Mixed-race marriages
Love is color-blind: Studies find dramatic shift.
Love is eroding America's racial barriers. The number of interracial marriages continues to increase, with about one of every 13 Americans who are married now wed to a spouse of a different race or a Hispanic background. More than 8.4 million people were in such marriages in 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That is a dramatic shift from 1960, when Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's white mother and black father married. At that time, 22 states banned interracial marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down such laws 40 years ago on June 12, 1967.
Now, more than one in five adults have close relatives who are in mixed-race marriages, a 2006 Pew Research Center survey says.
Also, more than half of all black, Hispanic and Asian adults have dated someone of a different racial group, according to George Yancey, a University of North Texas sociologist.
The most common interracial marriages (more than 40%) are between Hispanics and whites. More than 3.5 million Americans were in such relationships in 2005, U.S. Census data show. (Some researchers designate these unions as "interethnic" rather than interracial.)
Only 10% of all interracial marriages were blacks wed to whites.
Most black-white marriages (70%) involved a black man and white woman. That's the reverse of Asian-white marriages, in which 74% were white men married to Asian women.
More than 10% of married couples ages 20 to 29 had a spouse of a different race in 2005, compared with the national average of 7.5%. -- Rochelle Sharpe
Mr. Starks
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