Let's mix it up! Tots come in all colors, shapes, and sizes, and so can their toys. Whether mama's hoping to teach her lil one about his mixed heritage or she simply wants to add some variety to the toy box, there's a growing number of playthings to help her do so. Check out the following selection of toys designed with diversity in mind.
Progressing from infatuation to dating to relationship to marriage is a challenge for any couple, but interracial couples have a unique predicament. Besides the stereotype that dating outside your race is an experiment or, worse, a fetish, you have to deal with questions, concerns, and straight-up disapproval from friends and family. And no one's more judgy than parents.
There's a moving, first-person account in today's Guardian about a British-Pakistani man who married a white, Christian woman despite his family's insistence he marry Muslim.
His mother gave the wedding her blessing to his face, but then complained behind his back to siblings. Next she was declining her invitation, and the rest of the family followed suit. At the last minute, a sympathetic sister convinced their mom to come. They planned to stay just for dinner, but they closed the place down at 1 a.m.
A heartwarming ending for a story with such a volatile beginning, so I feel pretty confident it's possible for even the most traditional families. If you've been in a serious, interracial relationship, tell us how you either worked your way in to his family, or persuaded your own to like, love, or just tolerate him enough for a Sunday dinner.
Leaving the stigma of the past (and sometimes present) behind, more Americans are getting hitched to people of different races according to US Census figures released yesterday. The Census amasses a treasure trove of intriguing statistics so here are the numbers about race and marriage that caught my eye.
Do any of these numbers surprise you?
Source: Flickr User douglemoine
"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way."
— Keith Bardwell, a Louisiana Justice of the Peace who sounds like a Rip Van Winkle character who slept through the '60s,'70s, '80s . . . (you get the picture). He says he's concerned for the children interracial couples would have, and that in Tangipahoa Parish where he lives, interracial marriages don't last long. Last I heard, the chances of any marriage in the US lasting is about 50/50 and that people of opposite sexes, anyway, are free to marry who they choose.
