The Pew Research Center released some interesting data one month before we celebrate 50 years of legalized interracial marriage in the United States. According to the data, more people are accepting than ever about intermarriage, some racial groups are going buck wild, and location matters.

Here’s the highlights of interest for the BB&W Crew:

• 12% of black women are married interracially, compared to 24% of black men in 2015. This is progress, considering when I was doing research for Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate, Mixing Race, Culture & Creed back in 2010, that number was at 9%, and that needle hadn’t moved for decades.

• Attitude and acceptance of interracial marriage across the board have increased, and the amount of people who think intermarriage is good for society is up 15 points since 1980.

• Interracial marriage is still more common with the more educated, but there’s been a slight increase with those who just have a high school diploma. Blacks have higher intermarriage rates when they have at least a bachelor’s degree. And the more education a black man has, the more likely he will marry out.

• Interracial marriage is STILL political. According to the study, Democrats are much more accepting of the growing number of intermarriage (49%), while Republicans are less so (28%).

• Location matters! Major metropolitan areas have the highest acceptance and highest rates of interracial marriages, period.

All in all, we’re going in the right direction, but I can’t help but wonder why black women are still so slow to see the writing on the wall. Every other major racial group shows more willingness to date interracially, and at this point, we’re standing in our own way. We’ll be discussing this more on our “Dating Darwinism” Facebook page. Click here for consideration–we won’t accept everyone. Sorry; ladies only.

This would be a good time to mention that InterracialDatingCentral.com is the official sponsor for Beyond Black & White. Perhaps some of you might want to actually take the plunge.