Pointing out that marriage can coexist with sexism — which it can and does — is not an argument against the idea that a high percentage of poor White people have surprisingly positive attitudes toward ethnic minorities.

Marriage and sexism both exist and long have. Saying that people can marry other people for whom they do not have complete respect in every way is not the same as saying that married people don’t respect or admire their spouses more than they respect or admire other people who were alternate possible partners. Most married people do, in fact, love and admire one another. Straight male, neo-Nazis almost never choose women of color as their brides.

When a group of people say they feel close to another group, when they say they support legal and social programs intended to help that group, when they say they would vote for members of that group for president, and when they marry and have kids with members of that group at higher rates than others do, it feels very safe to me to say that — as a group (on average) — the people in question have positive attitudes toward the members of that group.

To say this differently, if poor White people married Black people at much higher than expected rates but still disparaged Black people on lots of other indicators, I’d have to consider this marriage finding some kind of interesting quirk, sexual or otherwise. But the effect shows up on multiple measures. My explanation is thus not any kind of quirk. It is empathy.

Finally, I think a good critique of these data must explain why (in the absence of group acceptance and empathy) poor White people marry people of color more often than rich White people do.