Socio-Demographic and Cultural Context and Attitudes towards Interracial Dating: A Study of Students at Two South African Universities

Ishmael I. Kalule-Sabiti, North-West University, Mafikeng Campus
Yaw Amoateng, University of Johannesburg

South Africa has placed enormous hopes on its youth who are in the majority demographically. Given their demographic majority, the youth bridge the old and new, provide an index of future social change and are beacons of hope for the society. In countries such as the United States, some of the early research focused on interracial relationships as a proxy for understanding race relations and acceptance of other groups. The study employs the contact hypothesis to examine students’ attitudes toward interracial dating at two South African universities by examining two main social settings or contexts within which contact occurs and contend that these social structures either hinder or encourage acceptance of other groups and thus affect the positions people adopt on interracial dating: educational and residential neighbourhood settings. Besides these two settings, we also control for such factors as race and ethnicity, social class, gender, age, friendship and religion.