This piece will appear in the Huffington Post soon, but I thought I’d share it with the crew first…

Five Unexpected Contributors to the Rise of Interracial Marriage

If you couldn’t believe your own eyes about the rise and acceptance of interracial marriage in America, rest assured. Recent polling reveals that most folks are giving the high-five to mixed race marriages–more that any time in history. Speaking of history, there’s a few unheralded reasons for this rise of acceptance. Tell us if you agree.

Al Gore’s claim of “inventing” the internet: During his 1999 presidential campaign, Gore said this on CNN’s “Late Edition”: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the internet.” While his quotes were widely taken out of context, one thing rings true. The internet has been an integral contributor of the rise of interracial relationships. I met my husband of tens years on a Yahoo! chat room the same year Gore made his claim, and I’ll be eternally grateful to you, Al. Online dating has evolved quite a bit since those early chat room days, and sites dedicated to merging races, cultures and creeds are as easy to find as pine cones on a pine tree. Take Rob Thompson’s brainchild, AfroRomance.com, an online site that connects over 1.5 million people across the globe who are interested in interracial, intercontinental, interfaith and intercultural relationships. Thompson created AfroRomance while he worked as a Silicon-Valley programmer. He continued growing the site after he moved back to his native country, Australia, and unbeknownst to him, his future wife, a Kenyan woman, signed up for his service. Talk about “building it and they will come,” indeed.

Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever”: Love it of hate it, the flick starring Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra has become a cult hit, and brought the issue of the successful black men leaving black women for white women into the national conversation. Sure, black women lamented about how so many IBM’s (ideal black men) we dipping their toes in the interracial dating pool, which was an especially hard ego blow just one generation after the Civil Rights movement. “Jungle Fever,” spoke to the pain and rejection black women were feeling as black men–their men–embraced their newfound freedom to swirl. Unfortunately at the time, what we saw in the media was that black men were the only gender in the race building lives with non-black women, while most black women stayed loyal to the “nothing but a brother” mindset. While it might have taken a while to sink in, over 20 years later, black women are beginning to open up to the possibilities of crossing the color lines to find love.

The inventors of soft-serve ice cream: After all, depending on who you believe, Dairy Queen or a team of British scientists created the machine in the 1930‘s that brought us chocolate/vanilla swirl, strawberry/chocolate swirl, etcetera, etcetera. Thanks to such yummy combinations “Swirling” has entered the American lexicon and is loosely defined as romantic blending of two people of a different race. Perhaps because society realized that if food could live together deliciously, why not people of other races, cultures and creeds?

Let’s Dance  by eternal rocker, David Bowie: Bowie’s 1983 hit, Let’s Dance encouraged everyone–no matter the race, color or creed–to get on their red shoes and dance the night away. But speaking of race and color, Bowie married Somali-American bombshell, Iman, in 1992, which, let’s face it–shocked a lot of people. Whether he was trying to or not, Bowie blew wide open the myth that white men only took black women as mistresses and not wives. Twenty years later plus one daughter, David Bowie and Iman are one of the longest lasting married couples in Hollywood.

Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” ride: After watching cute little dolls representative of every major country in every continent of the world singing “It’s a small world after all” over, and over, and over, how can you not have hope for humanity living and loving together? It’s either that or stick a needle in your eye to distract yourself from the mind-numbing repetitiveness of it all.

Christelyn D. Karazin is the co-author of Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate, Mixing Race, Culture and Creed and runs a popular interracial and cultural fusion blog called Beyond Black & White.