Black on Black: How the Marital Selection Process Among Nigerian Americans Complicates the U.S. Ethnoracial Hierarchy

Selecting a life partner is arguably one of the most important decisions in a person’s life. In the U.S. where race is salient, African immigrants present a unique opportunity to study how people make such an important decision. Black immigrants now represent nearly one-out-of-ten Black individuals in the U.S. Much of that growth over the past few decades has been fueled by migrants from Africa. Therefore, it is important that studies of marital selection account 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 ethnoracial hierarchies and preferences of second-generation Nigerian Americans when selecting a marital partner. I highlight three primary findings. First, there are notable generational differences between Nigerian immigrants and their U.S.-born children. In my study, second-generation participants acknowledge that their immigrant parents have an ethnoracial hierarchy that prioritizes choosing an endogamous partner of the same African ethnicity. Although some participants also shared those preferences for an endogamous partner, several were open to a partner of a different ethnicity and/or race. Second, there is a distinct process of learning what it means to be Black in the U.S. My findings show that some Nigerian immigrants and members of the second-generation have tried to distinguish themselves from African Americans and push back on a homogenized description of the Black population. Third, the impact of #BlackLivesMatter movement has outlasted the protests of 2020. The #BlackLivesMatter protests during summer 2020 crystalized the importance of choosing a Black partner for some participants. For those already in interracial marriages, it made the Nigerian partner more aware of how often or how infrequently they talked about race with their White partners, and their comfort levels when doing so.