding if a potential suitor is a complementary match. In this digital age, for some, the process of finding a marital partner has transitioned online, further complicating things. Given the historical significance of race in the U.S., a marital partner’s ethnoracial background is also a key factor worth considering. Since the 1967 landmark Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, which ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, intermarriage rates between individuals of different races have increased significantly. Therefore, it is important that studies of marital selection account not only for this matchmaking process shifting online, but also for the heterogeneity of the Black population in the U.S.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2016 through 2021 and interviews with 60 participants, this paper focuses on the marital selection process among Nigerian American in the U.S. Nigerian Americans present a unique opportunity to study how people make such an important decision for four primary reasons. First, Nigeria is the number one source country of African immigrants to the U.S. Second, Nigerian Americans are Black immigrants. This is important because contemporary studies of intermarriage tend to focus on racial differences between partners, often ignoring ethnic differences within racial or national origin groups, especially among people of African descent. Third, Nigeria is both a Muslim and Christian country; therefore, religion remains an important factor in the marital decision making of Nigerian Americans. Fourth, Nigerian Americans are one of the most educated immigrant groups in the U.S. Thus, focusing on a hyper-selective group such as Nigerian Americans allows us to investigate the ways in which groups with high levels of education navigate the digital marital selection process.