Last month, the Pew Research Center released new numbers about intermarriage in the United States. The numbers are rising across the board with a few exceptions, but there’s some good news when it comes to black women. To make a long story short, your feeling that all those interracially married black women you see on the street seems like a lot more than a few years ago, you’re right.

I’ve been clocking the intermarriage rates since I started research for my book, Swirling. That was in 2008. In 2008 and again in 2010, the rates of intermarriage amongst black women was at 9 percent. “Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. Some 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. [SOURCE] That doesn’t mean that a quarter of ALL black men intermarry, because only 43% of black men marry. So of that 43% group, a quarter of them marry non-black women.

However, between the years of 2008 and 2012, the rates of intermarriage for black women have risen from 9 percent to 12 percent, while the numbers for black male intermarriage remains about the same.

To read the entire current study, click here.

I’m going to go ahead and claim a small victory here. Google black women dating interracially and see this blog pop up on the first page. We my friends, are making history.