Interracial Intimacy: “White-black dating, marriage, and adoption are on the rise. This development, however, is being met with resistance—more vocally by blacks than by whites.” — Randall Kennedy, The Atlantic

A white writer has a different take on the development:

In a world brimming with bad news, here’s one of the happiest trends: Instead of preying on people of different races, young Americans are falling in love with them.

Whites and blacks can be found strolling together as couples even at the University of Mississippi, once the symbol of racial confrontation.

“I will say that they are always given a second glance,” acknowledges C. J. Rhodes, a black student at Ole Miss. He adds that there are still misgivings about interracial dating, particularly among black women and a formidable number of “white Southerners who view this race-mixing as abnormal, frozen by fear to see Sara Beth bring home a brotha.”

Mixed-race marriages in the U.S. now number 1.5 million and are roughly doubling each decade. About 40 percent of Asian-Americans and 6 percent of blacks have married whites in recent years. — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times