NBC recently debuted a Friday-night sitcom, Truth Be Told, that features an interracial couple and promises that “no topic is off-limits.” While the reception was generally cold, some critics were at least sympathetic to the attempt to feature the changing face of American marriages.
If TV shows want to stay abreast of the times, however, they’re going to have to start including a lot more interracial couples, even if the plot lines don’t read like college diversity seminars. Mixed-race marriages are growing at rapid rates, according to a TIME analysis of Census data. The following interactive chart shows marriage rates for any combination of race or ethnicity and gender of each spouse.
While the number of white men wedding white women has dropped almost 7 percent since 2000, marriages between white men and non-white women–either Hispanic, Black, Asian, American Indian, or Multiracial–is up 36 percent. (The reverse–White women and non-White men–is up 33 percent.)
In some cases, the disparity between genders is more pronounced. In 2013, there were over 130,000 marriages between white men and black women, while there were nearly 320,000 marriages between white women and black men. Both combinations are trending heavily upward.
Source: IPUMS-USA, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org.
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