Interracial Marriage a Black Guy Thing

Black men are much bigger fans of interracial marriage than black women, according to a new study. About 22% of black men who got married in 2008 walked down the aisle with a woman of a different race, compared to just 9% of black women, the study found. “When you add in the prison population, it pretty well explains the extraordinarily low marriage rates of black women,” one professor tells the New York Times.

Among all races, interracial marriages now make up roughly 1 in 6 new unions in the US. Black-white pairings are the least common, accounting for only 1 out of every 60 couples, though that's up from 1 in 1,000 when Barack Obama's parents got married. Asian Americans, meanwhile, mixed very freely, with nearly half of all US-born Asians marrying someone of another race. (More black people stories.)