We’ve told you before, in this very space, that dating outside of one’s race is nothing to be afraid of.
Actress Regina King agrees, noting last year that a lot of her Black friends are wrongly opposed to interracial dating.
“I have about five Black friends who date outside of their race," she said. “But all the other friends of mine, it’s either they vocally say that they won’t or every time an opportunity comes up for them to date outside of their race, there’s some excuse why it’s not going to work. It’ll be more like, ‘Well, you know he works at such and such, and our schedules don’t match.’ But we’ll know really what it is. It’s ’cause he’s white.”
In today’s ever-diversifying America, it makes sense for more people to start dating outside of their race. It turns out, however, that there’s still a tinge of racism within even the new melting-pot mentality.
According to a new piece from NPR, almost 7.5 percent of all marriages in America are now interracial. But not all interracial relationships are created equally:
As of 2010, just 0.3 percent of white men in marriages were married to Black women, and just 0.8 percent of white women in marriages were married to Black men. By contrast, 2.1 percent of white men in marriages were married to Asian or American Indian women, and 1.4 percent of married white women had an Asian or American Indian spouse. That meant that last year, white Americans were in marriages with Asians far more often than with Blacks, even though the number of married African-Americans outnumbered Asians by more than 2 million people.
It’s a strange fact that whites and Blacks just aren’t getting married to each other at significant rates, despite the fact that the vast majority of both — 84 percent of whites and 96 percent of Blacks — support the idea. But even that statistic is telling: Whites are less open to the idea of marrying a black person than vice versa. Despite the fact that it’s 2011, racial barriers are still a major factor in people’s lives.
Old prejudices die hard, even where love is concerned.

(Photo: Tamera Mowry)